Ren'Py - Happy Summer [v0.6.0] [Caizer Games]

played it yesterday and i really really like this game but after 2 years of not playing nothing has changed, not the reworking of text or the adding of the one character people want to see more of. Its basically in its alpha state after ~5 years~, its quite embarassing becuase this game has lots of plential

I really like games/VNs with a leisurely unfolding story. It doesn't matter if you don't get to sex until the third or fifth hour of gameplay - an interesting, deep story and detailed character development can make up for it. What do we see here (the game has been in development for over five years)?
- A sterile, empty plot, or rather, almost no plot at all.
- graphics are relatively good for the level of 2019-20, now it looks somewhat archaic.
- Completely uninteresting two-dimensional characters.
- the project can not fascinate, hold the attention of the player, because quite quickly the strongest attack of boredom.
- the project is developing so slowly that I am not sure that it will be completed by, say, 2030.
At the same time, I admit that this project will have its apologists, probably because of the cute physiognomies of the female characters.
I refrained from evaluating this project for a long time, but now, after five years, I can rate it two points out of a possible 10.
Can I recommend it to others? At this stage, no, unless after a couple of years, perhaps the developer will surprise us with an unexpected plot twist, so it's better to wait. But I personally doubt that there will be any pleasant surprises waiting for us.

The game started with a lot of promise, updates were a bit slow but the content was getting better. I would have personally liked it if they had just kept it to the sister and daughter but that is more preference. The biggest issue is that over time the updates have gotten lazy.
Some of the monthly updates were so sparse that there is no way it took more than a day to do them. The biggest issue however is that when we finally do get some scenes the quality has had a stead drop from questionable angles to extremely poor lighting to the last update listing 2 animations when its just 1 animation sped up.
It is very disappointing because it started out good but at some point the dev decided it was better to put in minimal work to milk the project as long as possible.

Frankly, the first version I played was really good and I couldn't wait to see more but after several versions, I feel like I'm going in circles because there is no explanation on what to do and you have to look for the walkthrough on the internet to move forward. The worst thing is when the game bugs when you switch to the new version and you have to start a newgame... Also, you can't revisit the interesting scenes when you finally get there.

Game Grind lead to anohter set mother of Grind and another Grind Large.. game is "gameplay what to grind" What sex? this game should be add to "hall of Blue ball"
Story? what story? grind yes..
Graphic okay.. is Grind
Music/sound is Grind... you hear it is grind and set of blue ball...

Recommendation.. Grind is Not key of successful porn game. SEX is Vaginal Anal mouth handjob... should change game name to "Summer of GRind"

It is boring and very repetitive. There is no depth or real story to the gameplay. Long update waits with very little added contents each time. I have decided to stop playing at 0.5.5. It is just not worth my time continuing.

Boring, long game with no action and takes forever for updates, Gameplay is stale and requires unrewarded grinding. Had potential 2 years ago. Today the models have been used in better games that only took 1/3 the development time.

The game takes a long time for an update and has little action. I've been following this game for 2 years and I'm still waiting for an interesting scene with Rosie. Perhaps this game is not the main focus of the author.

Happy Summer left me disappointed due to its lackluster story and absence of captivating scenes. The narrative felt dull and unoriginal, failing to provide engaging plot developments or memorable moments. Additionally, the absence of compelling scenes diminished the overall enjoyment and failed to create a sense of immersion. Unfortunately, these aspects prevented me from fully appreciating the game's potential.

at this point you should know what's up or if your still blind let me point it out for you... this dev is milking his patrons and backers and giving you next to nothing in return! the game has nice renders and the girls are cute! however the updates release show that the dev is putting in the bare minimum of effort to keep those who want to see vaginal sex with Rosie happen paying their bills! I was on the hype train myself for a while and hoped that things wouldn't turn out like this devs other games!

This dev doesn't have a good track record when it comes to finishing games and this is unfortunately the route I see this game heading too! my prediction is that this game will end up just like MLS (My Lovely Sara), and just before the MC and Rosie actually go to have sex for the first time... the dev will end the update on a cliffhanger and tell you the sex is coming in the next update! unfortunately that next update will never come and he will abandon this game to start another and the cycle will begin again!

perhaps on a slim chance, i may be wrong and the dev will eventually get around to giving his patrons what they have been dying to see for several years now and Rosie will finally get to become a woman! ive long since lost hope of seeing the MC actually have sex with Rosie, let alone seeing the game reach a conclusion!

in the end, my overall reaction/ rating of the game broken down by category is as follows:
Graphics/ renders - A tier! amazing looking characters and i have to give credit where credit is due! its not S teir but its pretty damn good! a nice mix of toon/ anime and 3d.

Gameplay - C tier! nothing new and stand out here. its a sandbox with areas on the map to visit and you link up with certain characters at certain locations at certain times to grind exp points for your relationship... blah blah! C tier, average nothing new to see here and the grindy nature takes points away from any fun aspect it might have had.

Playability - B tier! its not difficult to figure out what to do. the game even has a built in guide/ walkthrough that lets you know what you need to do next.
Story - D tier! what do you expect its an adult game! the story is barely there and just stands as a skeleton to hold all the cock-teasing together! you'll get some back story on the characters and then build some relationship levels then a bit more story and more relationship levels, rinse and repeat!

Adult Content - A tier! here's where things get tricky! if I'm grading the game on available content, then what's in the game is good! however...!! what people are expecting to see and what's been given in game at this point are two different things! I cant grade what's not in the game, but to those reading this who haven't actually tried the game... you should know your going in to be blue balled! the last time I played this game there was rubbing and grinding but no actual penetration. (some have commented in discussion that there is some sex in the game now but just not with Rosie) so just be warned!

Recommendation - Don't Bother! as stated above, if you go in knowing you'll probably never have sex with Rosie and your ok with that then be my guest! give it a shot! its your time and there are certainly worse piles of crap out there you could decide to play, but if your looking for the sexual content with Rosie its not here chief! the cock tease is real in this one and you probably wont see a whole lot of sex action, but if that's not a big deal to you then the handjobs and pussy grinding is still well rendered and the girls are cute! the grindy nature of the gameplay will feel like work as you grind relationship levels! I would personally recommend avoiding this one and finding another game with cute girls because in my opinion this one doesn't deliver!

I think it's a good game with good dynamics, good graphics, quite good actually, I don't like that it's so underrated, but ok, it's life. The monitoring of what to do has been improving a lot and I hope it continues like this.

Happy Summer [v0.5.3] [Caizer Games]
Review of version 0.5.3 of the game. The game is not complete and maybe in the future it will change completely.

Currently I think it's the slowest game on the site.
Very few scenes. Repetitive and boring game (every time increasing the % of girls is torture).
The game also offers the possibility to keep daily life stats stable, which of course makes the game even more boring.
The overall graphics aren't bad, but aren't incredible either.
I do not recommend the game.

The game itself is completely barren. There are no sex scenes, no choices/paths related to characters. The only thing that can be considered gameplay is where you manage your characters happiness, food, etc... but this are just one click time forward functionality which time forward not really serves a purpose. The in-game time mechanic also only effects where certain events(althought I call them events and they are technically events, it is just some interactions between characters that are related to time of day but from logical perspective there is no reason they should be time sensitive there is no reason you shouldn't be able to talk to Rosie at any time about the things you talk in the events I don't know how to better explain this).

[I recently wrote a response to another player in the HS discussion thread about how had argued that since we are all playing for free, we should - instead of complaining - go off and play other games. The following is a bit of a response to that opinion.]

Some people [such as myself] were former Patreons who excitedy paid to support the game, and grew disenchanted when the dev set a release schedule that made the movement of the continents seem almost rushed. A release schedule, I might add, that the dev chose not to explain or apologize for. AT ALL. I suspended my Patreon donations to Caizer after waiting 6 months for any substantial development of the game. I won't be back until the dev releases an update that is on par with virtually every other game out there; at least every 2-4 months.
There are going to be people who haven't paid for any of the games they play [and offer unasked for critique], that's true of any game. There are devs here who release slightly different versions of their games. There is a basic release - usually seen here and other places that is meant to attract players/patreons to invest in the game. Then there is a Patreon-only release, which often contains extra scenes, dialog and plot development, which is almost always released much earlier than the free version and pretty much never gets released for free. This appears to be a standard practice.
What is not a standard practice is someone like Caizer, who - in the beginning and for several months afterwards - promised a pretty ordinary release schedule before growing silent and releasing the barest minimum content.
A developer who has a change of circumstances [limitations coming about due to family, medical or work situations] doesn't necessarily need to go into detail about what changed, but they do need to explain that circumstances have in fact changed.
And we can clearly see from the release of mini-game within HS that the dev does in fact have the time to devote to a significant release...if he wanted to. It is crystal clear that Caizer is releasing the barest minimum of content so as to keep the Patreon/Subscribestar money flowing
Additionally, if the developer isn't a con man, they either limit or do away with Patreon donations until they can match that payment with performance. Anything less than that feels fraudulent and opportunistic.
I am sure that a LOT of other players feel this way; they do play other games, but keep coming back here because they have hope that their hope, interest and generosity is someday rewarded with an update worthy of the definition. And - like anyone who has been conned, they get pissed about reminded of the fact that they are indeed getting conned. If I were Caizer, I'd be very worried that just about every other game has a release schedule and quality of content that champions over Caizer by an order of magnitude. People are growing disillusioned by Caizer's shameless opportunism. He grandpappy would call him a cad and a scoundrel. I just think he's one of those people who never, ever leave a tip.

Currently, this game's current saving grace is the quality of the art. But with the advances in AI, that isn't going to preserve Caizer's last remaining grip on his supporters. His development 'career' is living on borrowed time. I hope the developer realizes this. It won't just be his current game that we abandon, but - due to such a shitty track record - we will apply the current level of pessemism towards any future game he might be considering.

v0.5.3
Lots of grinding, I wasted more time to get the MC's mood good for progressing with girls than enjoying the game's content. I don't recommand this game for someone seeking a decent amount of content.

Nothing happens and nothing will happen, because the dev rather introduces new characters than creates any sexual content for existing ones. All this game has is grind, but at least there's lots of it.

Short one.
Decent game with nice graphics.
Updates are a load of crap.

You will be waiting years just for it to progress enough with the character you want, its obviously a way to milk in the money aslong as possible. Theres 1 maybe 2 events per update and its likely going to be a little rubbing and thats it.

The character you likely downloaded this for hasn't had an update in events for a very long time.

Hi first.
so when i played the game in 2021 there was just no progression. you played for hours and you just didn't get any further....
but now (with the built-in guide) you can play it neatly in one go.
the animation is really great.
the only thing that bothers me, the mc is too young, he could have been a few years older, but that's a matter of opinion

I think the bad reviews on this game are related to older updates. Play it now and you will see how great it turned out.

reviewing v0.5.2

When I see a game in development for four years, I expect to see a lot of content. Now I won't say there's nothing here. There's content that looks good, but all but the spiciest scene would pretty tame if it weren't an incest situation. The annoyance is that it's padded out by plenty of grind, and certainly nowhere near what I was hoping for. Now I'm not a bitter patron or an entitled fanboy with an axe to grind. I have no opinion about milking patrons or any of that drama. I'm under the impression that patreon lets users unsub at any time. Some devs take their time, and it seems like that's what's happening here.

I'll start with gameplay, because that's what was on my mind most as I was incessantly clicking. I started a "standard" game. The other option is "free", and it's not explained in the game what the difference is. I suspected "free" might have less content, but after about 45 minutes of grinding, I searched this thread and found that "free" removes the MC's happiness requirements from gameplay. For the uninitiated, that means you don't have to regularly eat, shower, watch TV, and use the toilet with the correct frequency to keep advancing the game. I tried a new "free" game, and although it did make things simpler, it didn't really speed the progress in the game. You still have to do the boring grinding activities between the triggers in the relationships. Even when you've reached a milestone, many delays are still in the script. Basically, no matter what it's a slow burn. "Free" mode just lets you be mindless about how you grind, which IMO makes the grind even more insufferable. So I decided to stay true to the dev's vision and grind the fuck out of this thing. Let me tell you, dev's very dedicated to grinding too. Renpy's rollback, skip, and quick save features are disabled. He wants you to spam that mouse a half dozen times for each shower, TV show, and spreadsheet. Getting arthritis? No problem: the spamming actually only shaves a couple seconds off each grind montage. Just chill and watch each 7-12 second montage a couple time per minute about 100 times. Did you miss something because you got overeager on the LMB? See?! You shoulda just been patient. Now you can load up your last save from 5 minutes ago and grind it again, son! It's called replay value!
Now, I didn't use Cursor2's mod, because it hadn't been updated to the current version yet. After the third time that I needed to rollback though, I used Unren to force enable rollback. It's one of Renpy's best features. Why disable it if it doesn't break your game? It was a godsend. A few times, I rolled waaaay back and Renpy threw errors at me. I spammed the "Rollback" text button on the error messages and made my way back into playable game with no harm done. There's ways to handle that problem so that rollback needn't be disabled, so I don't think that's the excuse for disabling it.
As far as the complaints about sandbox, they're mostly overblown. We can all see the tag and know what sandbox is going to mean. It's a bit annoying, but this isn't that bad of an implementation. The map usually tells you where a LI is during any given timeslot, so if you're trying to advance her plotline, then look for her. The "usually" in that last sentence is really the frustrating part. Sometimes (whoopsie daisy!), dev doesn't have a LI's icon showing where she is. I found Mika hiding in her apartment when she wasn't showing there, which kicked off one of her events. The LI's generally follow a schedule, but later in the game parts of that schedule shifted. It could've been due to my rollback shenanigans, could have been dev's intention, or a coding oversight. It wasn't a major problem to adjust to, but noticeable after an in-game month to have them suddenly bathing and flicking the bean later in the day than usual. A tips section would help ease the sandbox burden, which is listed as a feature of the mod, because there are more than a couple times where progress just plateaus with little to no clue what will move the game forward. The most notable example is when I got stuck in "sick mode" for almost two weeks in-game. "Sick mode" disabled almost all the story progression and levelling with the girls, and lets you focus on what you came here for: grinding a "real life" simulator. What makes sick mode even more outlandish is that it starts with declarations from Rosie and Lucy about how they're worried about you and will take care of you, but then they just don't do that. I really had no clue what I should do to let me progress. I wondered if "sick mode" might have been coded to last a certain number of days, but then I tried cooking with Lucy, she gave me some medicine, and next day sick mode was done.

The artwork is really good as long as you can accept the Bratz doll style. The first time I saw this CG style in another game, I rejected it on principle. I've played a few games with these models now, and while I'm still not a huge fan, it's not such a hard pill to swallow. A few minutes into it, and I kinda forget that they look like dolls. The girls look good, even if you can only appreciate them as dolls, they're sexy dolls, as creepy as that makes me feel to type. There's some variety in body types, but the "flat is justice" crowd won't find a princess they can idolize here. Rosie and Lucy are curvier than the other LIs, but they all have some nice curves, which I appreciated. The scenes look good too, there was a lot of attention put into the environment to make it look about as realistic as you'd want characters that look like dolls to be surrounded by. The animations are really smooth and have some impressive pans, sweeps, tilts, etc. The animations are worth checking out, but there's not enough of them.

The writing is in clear, concise, grammatically correct, and readable English. While there are some unusual sentence structures and dialogues are sometimes pretty stilted given some of the relationships between characters, emotions are conveyed almost realistically. The writer has either spent some time around native English speakers or has a good proof-reader. The plot is nothing exciting. It's the beginning of two incest stories with some side girls. It could turn into a harem, but right now it's MC just winning hearts by being Mr. Nice Guy. Really, I wish there was more actual plot, because it's honestly fairly thin. Hang out with shy, cute teens (and your 25-year-old little sister), tell them they're cute, buy them things, and sometimes help them get low paying jobs. That's this dude's game. It works too: he's gone all the way once, gotten (I think) five BJs, and gone down on a few of them. There's repeatable shower handjobs and bathtub footjobs if you prefer your sexual encounters to not involve holes. Optionally, the MC can play a game on his computer that can end in a MMF sharing scene with that game character, his gf, and an old dude. Apparently, some fans count this sexual content also, but since this pornception has nothing to do with any plot going on in the actual game, it scratched none of my itches.
There's also a few details that when put together cast a different light on the MC. Early in the game, MC comes off like a pretty normal guy, occasionally noticing his hot daughter and other young women, and rebuking himself for it. This is the starting point for the surrender to forbidden love/lust plot in an incest story. Early on, we also learn that MC was the betrayed party when his cheating wife left her family for her lover. As mentioned, he's Mr. Nice Guy, defender of women, hardworking and loyal. Later, we find out he bathed with his sister until she was five, but we already know he's 12 years older than she is. Dev has gone to painstaking effort to create a "real life" sim, with food, waste, and stress/boredom accounted for. We're supposed to accept that a normal 17 year old boy and his five year old sister were bathing together? Okay, very weird, but only slightly untoward. Even later later, we find out that 7 years ago he propositioned then 18-year-old lil sis for a handie, and she was down but got scared. Wait a minute!? It's not explicit, but at various times, it's strongly implied that Mr. Nice Guy MC's wife left him somewhere 2-4 years ago, and both MC and lil sis vilified the ex for cheating. So evidently, Mr. Nice Guy MC isn't beginning his surrender to forbidden lust. He's been willing to cross that bridge before. It makes all his and lil sister's reluctance earlier without any mention of their past seem unwarranted. Mr. Nice Guy MC isn't struggling with new ephebophiliac tendencies. He's always liked them barely legal and taboo. It's not addressed in the script, so it doesn't feel like we're adding depth to the MC. Instead, it comes across like the dev has been working on this game for so long he forgot what archetype he was following for the MC's character. It's okay for your story to reveal that Mr. Nice Guy is actually a closet Mr. Perv Nasty, because really all Nice Guys are, but you have to address it in the story or it's just ludonarrative dissonance.

I'd like to give this one more than two stars, but those would be "potential" stars, which I'm ethically opposed to. More importantly, after more than four years, I'd expect much of this game's potential to be visible already as well as for the grind problem to be more effectively mitigated or balanced to allow players to enjoy the game. If I take a look at this game again, it won't be before 2025, and it won't be unmodded.

Good Points
+ Visual style looks unique and girls look hot/sexy/cute. Especially in some scenes, some girls look hot AF... Like Rosie's surprise scene, that scene was dope...
+ We have properly made animations, and most of the sex scenes have at least a couple of different positions, which is quite good.
+ Despite most of the content being teasing and stuff at least they are hot and enjoyable, except our only penetration scene...
+ Considering MC and most girls have related their relationship progress is not too slow nor fast, it feels quite alright, online problem is grammar being quite bad and how it kind of makes scenes less immersive.

Bad Points
- I'm not sure when it was added to the game, might be after people complained a lot about the grind, but at least we have an option called ''Free'' and it removes the grind for like sleep, hunger, cleanliness, etc, but still you need to grind for progressing your relationship with girls and do same things and watch same scenes and dialogues over and over again... Considering without a mod you can't even skip these scenes, that means you gonna press your keyboard buttons or mouse button over and over again... What a bad design...
- Despite being made by Renpy this game menu, HUD, and save-load system is a total mess... You can't reach the main menu or save-load functions with ''esc'' or ''right mouse button'' like all other Renpy games, instead we have a pop-up menu in the HUD, and every time you need to make something related to the menu or save-load you have to open that pop-up, but that's not even worst part, that pop-up menu and ''back'' button is in the same place and ''back'' button is literally your only option to leave the room in free-roam, you can't move without that button, so every time you do something related the menu you need to: open the pop-up menu, do your thing, close the pop-up menu, press back and imagine doing this over and over again while playing the game... This design literally makes no sense and is annoying AF, oh, and don't forget you can't open the main menu without being in the map part of the game! Arguably this is one of the most nonsense menu, HUD, and save-load systems in any Renpy game I saw...
- Despite being sandbox this game does not hold players hands enough to not make things painful, without mod giving you hints it's nearly unplayable...
- There is no skip or rollback feature, and let's be honest both are quite important for games like this... (It's one of the features the mod adds BTW)
- You can't advance the time... (Again another feature mod helps the game already should have)
- Grammar is not good and it's almost bad as call it ''Engrish'', especially some scenes make zero sense thanks to grammar problems, like do you understand anything from ''No MC, sometimes I can sit on my phone'' this or ''Get used to anything.'' or ''No MC, I... you lose your hear and do not immediately go out.'' this or ''He would get lost in his work and start scandals all the time.'' this sentence? I'm not a native English user either but this game feels like didn't even pass proofreading with most basic and free applications.
- Sometimes it feels like DEV assumes you already know some story details like Lucy's first arrival, why she came, or how the game assumes you already know she had a relationship with someone, etc. It just doesn't make any sense at all and makes things quite hard to understand.
- Girls do look kind of unattractive when their hair is slicked back.
- This game is nearly 4 years old and I can't say we have enough content for 4 years of development. Mc didn't have sex yet with any of the girls except Lucy and his sex scene with Lucy wasn't good at all, it was too fast and weird, which I don't even understand why because DEV was doing a good job with teasing scenes, etc. And don't forget after 4 years of development this game has serious grammar problems... Like seriously forget using proofreading, if he worked on his own English he could have fixed most of the grammar problems in 4 years' time...

For The End
I'm going to be brutally honest, I enjoyed my time with this game, and without all those bad points I would give this game 4 or 5 stars rate, but with them, I don't think it deserves more than 2 or 3 stars, I hope DEV will fix those bad points and I can give this game better star rate in future.