About a year ago, I reviewed a fun and relaxing game by the name of Lake. Lake fits the definition of a “Cozy Game” to a T. It’s simple to understand, it’s lenient so as not to cause stress, and it lets you take in your surroundings and characters. In Lake, you play as Meredith Weiss, a young lady returning home after 20 years living away from her hometown of Providence Oaks, Oregon. She returns because her parents are off on vacation, and Meredith’s father, Thomas, has asked her to come to housesit and take on a few of his postal mail routes. As you progressed, you learned more about Meredith and the town. You got to choose your dialogue to build Meredith’s story and interact with some fun townsfolk, maybe even fall in love! With the holiday season upon us, Gamious has delivered us a present early with a return to Providence Oaks in this prequel DLC.
Since this is a prequel, you’re not in Meredith’s shoes; you’re actually living through her father Thomas’ eyes. The story takes place on the Christmas holiday in 1985, the year before Lake takes place in September. Unfortunately, tragedy strikes and the Weiss family receives some disappointing news. Meredith is stuck working through Christmas this year and will be unable to make it home. As you play through Thomas’ days, he and his wife Emily, will come up with some new plans and run into some interesting stories along the way. Thomas does have a more upbeatness to him, where he seems more positive and “glass is half full” in his responses when compared to Meredith. Although, as with the base game, Season’s Greetings also gives the player dialogue choice in how to respond to other characters, and this does affect specific scenarios and may affect which cutscenes play out. So, as with the base game, you may want to play through a second time to see and hear everything the extra content offers.
You’ll drive to familiar locations, deliver packages and mail, and enjoy the beautiful snowy scenery. You’ll also meet some familiar neighbors and new out-of-towners and experience some enlightening encounters overall as the story unfolds. It was nice to get some backstory on a few of the characters you have come to know in the base game, and it was also lovely to meet a few of the new characters, like the quite arrogant News Reporter and his team whose van has broken down inside of town. Overall, Season’s Greetings is just more of everything Lake brought to the table. If you enjoyed what Lake was providing, I’m going to go out on a limb and say you’ll enjoy this DLC just as much. It’s not very long, but it doesn’t overstay its welcome, either. There was enough content without making the delivery or listening to dialogue a chore.
As with the base game, each day your map is populated with parcel delivery locations and letter delivery locations. Hop in your postal van and drive to each. Some will open up a dialogue cutscene, while others may prompt Thomas to say some quirky line. Even with all the unplowed snow on the ground, the driving was no different than the Summer roads in Lake, at least from what I could feel. Not that this game is going for Forza-level realistic postal van physics, but I was expecting the truck to handle a bit differently. Although maybe it does, and it’s just not that much different, regardless, the drive around Providence Oaks is still comfortable.
As you do in Lake, you walk very slowly. You can speed up your walk a bit, but you’re not running from van to door and back. It would have been nice to maybe give an option toggle for a much faster walk in the DLC since we’ve already gone through that slow pace in the base game. It’s not a slight against Season’s Greetings, but more of a feature that would have added to the fun. The only other thing I ran into while playing was the music tracks are lifted from the base game. So you get songs about summer and those that try to invoke that 80s-90s country sound. A couple of holiday-themed songs are placed on the radio, but not enough to give it noticeable variety.
All in all, Lake: Season’s Greetings is a solid choice of prequel DLC that takes everything I enjoyed in the base games and gives me more of it. I found the new characters entertaining while enjoying learning more about the characters I came to know from the original game. But mostly, the short runtime does the DLC a solid by not making your time in Providence Oaks feel like a slog. As I mentioned earlier, if you enjoyed the original Lake, you’ll undoubtedly get some warm and fuzzy feelings playing Season’s Greetings. If you want that nice and cozy experience, do what I did: grab some fuzzy socks, a mug filled with hot cocoa, and deliver some mail. The only way the experience would have been better is if snow was falling outside my own window.
A Steam code was provided in advance by the publisher for review purposes
