Lake and Season’s Greetings review: I’m taking the slow lane this holiday season

Today I’m reviewing Lake and its DLC. Lake is a game released in 2021 where you play as Meredith Weiss, computer programmer filling in for her dad as the mail carrier in her hometown Providence Oaks while her parents are out travelling for a couple of weeks. The game is set in 1986 and it’s needless to say that the nostalgia plays a big role here. Deliver mail, reconnect and help the locals, and take a much needed break from your busy job.

The Season’s Greetings DLC is a sort of prequel to the game, where you play as Meredith’s dad Thomas in 1985, delivering parcels during the holiday weeks and driving around Providence Oaks now beautifully covered in snow. It shows characters we’ve already met in the main game, while also introducing some new ones. Playing Season’s Greetings started getting me in the mood for the holidays and it was a perfect December pick.

This is the second time I played Lake but the first time I played the DLC. We are playing it together in the Cozy Gaming Club this month, so check out the Discord server if you’d like to join us.

A huge thank you to Luc and Gamious for gifting a game key to me and for the gaming club giveaway!

There are no spoilers in this review, so feel free to keep reading even if you haven’t played it yet.

Coming back to Providence Oaks

It’s very rare that I’ll pick up a story game for a second time. But when I heard that the gaming club was going to play Lake in December, I was very excited to revisit the game and to check out the DLC. I wanted to play something a little festive this time of year and this was the perfect pick.

I live in the Netherlands and we don’t have much snow here (sometimes it might happen for a week or two between January and March). The setting felt really cozy since the main game has this typical American Fall feeling and the DLC is set in deep, white winter. A fun fact that not a lot of people might know is that despite the game being set in a very typical small American town, Gamious is actually based here in the Netherlands. I’m not from the US but I think they nailed the overall vibes so well!

It’s September and you come back to your hometown of Providence Oaks to fill in for your dad as the mail carrier for a couple of weeks. It’s also a much needed break from the city life and your hectic job as a programmer, which in turn makes you start reflecting about your lifestyle choices. Drive around in your truck to deliver letters and parcels from Monday to Saturday, while also running some errands for the locals – well, if you want to.

How will this brief period back in Providence Oaks affect your life? That’s up to you as the player.

Life in the slow or the fast lane?

As you perform your duties, the game gives you the choice of helping out some of the locals, but it’s basically up to you to accept those errands or to stick to your work. As for me, I helped everyone whenever I could, even when I didn’t particularly liked them (looking at you, Nancy). I thought the characters were generally interesting, and also flawed in different ways which made them more lively. Lake is completely voice acted, and the voice acting really takes the game to another level, bringing out each character’s personalities and little quirks.

I liked how there’s no time pressure when you’re working. You can take as much time as you want to deliver parcels and drive around as much as you want without penalties or rush. You simply end your work day when going back to the post office which triggers a night cutscene. Then you get to choose how to spend some nights: reading a book, watching TV or working on the computer. There are also some events triggered by helping out townies, for example, one night you go to the movies with the owner of the local video rental store.

Driving is highly satisfying and chill. Your truck has a radio that plays some songs while you work (not to mention a hilarious morning Pet Peeves segment). All the songs are a perfect fit for the game, but I was also glad the game lets you turn it off when they start feeling repetitive. A neat little continuity detail is that if you walk out of the truck, the music gets quieter, but if you enter a shop the same song will be playing. The mini map and expanded map are really easy to check, but the way the small town is designed around the lake makes it simple to locate yourself and this never became a frustration point even though I don’t always have the best sense of direction.

I have to admit that I did crash my truck a few times, and also flipped it once. I tried to run over a local to see what would happen. The game stops you, thankfully, otherwise things would take a real dark turn.

I also liked that you can pick from a couple of romantic interests in the game, but the game doesn’t force you to go down that route. I wasn’t personally invested in romance, so having that autonomy was important to me. Secondary activities like taking pictures with a camera, from one of the errands, or reading the (hilarious) end-of-day book really helped add variety to your days as well.

A minor complaint I have with the game is that I would have liked the possibility of interacting with background NPCs (for example pedestrians in the shopping street or customers from the diner). They felt like props, especially in the diner where you could see they were just sitting there and not eating or talking to others at their table. Another gripe I had was that I felt I couldn’t progress the Lori friendship storyline. Without spoiling too much, the option the game offered felt out of place for a friendship between a 16-year-old and my 40-year-old-ish character, given we’d just met.

Is Lake and Season’s Greetings for you? My final thoughts.

You can probably tell by now that I really like this game, if choosing to play it a second time didn’t give that away.

If you like the idea of a chill, low-stakes story rich game where driving around and talking with locals is the main gameplay, with dialogue choices that influence your experience (though I should emphasize it’s not a full “choices matter” game with major ramifications), you’re probably going to enjoy Lake and Season’s Greetings. The DLC follows the same gameplay formula despite the different main character, but I loved the ways it references the main game and flawlessly shifts the setting to a holiday one.

With the main game taking about about 6 hours to complete while the DLC takes about 4 hours, according to HowLongToBeat, I think you couldn’t pick a cozier short game to play in December.

If you played Lake, how did you feel about it? And do you have any recommendations of cozy games to play during the holiday season?

Thank you for reading,

-Luna