Hands on with Ary and the Secret of Seasons
I have a perennial soft spot for adventure games, so when Ary and the Secret of Seasons popped up on my radar, it jumped towards the top of my list, thankfully, Modus Games were kind enough to grant me early access.
Ary tells the story of well, Ary, or Aryelle, if you want to use her full name, she is a young girl in the village of Yule, known to be the seat of Winter. While Ary longs for adventure, it is only the male members of her family that can take up the mantle of protecting the town, that was until a few weeks before the story begins, when Flynn, Ary’s older brother vanishes and is presumed dead. After a bit of exploring, giant hot rocks fall from the sky and melt the snow, turning what was once a winter wonderland into a warm and now confusing summer escape. With this change in the seasons, unnatural as it is, a missive arrives, calling Ary’s father to a mysterious meeting with the other guardians, but as he is sick, Ary decides to head off in his place.
If you are getting strong Mulan vibes from this, don’t worry, you are not alone as it is strong, but while the story has moments of that, it also has a little bit of The Last Airbender in there as well, especially with its setting. For the most part though, the gameplay is pretty straight forward, it takes the basics of adventure games, like your Zelda’s and combines it with your puzzles, also from your Zelda’s, but finally throws in some temples and some bosses and you guessed it, with a touch of Zelda. The separation here though is more to do with the ability to impact the seasons, either around you in a small way, or on a larger scale and that changes up the game in big ways.
The first part of my playthrough was more tutorial than anything else and was the same level that was included in the recent Steam demo. As a tutorial, it was nice to get a solid understand of the games systems and how they work together, obviously as the starting power is Winter, you can freeze and unfreeze parts of the world. This is the critical part to understand, seasonal manipulation is important, because when you come across a space where there is no way forward, you can just engage a wintery blast and you will be ok. This is the element where I enjoyed things the most, you might come across a treasure chest that is wrapped in vines, changing the seasons will see them wither and shrink in the cold, granting you access.
After exploring the ruins and making my way to the Dome of Seasons and seeing the start of the grand quest that lies ahead, my time with that portion of the game came to an end, but then I got to play something all new. This time, I was using multiple season powers, Winter, Spring and maybe Autumn, I honestly couldn’t tell, to attempt to climb a giant tower and take down a big boss. While the core mechanics were the same, the addition of extra seasons added in more complexity to the puzzles, with the first one requiring a combination of both Spring and Autumn to work. There is a little trick that comes into play as seasons can’t overlap, meaning that if you need both, you have to position them in the right spot, too close and one won’t become large enough, to far apart and you risk them not meeting where you want them to, it is a delicate balance.
After clearing the first, it was onto the next and the one after that and so on, these all were challenging, but clearing them felt rewarding and not just because one of them provided me with an upgrade for my slingshot. While the upgrade was nice and the puzzles fun, the combat feels the weakest, and while you can lock onto enemies, there is something off about the entire aspect. Not to say it is broken, there is just a disconnect between the actions and the results, almost as if its floating, to some it might not be an issue, but it was something I noticed at the start and it didn’t click with me, by my time came to an end.
Ary is shaping up to be the perfect game for all seasons, there is a charming story to be told, the world appears vibrant and very stylised and top it off the seasonal powers are fun. While combat feels odd, it might be that I just need to grow with the game some more, in order for it to feel better with it. For now though, we need only wait out the remains of Winter and look forward to a sunny Spring day, when it releases in September.
