Lake: Season’s Greetings Review – An Extra Round of Festive Relaxing Gameplay (PS4)

Lake is one of those cozy easy-going games, a refreshing change from the usual role-playing, action-adventure, first-person shooter games. I bought the game earlier this year and thoroughly enjoyed it. When I saw that the first DLC was being released, I knew I had to get it as an excuse to play this game again. Season’s Greetings is that DLC, and it brings everything that I was hoping for with bonus content. More mail-delivery gameplay, more multi-choice dialogue, and more stories and characters. Plus, it’s set at Christmas, and Providence Oaks sure looks pretty with all the snow and Christmas festivities. Read this review to see why you should get Lake: Season’s Greetings. Note that there may be spoilers ahead.

Lake: Season’s Greetings is available on PC, PlayStation 4 & 5, and Xbox One & Xbox Series X | S for $9.99. Additionally, you can get Lake: Special Delivery, which is a bundle containing Lake and the Season’s Greetings DLC, on PlayStation and Xbox for $24.99.

If you want to learn more about the original Lake game, you can read our review.

Story – Happy Holidays

If you’ve played the original Lake, you’ll know that the playable protagonist was Meredith Weiss, the daughter of Providence Oaks’ retired mail man who filled in for him temporarily. It was also set in the autumn of 1986. Season’s Greetings is the prequel to Lake, specifically set around Christmas of 1985. This time you play as Thomas Weiss, Meredith’s father. When I first learned about this, I was surprised, as I thought I’d be playing as Meredith again, but I thought playing as her dad instead was quite interesting. When having a different playable character, there’s a risk that you won’t warm to them like the original. I didn’t have that problem with Thomas Weiss in Season’s Greetings. I quickly grew to like him the instance I started playing him.

Being Lake‘s DLC, Season’s Greetings links to the original game’s story. There are frequent phone calls to Meredith, who is unable to visit her parents at Providence Oaks due to a deadline at work. You also find out how Meredith’s parents got their holiday to Florida (her mother had entered a sweepstakes and won the grand prize, which was the two-week holiday to Florida). You also get to talk to the usual band of small town characters, such as the nosy diner waitress and the crazy old cat lady.

Season’s Greetings does get to offer something different storywise. Getting to play as a different character at a different time of year offers up new scenarios, as well as new characters to meet. There are 5 new characters in Season’s Greetings, 3 of which make up a visiting film crew. There’s Gabriel and Ilsa, two likeable characters who you can nudge into a relationship, but the most prominent character was Connor Price, a big shot news reporter. For me, Connor was one of the most striking characters I encountered so far in Lake. I enjoyed his character arc, and I wished there was more of it. It felt like Season’s Greetings was really getting somewhere with the film crew storyline – and then the game was over, quite abruptly, I thought. The game touched on these characters, but it didn’t feel like it went far enough for my liking. 

The film crew offered some interesting scenarios, but I wish there had been more.

There are other stories alongside the visiting film crew. The most heartwarming moments were between Meredith and her parents. Even though Meredith never appears on-screen, you could tell how close she was to her parents even when they were just speaking over the phone. Another story involved a character who was leaving Providence Oaks to move nearer to their family, something that got Thomas and Emily (his wife) thinking if they should move closer to Meredith too. There’s also a scenario involving Frank, Thomas’ coworker at the post office, who is in a spot of bother over some fireworks. After playing Lake, it is good to see more storylines out of the original characters, especially the more prominent ones. Again though, I wish these stories had gone on for longer. I think Season’s Greetings should have gone on for a few more in-game days, even a week. Just over a week didn’t feel quite enough.

Gameplay – More Deliveries, More Conversations

Lake: Season’s Greetings offers new characters, new scenarios, and is set during a snowy Christmas and New Year, but what about the gameplay? If you were expecting something new here, there isn’t – not that this is necessarily a bad thing.

Although the first review of Lake goes into the gameplay, and nothing’s really changed here, I’ll still talk about it here and share my thoughts, as I didn’t do the original review.

Delivering Mail Through Christmas and New Year

Lake has two major gameplay elements: driving around town in a van and dropping mail off at designated locations, and multi-choice dialogue. We’ll start off talking about the mail delivery gameplay.

Delivering mail couldn’t be easier in Lake. At the start of each day, you begin at the mail office, the van and your bag all loaded up, ready to deliver letters and parcels. The game helpfully pinpoints all the delivery locations on the minimap for your convenience, and even tells you whether it’s a letter or a parcel you’re delivering. Letters are easy; you just approach the mailbox and put the letters in. Parcels require a bit more thought. You have to retrieve them from the van and select the right parcel, matching the address of the location and the parcel. Then you have to take the parcel and hand it over to the customer, or leave it on the doorstep. Sometimes a parcel delivery will trigger a conversation with a notable resident.

The gameplay may not have changed, but it’s great to do more deliveries.

One thing I love about Lake is the not knowing what the day will bring, where your delivery rounds will take you and who you’ll encounter. Every day is different, even if the gameplay remains the same, and it never feels repetitive or boring.

The other thing I love about Lake is driving around town in the van. Being wintertime with Season’s Greetings, the driving can feel a bit hazardous at times, especially the steering and braking, but it’s not undriveable or distracting otherwise. It’s almost a nice breather between delivery drop-offs. There’s also a sense of satisfaction when you make the last delivery and you head back to the mail office to end the workday.

Lake is probably one of the most relaxing games I’ve ever played, with the easy driving around, the stunning scenery, and the simple satisfying mail delivery gameplay. The fact that Season’s Greetings allows you to do more of this feels rewarding.

Chatting With the Residents

A mail delivery simulation game wouldn’t be complete without having the locals chat with you during your rounds. These conversations happen frequently throughout Lake, either between working hours or during your rounds. Conversations aren’t filler for in-between deliveries; they all serve a purpose and are the driving force behind the game’s story. They can also give better insight into characters and make the town of Providence Oaks feel more alive.

Like the delivery gameplay, there’s nothing different gameplay-wise with conversations in Season’s Greetings. You still get plenty of options on how to respond to dialogue, and there’s no right or wrong answer. You feel totally in control and the options give you good variety. It makes the game’s story feel more like your own than someone else’s.

As the resident mailman, Thomas knows everyone.

Graphics & Audio – A Bit Glitchy

While Lake: Season’s Greetings is overall a good experience, it is slightly let down in the graphics and sound department. There’s nothing game breaking or immersive stopping, but it’s not something hard to ignore either.

Lagging, Camera Angles, and Animation

The first thing I noted was the issue with lagging. I can’t remember if I experienced this with the original Lake, but it was certainly present with Season’s Greetings. This mainly happened when doing my rounds around the neighborhood. It wasn’t constant, but when you’re driving a van around in snowy conditions, lagging doesn’t really help. I don’t know what was causing the lag issues, whether players have a better experience on a more powerful device like a PS5, or if it’s down to the new snow-covered Providence Oaks.

There was another graphics-related issue I spotted during a few conversations, namely the camera angle. The camera was set in the wrong place, not aimed at Thomas and whichever character he was talking to. This didn’t happen very often fortunately.

Continuing with graphical gripes, I wish the characters would have been better animated, particularly facially. I know Lake isn’t a big-budget game with mo-capped actors, but it’s a bit off-putting when the characters barely move or gesture when they’re talking. Their faces are set in the same neutral expression, never showing anger or sadness or joy. The good voice acting does make up for this though.

There may be a few graphical and audio issues, but at least Providence Oaks is pretty to look at in the winter.

Missing Voice Overs, Extra Radio Songs

It wasn’t just the graphics I had problems with. Another minor issue arose during a conversation during my delivery rounds. I was speaking to a resident, and at times, the voiceover dialogue wouldn’t play properly. For a few moments when they’d start speaking, I’d hear nothing, then suddenly their voice returns midway through their sentence. It was a bit jarring and kind of ruined the immersion a little, but again this was a minor issue that could be fixed with an update. Also, the subtitles meant that I didn’t miss any of the dialogue, even if I couldn’t hear it briefly.

There was something else I wanted to touch on the audio. This wasn’t a bug or mistake, but just something that could have been improved on. Lake has an in-game radio station that plays during the delivery rounds. Personally, while it is nice to have some music to listen to, and it adds to the game’s setting, after a while the songs do get repetitive. I think the issue with this is that there aren’t a lot of songs, and the same songs will loop over and over. Sometimes I hear the same song playing on the same in-game day. I think Season’s Greetings does add a few extra songs, but not many.

Saying all this, not everything about the graphics and sound was disappointing. When I first loaded the game, I was blown away by the transformation of Providence Oaks. It’s such a contrast to the autumnal setting of the original game. It was joyous driving along snowy roads, everything being covered in glorious snow, Christmas decorations up everywhere. The developers did an excellent job giving Providence Oaks a wintry makeover. 

Lake: Season’s Greetings was reviewed on PS4 with a key provided by Whitethorn Games.