Seasons Of Solitude is a wistful turn-based strategy game with constantly changing prehistoric maps

Seasons of Solitude is a soulful balance of survival game and turn-based strategy about an exiled prehistoric tribesman who is trying not to trash his own habitat. It’s the work of Estonian developers Ninjarithm Studio, and is based on Estonian myths.

There’s a demo on Steam, which I’ve spent barely any time with, but this seems Interesting – Interesting enough that I wanted to get a write-up in front of you before the weekend. Please disregard the rapid-fire editing of the trailer below: it works as an overview of the mechanics, but doesn’t really convey the sleepy pensiveness of the actual game.

The first thing that intrigues me is the hex-based world, which alters constantly underfoot both of its own accord and in response to your actions. Big shifts include the changing of the seasons, with food being harder to find in the darker months. Smaller ones include bee swarms blocking access to fruit, or larger animals eating your crops.

You can trap or drive those animals off, but if you do that, you’ll stress out the ecosystem, causing ripple effects elsewhere. You’ll want to build shelters and devise tools such as stone spades, but you also need to cultivate and repair tiles to support the vitality of the whole map. The basic controls are simple: you spend limited points to move around and carry out tile-specific actions, then hold F to end the turn and advance the year.

The second thing that intrigues me is that you’re not alone. Or rather, you’re alone with your thoughts in a more literal sense. The Exile has an Echo, a wraithlike manifestation of their needs and urges, who acts as a second playable character – presumably, this is the key bit they’ve derived from Estonian myth. You’ve got to keep the two incarnations of yourself apart, because if they’re both in the same green-bordered area it multiplies your ecological footprint. But you also need to use them in tandem, because if they perform the same actions on separate tiles of the same kind, you’ll get bonuses. Possibly there’s a moral here.

I like the visuals, which combine sunny vegetal shades with lots of deft little movements, like wind in the boughs or water springing up as tiles transform. I’m finding the tutorial a bit confusing as regards details like the distinction between tiles and larger regions, but it doesn’t feel like anything I can’t figure out. There’s no release date yet. Find the demo on Steam. If you dig it, you will probably also dig Folk Emerging.