The sun is not on your side.

You get a towel, a bottle and a day. The tan you go home with is your score. The burn you go home with is days off the calendar. Everything in between is you, making decisions, in the heat, badly.

First, put it on properly. Sunscreen is not a button. You spray it where your hand actually is, then rub it in, across eleven parts of a body that cannot see its own back. Getting at your back means rolling over, in real time, while the sun carries on working.

Then manage the day. Heat starts climbing the moment you lie down. The sea cools you and takes your coat off with it. The umbrella keeps you safe and pays you nothing. A cold drink buys you a few minutes. Ignore all three and the day ends in an ambulance and three days indoors.

Then know when to leave. Nothing here fails you by surprise. Your burn, your heat, what is left in the bottle and what is left of your patience are on screen the whole time, and the game says the important bits out loud in plain English. If the day goes wrong, you were told. Repeatedly.

Thirty beaches, and they dislike you in thirty different ways

Wannsee is a lake in Berlin, barely a beach at all, which is exactly what makes it survivable. La Caleta has the Balneario and a levante wind that takes your coat off in an hour. The Gold Coast is where the ozone gave up. The Dead Sea sits 430 metres below sea level, where the atmosphere is, for once, doing you a favour. McMurdo Sound is Antarctica in high summer: the sun does not set, so there is no end of the day to wait for.

One of them is the Sea of Tranquility. There is no sea. There is no atmosphere. Bring the factor 100.

Some beaches are not on the map until you have earned them. No, we are not going to tell you which.

A career, not a run

A season is ninety days and every recovery day is one you do not get back. Points open better beaches and a shop of twenty three upgrades: a serious hat, a rash guard, a cool box, a base tan, and a Knowledge branch that buys you nothing whatsoever except the truth about numbers the game had been keeping from you.

A season only counts if you come out of it with a tan worth having and skin you have not wrecked. Sitting ninety days out under an umbrella is not an achievement, and the game will say so to your face.

Also in the bag

Eight bottles, from a factor 15 bought at a petrol station at 07:40 to something a pharmacist would raise an eyebrow at. Fourteen swimsuits, none of which protect you from anything at all. A globe you can spin. A crab.

Works with the Steam Deck

The trackpad aims, the triggers spray and rub, and every menu takes a finger. Mouse and keyboard on the desktop, full controller support if you would rather.

At the end of the season

A skin risk score, built out of every burn you took. It is a game statistic and not a medical one. It shows up once, as a percentage, and does not lecture you.