VN - Ren'Py - Summer's Gone [S1 Steam + DLC] [Oceanlab]

Some of the best story telling you could find in a Visual Novel.

You find games with 5/5 renders and animations, some with 5/5 story telling and 5/5 characters. But it's very rare to find a game with 5/5 for all of those (characters might be 4.5/5 - but they all look great)

The story and emotional content between Bella and the MC is so far above any other game. It forms a true and real connection between the player and Bella. This type of connection you may find in another game where the MC only has one or two LI's, therefore solely focusing on that characters relationship building, however, to have such as deep character such as Bella in a multi LI VN is very rare.

There's something about this game that keeps me hooked from episode to episode, constantly wanting to see what happens next, and how the overall plot of 'summer' gets resolved or figured out.

Some weird parts in terms of the whole basketball team and a weird take on the college basketball / college sports system.

Overall, this game has me hooked for the storyline over the intimate moments (in the future) which even I'm surprised about.

Nice work Ocean!

*on a single play, and the choices I've made, might be possible to alter things but I tried to stick with MC's personality and go about things "his" way and this is what I've come down to.

I like to embody the character I'm playing and one of my first gripes come from "out of character choices" for the MC He's a very emo, broken, husk of a man. He gets thrusted into situations that otherwise he would have never been in. A good handful of choices are very out of character and force you to respond in a way thats just not concurrent with the MC's behavior patterns. Also just kind of forced to make choices a little too early that have more impact than I would initially have thought. Leads into the problems that makes me shy away from giving this a 5. The writing is pretty excellent, the renders are beautiful, the animations looked good. It's not a bad AVN dont get me wrong, just some critiques in general.

However, the second issue is the LI's in general. Theres Victoria, Nami and Bella, anyone else should immediately be written off because they feel like an after-thought in the story. Even Victoria at times feels like an after-thought. It's mostly between Nami and Bella. There isn't much experimenting or establishing dating/relationships, it kind of goads you into making early choices in a sense. Which granted, sucks because out of the three, they all have a pretty strong reason to go for but you should also be able to test the waters just a little bit to understand what each impact is going to be.

Victoria is the first person you meet who has a significant impact on the MC from that short meeting due to circumstances, she really needs the MC because of said circumstances and it just feels off to push her away.

Nami is the unfortunate third-wheel lifelong friend(?) that has been by MC's side the whole time and is clearly suffering. Theres a deep connection and clearly alot of unspoken things between the two but isn't really expressed out loud you have to piece it together. Also would say its the MOST FAIR choice. People will see Nami as possessive, or controlling but I understand the character archtype of "missing your opportunity and feeling cheated" and thats Nami in a nutshell, without spoiling too much, you find this out fairly quick if anything. Nami's pretty damaged herself.

Bella is the bully that just holds similar issues to the MC that ends up hogging alot of his time and turns out they have a very strong impact on one another, this again is another obvious choice because they're practically inseparable once meeting and are always pushing each other.


Other LI's just cant really hold a candle to those three, theres not much to work with, nor time spent with them that make any significant impact. Would have been nice to test the waters, date multiple people, connect with them, figure out what makes them tick and what kind of person they are before being thrusted into something. Wouldn't necessarily say it has to be a harem, but playing the field when single is totally normal.

Good story, will see where it goes next.

Currently replaying through the completed rework through Chapter 5. I've already played through the current content, but man this game is so good I'm playing it all over with the rework as if I hadn't played this before. Lots of characters are fleshed out, the MC has been given a proper backstory and given an opportunity to connect with for those with also troubled pasts who've had to work through things within themselves. Each girl in the story is amazingly beautiful and unique in their own way. This game will continue to push the limits of top of line renders, environmental settings, and overall graphical beauty.

Game is in my current top 3, and I really don't see that changing anytime soon. And no matter what playthrough you're going through, you get an amazing LI to focus towards; there's no shortage of great ladies. I love the connections to Ocean's other game Where It All Began, and I'll continue to follow both games closely. Game is a 5/5, 10/10 you name it.
Team Bella, Team Nami, Team Mila, Team Zara, Team Vic, TEAM ALL THE LADIES.

Highly recommend. Great Game Ocean!

Finished Summer's Gone with every path but Jesus Christ what a high quality shit show...hear me out:

Bella is best girl for me, reminds me of my ex and has every quality I love about a woman. She also has the most content obviously, which puts her a step above the rest, AND the intimate moments are far superior and emotional than the others in my opinion.

I actually think Nami is the weakest cause while she does care about you, it comes off as a bit too possessive for my taste (obviously due to her crush). To the point where she makes the player feel bad for wanting to date these other characters, almost like a pre established relationship WHICH I LOATHHHHE in games. Let me choose someone without feeling guilty for fuck sake, why do Devs do this shit...and the playful horniness is literally just me irl so I'd rather not be invested in a clone thank you very much.

Mila is alright but I think her biggest issue is the lack of confidence. Her intimate moments are VERY nice and yet...I just can't find myself connecting with her on any real level. Shit even Zara has a generally better appeal for me. She's just; a solid middle candidate.

Victoria is my second favorite, I do love me the cute types and I think her model is GORGEOUS. BUT during the intimate adult moments she strikes me as wildly kinky underneath it all just like her sister, or perhaps dominant, I like that a paradox...At first I thought she just felt like a more laced clingy version of Nami, but then I realized she just likes to speak her mind and not give a shit. Her biggest issue is not having ENOUGH content so I can't properly get to know her more.

I can look past the inconsistency between the Chapters due to the CONSTANT fucking reworks, and even the lack of Sex, but if I had to point out one major flaw in my eyes, it's Chapter 5 SPECIFICALLY.

I dunno WHAT the fuck the Dev is smoking but you can see my rant about it here and with further pointing out here. The Dev's tell on deep rooted issues is actually something I can relate to on a personal level which is nice, they at least wrote the topic well, not perfect but well. Anyways that's pretty much it, it's a good read, with some good characters, but it leaves a fuck ton to be desired.

You can do better, you clearly have the skill in every aspect, so DO better.

the best AVN that I ever played, the characters are compelling, the writing is better than most AVN's out there, and the renders are the best I have seen in at least until now.
With that being said, this game is not for everyone, there is little to none sex scenes (for me it's not a problem because I am not playing exclusively for these kinda of scenes) also the game have a very long production time (also is not a problem for me, I liked it and I am willing to wait as long as Ocean wants if he is going to release this game)

A fairly enjoyable VN.

The story is actually quite interesting (for a "porn game" ) It is a fairly stupid plot but the delivery is good enough to compensate for some of the absurdity.
The plot is a typical male teenage erotic fantasy, but that's to be expected.

This is definitely not the typical porn game, with less focus on pornographic content and more on erotic content, both written and visual. It's decent enough, though apparently the dev removed a bunch of "content" for the steam release, i've played both versions (the steam version and the uncut version availalble here on the forums) and i found most of the cuts and changes to be understandable and genuinely not really an issue. Some of the nudity removal felt a bit unnecessary though, but that's just me.

Only criticism i have is that there aren't that many dialogue choices, and a few of the dialogue choices felt a bit too obscure in terms of what they meant for the MC's character development. Not a big issue, but It's a bit annoying trying to decifer the meaning of a dialogue choice based purely on a single very vague word.

Speaking of the main character. BAD VIBES is basically his surname. I genuinely felt a bit unconfortable with some of the "jokes" and comments the main character makes - without player input - especially in the very first episode where he genuinely gives a psycho vibe.

TLDR. I really liked it... it's decent. Looking forward to the next season. Main character is a bit too edgy, but he grows out of it to some degree.

There is no REAL sexual content in all of season 1- buyer's beware.
This little tidbit of information is not given to you until you download 10+ gigs worth of data and run it for the first time.

It's very good, don't get me wrong, but I prefer to wait until the story has progressed/matured to the point of MC having meaningful sexual encounters rather than getting teased by pointless tits and asses for no reason.

I would suggest waiting for season 2 because right now it all just feels like an introduction to the characters.

You can expect adult topics rarely treated in this type of games like: Depression, anxiety, violence, bullying and lewd scenes, with a strong focus in the story and the characters, leaving aside the lewd scenes for when those are needed or senses good, you won´t feel forced almost any scene because the efforts the dev puts in making a natural and "realistic" AVN are notables.

What i find good:
- Slow building relationships.
- Original and intriguing characters.
- Natural and realistic environments.
- Interesting and mysterious story.
- Exceptional quality of renders and animations.
- Exceptional capture of the essence in each moment.
- Good representation of mental problems like depression, anxiety or panick attacks.

What i find bad:
- Some choices/actions feel forced by the plot, don´t letting you choose as freely as you would like (related to some characters relations or future events).

Admiration for the artist, everything is great and it's not that I go into following a novel like this to see sex scenes and spicy situations, although it is appreciated when the script requires it, but I like that it adjusts to reality; It's hard for me to think of a young man without physical problems and who is heterosexual, who doesn't have sex with gorgeous girls in such clear situations, okay, he has an emotional trauma, but if he is opening up as he appears in the novel, his passivity is worrying, that's just believable if he has erectile dysfunction or is gay... Everything else is magnificent

If this game deserves to be on this site so do other triple A games with some sexual content. First time you play this game it reels you in ngl, the production and atmosphere feels different and original, like going to an authentic restaurant. But why do you go to the restaurant? To get some fcking food! You gonna get mad and leave if there is only bread and water on the table after 3 hours and it doesn't matter how elaborate the decoration is, how many michelin stars it has or which renowned chef runs it! This was the summary of my experience.

I dont know what the dev trying to do here. Is he trying to make a story driven game but it seems nothing proceeding 5yrs of work nothing a hint on Summer and LI's not much development all just reworks. Dev putting too many sex innuendo, naked and such but not really committing to make it porn. What is dev trying to make.
Plan to make 25 chapters but after 5yrs we are still in 5 chapters. At this point with constant reworks we wont even make it through half the story. It is either gonna end abruptly short or get abandoned at some point.
Characters are good, renders are good but that is all about it. Story somewhat good but we wont know yet it still early part of the story.

Was waiting forever for this "season" to get finished, was hoping so much to see it as good as before, but now with a better CG.

Chapter 5 Beta already had way less tempting content with Nami, that was kind of unpleasant surprise, but still got my hopes high for the whole season...

And here it is, now mentioned content is fully gone. And you can't fix it with some patch, cause now game doesn't have those CG anymore. There is like zero tempting scenes with Nami now, including those, that was done years before

It's really like some VN for 10 to 12 years old now.
Guess i'm done waiting for this game to get done, cause it seems to never happen

This has been on my watchlist and today I finally played it because I thought "Season 1" means it will have some good SPICY scenes in it but sadly there was barely any spicy content.

But to my surprise, even with ZERO sex scenes, It's a really well written and well-crafted VN. I easily got hooked with the characters and their stories. The world building is pretty good, lots of characters are being introduced along the way. Which is both good and bad, so many characters, so much build up, so much potential but will the payoff be worth it? The dialogues choices do matter and might have consequences in the future. Which I'm hoping will lead to many ways with multiple endings. Anyways, I am confident this VN will be even better in the future updates. Though with this pace, it might be completed in a decade.

I'll comeback when season 2 is finished. if I'm still alive by then

Quick summary:
+ Engaging story
+ High quality render & animations (one of the best one out there)
+ Good writing & good music
- No spicy content yet (some blue ballz)
- Slow burn & slow updates

Review of - S1

'A summer with Bella' or how this game should have been called.

I don't think i ever saw such an overhyped game on this site and i really don't see what is so good about it.
The visuals, renders and models are great, but beside that there isn't much sticking out in this game.

After 5 years of development, continuous reworks and model changes (mostly not for the better), the game has not much to show.
And whoever believes that there won't be any more reworks or character changes whenever the dev has a new idea, i applaud you to your blind faith in the dev.

The dev advertised this as story focused and slow-burn and i prefer story focused games, no problem with slow-burn either...but calling this slow burn after all this time (and how he even neutered the game for Steam) is laughable, more like no burn, really.
To make it worse, the story progress is glacial at best. For an apparently story focused game and 'slow-burn', thats a large fail imo.

As for the characters

The MC is different, true. That isn't necessarily a good thing thought.
I'm glad he is not the usual creep/pervert, but beside that, i don't find him great, or even likeable.
His personality ranges somwhere between emo/edgelord/asshole and the next school shooter...well, if you like it, i don't.
Ah, he is also impotent because of a trauma...well, so far i don't find that traume really traumatic...i guess Ocean needed a excuse for the 'slow-burn'.

Add to that, the few scenes with Summer are among the most boring ones in the game and i really couldn't care less about her, or what happened to her.

There is a large selection of LI's and some are really likeable, but so far most didn't strike me as memorable.
Of course there is also the point that half the game is focused on one LI (Bella) and all the other LI's need to share what screen time is left...
Personally i can't stand Bella, neither do i care about her problems and would really like to tell her to fuck off...but yeah, not really a matter of choice.

Which brings me to the choices.
So far they are pretty meaningless and amount to 'do you want this girl' and maybe you will get her...in another 5-10 years.
Neither can you get rid of LI's you don't like.

Overall, reading the thread proved way more entertaining then the game ever managed to be.
If you actually want to see a good story, romance, or god forbid sex, try again later...maybe in another 5 years. So far i really can't recommend this game.

Mini review

I can't believe that this has been in the works for 5 years and that chapters have been reworked/remastered for no reason even with the story not finished. Even worse with the latest steam release certain scenes have been censored/removed that I enjoyed. How do you update a game and it loses content for this alone it gets a 1/5.

I remember the running gag being that there is still no sexcontent because the MC is a damaged impotent virgin but holy shit you are bombared by sexually suggestive renders constantly even by random NPCs.

Overall I like the characters but there is not much to be said about the story at all so far due pacing being the slowest of slow burns.

5 years, still S1 and they keep remastering all the time. in 20 year maybe s2 wil start. people love the slowburn but 5 years and still nott even close its abit far. but people keep paying on patreon so why should he change it.

Story 1/5
There is slow burns and then theres this one, this isent a slow burn its a no sexual content game and should be tagged as such, atleast untill it has a sex scene if ever.
Game is more then 5 years old and not having a single sex scene by now you cant really call this a AVN at all, sure hope supporters dident expect a AVN.
And it blows my mind how it can be rated so highly with nothing there.

The cold MC its refreshing to play an MC that dosent have a mindset of a 12 year old that cant stop looking or thinking about tits, its freaking great.

But i wasent really a fan of the girls, i loved summer and Nami since i like the smols and then MC came to college and every damn girl is big or huge tits all the diversity in builds went to shit..why?....
Its mostly just annoying but since its not a harem game i can live with it sincei couldent care less about 95% of the LIs in this one, but aslong as there is one i do care about game can still be good.

But the biggest issue is that theres really only a sinlge LI and thats Bella who i see as a total bitch i wouldent want to touch with a 10 ft pole

I also found the hole Bella story annoying as hell, i mean a huge bitch and MC just keeps following her around like a submissive idiot, why help her MC is supposed to be a dude with no feeling and yet hes Bellas poppy and you cant do fuck all about it as the player, even after she kicks hes balls into another world hes still just following along with her helping her.. it makes no sense at all, why cant we just dump her ass right there and then.
How so many loves Bella as a LI i just cant understand, but im not the submissive type or into femdom maybe thats why i dunno.

She even forces him to cut he fucking hair i mean wtf is going on, i had a alot of minus in love points with the bitch so why the fuck does MC even give a shit about her or what she tells him to do and the haircut looks a million times worse then what it was to begin with...

Also MC agrees to go to terapi with Bellas mother knowing Bella can read hes journal its absolultly idiotic and MC should never in a million fucking years open up to her knowing that and you get no choice but to open up i mean what the fuck....thats some shitty story.
Even more so if you dont care about Mila either since a shitload of the Bella story is due to helping Mila who MC dosent trust or like in my playthrough so it truely just dosent make sense.

Worst part is that the hole story feels like its only about Bella? and when you hate her this game wont be for you since shes all its really about for unknown reasons.

Girls 2/5
Very little diversity in builds and mostly aimed for people with big tit fetish, cute faces but thats about it.

Animations 1/5
No sex scenes so cant really rate them....the one point is for the random animation doing the game but in a AVN those arent really importen.

Music 4/5
Above average music, really the best thing about the game which just isent enough.

Choices 1/5
Big lack of choices which results in a poor story and a brainless MC, story also feels very very kinetic, you cant just dump LIs like Bella shes forced on you for a very long time so it feels like its all about her and no one else, no matter if you pick the worst choices for her every single time.

Content 0/5
As for sexual content theres just nothing after 5 years in developmemnt you get to kiss Nami? thats it....do yourself a favor and just skip this one if your looking for a AVN.

This is by far one of the vest and most engaging AVN I ever exoeeienced in my life, the models are even better than most AAA games, the story is very intresting and all Love Intrests are cute and each has her own personality making it feel so real, S1 still has no adult scenes because its focusing on character and story building and make you care for all the characters

This is a bad game, full of sexual innuendos but no actual pornographic scenes. The author frequently changed it to make it become a strange game with very strange behavior of the mc. The only advantage is the model. As a harem game, the plot of the game As boring as all harem games are.

I have rarely seen such a shitty game carried by a lookalike religious cult.

The scenario is you typical MC with his "landlady" and "roommate" arrived at a new school. Except the MC is impotent and an asshole. Of course, half the school is after him for no reason. Characters have no agency of their own. MC goes from one place to another, discuss random things and repeat. Half the time is taken by one girl while the 20 other girls share the rest.

Right now, the choices are on the same level as do you want to fuck or not? Except there is no fucking. So It's more like do you want to discuss or not?

Community is one of the worst I've seen, stuck in an echo chamber since years looping on the same subject as the story doesn't progress. 5 years of development for barely more than one hour of "gameplay". I have never seen AVN made at such a snail pace.

Aside from the developer who is renting free of work for half a decade, the whole project is a catastrophe, terrible AVN funded by people with too much time and money to waste. It deserves to be said if the egos of the fanboys allow it.