Latest version & Epilogue
Secret Summer unfortunately falls short in the end for several reasons.
There is neither sound nor animations, which isn’t my main point of criticism, because I can live with these shortcomings.
In general the game takes a slow pace, sex scenes weren’t rushed in the beginning and the devs put a lot of effort into the character-building resulting in love interests, which feel unique enough.
But somewhere in the mid-game the plot became more illogical. Everyone being so relaxed about the mc’s confession dating all of the family including Irene on top (harem ending path) seemed forced.
Of course harem lovers dislike mutual exclusive decisions and don’t want to lose any of the love interests in the game. But the story to make that happen seemed implausible. For me the writing failed on that part and could have been much better.
Apart from that, the writing is ok for most parts, although there are contradictions like during the first shower scene, the mc compliments his mother for her skin. She replies, that she doesn’t use lotions with all their chemical ingredients, but believes in a healthy diet and such, while later in the game the mc compliments his mom again for her soft skin during the massage scene, when she suddenly replies, that she uses a lot of lotions. It only seems minor, but really such contradictions shouldn’t happen, if players actually take the time to read the dialogues, instead of skipping them for most parts in order to jump quickly to the naughty scenes. Another example of rather bad writing were the confessions of both elder sisters being virgins, who used the exact same line of text for that.
Obviously there are missing sex scenes. Despite having a harem path there isn’t a single ffm or orgy scene in the game. Furthermore the mc doesn’t have vaginal sex with 3 of the love interests in the game until the epilogue. F.e. the mc’s mother only has got a handjob scene and one of the sisters, Zoe, only got a teasing scene before the end, that’s it. Their sex scenes happen during the epilogue, which then lacks build-up.
Therefore the ending seems to be rushed. Also only two of the women are impregnated (the milfs) in the epilogue, despite having unprotected sex with the others, too, if the player chooses to do so.
The character models are beautiful and diverse enough, despite them being family. But there are shortcomings as well:
Coral f.e. the youngest sister doesn’t look realistically with her enlarged manga style eyes. It’s partly a problem of daz, offering many unrealistically looking 3d models representing teenagers, especially concerning their faces, but as a game designer I would have simply picked another, more realistically looking genesis model for a teenage girl. These exist, too, but are rarer. Still partly daz is to blame for offering that many unrealistically looking not of legal age models.
Then there is Irene, the platin blonde bombshell from Portugal. She doesn’t look Portuguese at all, sorry. Even if she's supposed to be fake blonde, she’s way too tall for a Mediterranean woman, towering the mc’s mom and most of the cast. She also seriously lacks tan for deriving from the Mediterranean. Making her background Northern, Central or Eastern European would have made much more sense concerning her looks, instead of making her Southern European. Her parents look fine by the way, tanned and dark haired which fits into their supposed ethnic background, but the daughter somehow looks like a Swedish supermodel out of some old Norse sagas. You can only blame the devs for such bs.
The scene design also lacked effort at least partly. There was f.e. a camping scene out in the woods with Leanne. A daz model of a medieval tent and medieval furniture was used in that scene, which I found quite confusing. There was also a bathing scene during that trip into the forest with Leanne, but instead of a forest lake as background an ocean beach was used, which felt really odd.
I don’t want to sound too harsh, but all in all Secret Summer is a mediocre game, which is unfortunate, because I do like the harem and pregnancy kink. The shortcomings are just too many to give it a 4 star rating. Therefore I can only give 3 stars.