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

Review of version 4.5 Beta.

I will start this review by saying right away that, as of this update, the game has no sexual content. The biggest mischief the characters can get up to is kissing, groping and grinding on one another. This is not a problem for me at all as I don't play these games for the sex, but I feel obligated to mention this for those of you who either focus on lewd content or require copious amounts of it in order to keep following the story. If you fall into one of those two categories, you should probably wait for a few more updates. If, on the other hand, you are primarily interested in romance, deep characterization and emotional payoff, Summer's Gone is as good as it gets.

The game makes it very clear from the very first render you see that its primary focus is worldbuilding and character development. And I'm very glad that it stays unapologetically true to that to the very end because these are things Summer's Gone does exceptionally well.

The game features a large cast of diverse characters and takes its time introducing us to them, slowly building them up as unique, fleshed out individuals with their own quirks and personalities, goals and ambitions, hopes and fears. Some of them may seem at first glance like a rehash of classic tropes, but as we get to know them on a deeper level, we uncover whole new layers of depth and nuance to them which calls into question or straight-up upends what we thought we knew about them, forcing us to reevaluate our perspective. This applies to Bella in particular, and, to a lesser degree, Nami. They are at this point the most developed of the love interests but that's not to say that the other girls are uninteresting. Most of them simply haven't had the screen time to be able to compete with the other two on an equal footing.

I can't talk about the characters and not mention the MC - not least because whether you're able to enjoy the game will largely depend on how you feel about him.

Summer's Gone's protagonist is not your typical AVN hunk - meaning a total personality and charisma vacuum who nonetheless attracts women like a cow pie attracts flies. He's a flawed, bitter and cynical guy, living in the shadow of a traumatic event from years ago. Stoic and seemingly emotionless, he's definitely not someone who would be winning over strangers at a party. When he's not sitting quietly with a surly expression on his face, he's snarky, occasionally insensitive and calculating, often thinking ahead and planning his moves with a singular goal in mind: how to manipulate others into doing something advantageous to him or that would give him leverage over them.
But he's not a bad guy - when he does the things above, it's often to protect those he cares about or with a bigger picture in mind. And when the consequences of his actions catch up with him, he doesn't try to weasel his way out but owns up to it and accepts the consequences. He's also aware how out of line he is at times and is actively trying to get better.

I personally find the MC very relatable and enjoyable to play as. His irreverent behavior at times reminded me of plaything through Mass Effect as a renegade Shephard, giving me some good chuckles, even if he's sometimes unneccessarily jerky to people who care about him - and whom he cares about as well.

Turning to the visual aspect of the characters, I gotta say that this game has some of the most stunning models I have seen. Beautiful faces, perfect figures, curves in all the right places, very impressive backsides... yep, there may be no sex here yet, but Summer's Gone is already a feast for the eyes. Fans of voluptuous blondes will be particularly pleased as many of the girls fall into this category.

Another strong point of the game is its outstanding production values. Stunning visuals, a varied and appropriate soundtrack selected to fit the mood of each scene (and there are some genuinely good songs there), competent shot framing and scene composition, excellent use of lighting, great attention to detail, like, for example, the vibrant, bustling backgrounds in the images, or how the characters regularly change their clothes, hairstyles etc. Those building blocks coalesce to form a world that really feels alive.

And last but not least, something that, as far as I can tell, really sets Summer's Gone apart from other games out there: the use of animated cutscenes during pivotal moments. Even the tracks that play during those are carefully chosen to fit that particular scene, and synchronized to completement what we see on the screen.

If I were to complain about anything, I'd mention two things.

The first one is the inconsistent, changing body proportions of some of the characters. Mila is the most obvious example of this, but she's not the only one: some of the other girls' busts got much bigger between some chapters, and it's quite jarring to me - especially since none of them really needed it. Mila looks great in Chapter 3 (and 2, which has yet to be remade), but her bust is over the top in 1 and 4/4.5.
Don't get me wrong, I love a nice pair of boobs as much as the next guy, but they need to look realistic. I hope this gets toned down, or at least is made fully consistent.

The second thing I'm going to talk about is not a problem per se at this point, but a potential issue further down the line: namely, the size of the cast. If I'm not mistaken, at this point there are no fewer than about a dozen main love interests planned for the game, with the possibility of more being added. It's good that the game has a large variety of love interests, but from a writing perspective, giving that many characters enough screen time, development and meaningful arcs is a tall order. And this does not even consider the side characters.

You can kind of see this happening already: for example, we can already get major breakthroughs in the MC's relationship with Nami or Bella, but I still couldn't tell you much about Sasha or Sonya (both of whom are listed as main LIs). And while you can have Nami and Bella (or whoever else you're interested in) take a back seat for a while, that means breaking the momentum of their paths and forcing the players into long scenes and interactions with characters they may not be interested in pursuing. Unless there are strong story-related reasons for this, it could become a problem.

Time will tell how this pans out. Ultimately, I'm not rating the game based on how it may go in the future, but as it is now. And what it is is a compelling, touching and entertaining piece of digital art with a lot of thought and love put into it. One that I thoroughly recommend to those looking for romance-focused VNs, and one that I will be eagerly following and supporting myself.

Edited to specify the review was for the 4.5 Beta version.

So I played this game again after a long time and I must say that to my surprise it feels much better and more natural, and by this I mean the rework in the first chapters, before this there was something that took me out of the game and that was the "college" it felt very artificial the whole environment seemed like a high school or a school for adults, but now the atmosphere is much better and not only with the college but in general everything feels much more natural in the game dialogue is better, the interactions between the characters too, everything is much better

And what can be said about this game that is not already known, the renders are superb, the characters are great and most of them don't feel cliche, the music is very good, it doesn't have sex scenes yet but for me that doesn't its a problem i play these games for the story mostly if i wanted a quick fap i watch porn and thats it

If I had to say something that I don't like, that would be the mc's dialogue at the beginning of the game, it's very edgy especially in the car accident scene, but other than that it's a great game and a must play if you're a fan of the AVNs

Excelent game with an amazing storyline. It's not just a lewd game, it tells a story with a difficult topic: depression, in a very well developed environment. All the characters are grea making difficult to choose between them.

Among the best visuals, a compelling story line, good character representation, and for one not the usual:
"young mal, lost his father, inherited money/family/MILF and sister".... although that can be fun, but not 300 times, kinda

Damn, This if probably the best story based adult game ever, i have played plenty of games but seriously this feels like this is on it's own league.

Pros
Wonderful story (will be dark for some but it becomes completely different depending on choices)
Feels like a high grade cinematic arts
Choices truly matter
Very lovable characters

Cons
Probably because they can't afford it, it takes longer for updates.


P.S. this game doesn't have much sex content yet while i am posting this review

If not the best, definitely among the top 3 VNs for me. The characters and the story telling are the heroes. You feel the interactions with the characters like you're immersed in the story yourself. As an MC, you care for the people around and truly feel that they care for you. The story progression is beautiful and engaging. Strongly recommended!!!!!

I've absolutely fallen in an abyss of love for this game. I'm not really sure how the "choices" play out, but more than a halfway into the game i feel connected to most of the female characters at a certain romantical level and i'm sure i'll be playing it again to test things out.
The animations and plethora of female characters are phenomenal, (not a silly copy-paste from other games) attention to detail too, complex personalities of the characters you can bond with are also praise-worthy.
And i have to say, it's one of the few games where the main character evolves and turns heads around not just with his zweihander.. so it feels good playing in his stead, the immersion is great.
I'm going to play it out but chances are very high that i'm going to support this developer, thank you for bringing such a beautiful game to us, keep up the good work.
You really REALLY have to take this game for a spin, in my eyes it made the list of AMAZING games.
Cheers
H

Best adult VN I've played so far and I've played more than 50. When you meet masterpiece like this game it's hard to choose single elements that makes whole game briliant but I try. I think its combination of excelent story writing, dev's attention to every little detail, well written characters with real emotions, amazing renders which also show characters' emotions very well and music. Cinematics are also 10/10 with characters looking very realistic and alive. Story is very intriguing and addictive, looking forward for future updates. Great job!

This might be the most engaging story I've seen in my 7 years of browsing this website. I can't wait to see this MASTERPIECE complete. The level of detail, the quality of the writing, the soundtrack, the renders, the girls, it's all also incredibly honest and down to earth. I LOVE IT!!

Without a doubt one of, if not, THE best games / VNs on F95zone. Oceanlab's attention to small details, incredible story and character development, as well as character models and scene composition, make this a winner.

This isn't just another VN or "porn game", but instead a true work of art backed by an immense amount of talent. Bravo @Oceanlab , bravo!

5 stars, highest recommendation.

One of the best Visual Novels that I've ever played.

The moment I'm writing this review chapter 4.5 just came out and whenever an update drops I always replay this game so my memory is very recharged with SG content, this is my third time reading this game.



I'll go from the easiest to talk about to the hardest.

Starting with the most obvious one, SG has the best renders and animations I've ever seen in any AVN, chapter 2 will receive a remake so I'm not counting it since I'm sure it'll be as beautiful as chapter 1 remake.
The scenes are so vivid, you can see each place is alive and full of details and not your basic background that you'll find in the average AVN.
And all characters have amazing design, even the ones you know that you'll never see again, both male and female. But it can be a minor problem since some people can be disappointed as it's impossible to make every single girl a LI, so maybe the girl you'll find the prettiest won't be a LI.
And if you animate these amazing renders you get breathtaking animations for all types of scenes: introductions, romance, action and even some light lewd.

Once again SG has one, if not the best, music of any AVN. They improve so much the impact of the scenes or they help you to keep immerse in this universe. (Even though the developer had to switch out one of my favorite songs because of copyright, Demons in my mind - lvly)
(I just gave it a 9 instead of a 10 because I think a VN has to have some kind of music playing at least 85-90% of the time and SG as a few scenes without music for no reason, just a nitpick)

Summer's Gone doesn't have a "main plot" that push the story forward, but the developer really knows how to give information, you won't find boring intern monologues or the MC explaining his entire life to another character as a easy way developers use to give a summary to the readers in your average AVN.
In fact Summer's Gone lack a lot of details and we don't know a lot about MC's past and you could think that's because the MC is a boring character but here comes the talent of the developer, instead of giving the reader expositive dialogues so you can know about the MC's past he focus on the consequences of the MC's past, how it affected him to make the MC the person he's when this story begins. So we see the effects of how something in the past that is still heavily affecting the MC but we just know a few pieces of what happened and this make us craving for more knowledge. (it's the perfect case of the classic "show, don't tell").

Yes, it's your classic college setting that's been used a million times, but in SG you can feel how the world is alive, characters are connected to each other in many ways, there's a lot of information in small details, important characters to the setting but that don't appear in the story, structure of the teams in the university and how thing change over time.

So we arrived, this game is so well done that if you take my 4 topics above and reduced their quality to the average AVN just the character would still make Summer's Gone a great AVN.
As I said earlier SG is not driven by its story, it's driven by its character that undoubtedly are the gem of this game.
Each character that has been show has a unique personality and SG has a massive cast, even though most of them are female there's still a lot of male characters (I can only think of one AVN that has more male characters this well written). And they have their own lives whit their problems, their past and their plans, instead of living around the MC and them disappearing when they're off screen. You can see they are getting close with each other in the background, and you can see how they change interacting with each other and with the MC.
Even the few one-dimension characters are given more depth as the story progress, and you feel in every one that receive a bit of spotlight that they're alive. and when you put these characters with the worldbuilding above you get an interesting world that you want to explore and that always has questions you want to answer.

Love interests (technically a subtopic of character):
I don't think we have officially how many LI there are and who are all of them (for what I have seen even the developer don't know yet).
So for now I just consider 4 of the girls LI, and in addition to what I've said about characters these 4 LI each have unique relationship and interaction with the MC, each have some themes that the story will focus more and all of them are interesting and well written.

Main character (technically a subtopic of character):
Nothing more, nothing less than the best MC of any AVN.
Yes, in the beginning of the story he's too edgy but if you make the right choices you can put his edginess in acceptable levels.
Nika (MC's official name) is not yourself insert MC and his personality won't please everyone, although you can change him a bit with your choices. He has good and bad traits that put him on or take him out of bad situations. He makes mistakes and must live with the consequences while trying to repair it, or not.
And his biggest trait is a trauma from the past that we don't know much about, but we see whenever he interacts with another character that this trauma still affects him a lot, in this character driven visual novel you can even can Nika's trauma as the main plot that put the story forward.

Summer's gone is undoubtedly one of the best AVN, personally it's my favorite, but nothing will never please everyone and nothing is perfect.
As SG is so well done it doesn't have a major defect that make this game bad, but I'll list a few minor defects that can turn off some people.

• The MC starts a bit too much edgy, but gets better over time, especially since the remake of chapter 1.
• Technically is not a defect but some people may not like: the MC takes time to starting to have feelings for the LIs because of his trauma.
• There are a lot more female characters than male ones, but not in absurd levels. At least there are half a dozen interesting male characters, and it seems more will get introduced in the future.
• there are a lot of light eyes in this game, it's not a problem but sometimes it can break your immersion (just among the 4 LIs we have 2 green eyes e 1 blue eyes).
• Sometimes a scene that doesn't have music can feel empty, especially after you've get used to the music in this game.
• This game doesn't have any form of sex scene, personally I don't think this as a problem, but some people do.
• chapter 2 has the worst quality among the chapters both in renders and in writing, but it'll receive a rework on the next update (5.0).

Normally I don't write a review, but I had to for this one. This game is a Masterpiece, everything is great except one thing it's that we haven't really got to know every character so right now it's a little hard to say which LI is best except this there is not a single thing to complain about. I just wish we get more updates as soon as possible, but we have to be patient when we are about a masterpiece such as this game.

This game is amazing and should at least be on the first page.

All the characters are unique and have this tremendous depth that is told not only by words, but also by the small things they do or the look on their faces. And the once that you haven't seen much but are teased in such an marvelous way that you cant wait to find out more about them.

Yes there is no actual sex in it yet but the build up towards is incredible.
This game does not cause you to think they are just craving for MC dick, no by the time you get to see something of you LI, even if they are only "tiddies" you get blown away, not because the renders are amazing (They are though) but because this connection you build with them, they care for you and you care for them.

The amount of work that goes into every scene, and animation is baffeling.
Every action, every movement, everything in the background has a well though out meaning, or something yet to explain, or something that you would have found out if you took another path.
It makes every character and place feel so alive.
Most updates I start a new game, not because saves are not compatible but because like a great movie or show you notice new things, small gestures, small facial expressions, background stuff that makes it so much better.


For example, Nia letting go of Nami's arm the moment she sees you if your last interaction with her was "weird" but if it was good that does not happen.

Another example:
My last play trough (Update 4.5) caused me to have 163 pages of saves, just with scenes I want to remember, to see again or that I just love. creating my own gallery


This game is just amazing; Ocean please keep doing what you are doing.

And to you, just play it!

I am completely in love with this game, it shows that a novel doesn't need to have sex (yet) to be a good one. The renders are awesome, the story is good, the ambience and the music are really good and relaxing, the characters are gorgeous, etc! This is a masterpiece in the making.
I could do with longer episodes but I know masterpieces take time to make. I could spend hours here praising the game but nah, I lack the patience to do it

This game really is a great work of art !

I do love these pearls which combine high-quality renders and captivating storytelling.
Looking forward to seeing the story unfold.

Many thanks and best wishes to you, Ocean !

I never write a review however I had to take the time for this one. This is one of very few games where I don’t skip ahead to the sexual content. I’m intrigued by the story and the visual quality is amazing. Every character is different with unique body types and features. Soundtrack is dope. This is my number one game of all time. I don’t even care that is kind of slow burn. I honestly think that once you have finished the story (I hope not anytime soon) you could make a video story with voice animations and it would be a hit. Keep up the amazing work.

I have to reconsider my attitude to this game. At first, it had a good potential, its own highlight and a great visual - the only thing that remained unchanged, but after 4 years, the whole story is stomping on the spot, there can be no question of any obscene content, moreover, the author removes the little that gave the basis for finding this game in the adult section, in an attempt to expand the reach of the potential audience of his once promising vn, betting, apparently, to kids from Steam.
The story provides a cliched tracing paper from the anime with a drama sucked from a finger, with illogical and not real dialogues, environment, behavior of characters, with typical bimbo girls, unreasonably gone crazy about the main character, but at the same time without intimacy, where is the logic here!? It is not here, as well as realism, which ardent fans of this creation like to talk about so much, but when it comes to some kind of harem suitable for this genre, fans and dev insist that it is not real, come on?)
In general, the trend is not very good, efforts are spent on unnecessary demonstrations of technical skills of the developer (a whole episode of a board game), alterations, removal of good content and endless surreal dramatic attempts to solve the problem, the essence of which is still not clear to anyone, against the background of the aforementioned bimbo beauties who play the role here unnecessary and inactive extras.

I'll edit this with my usual multi layer review once the game finishes(this is my first review of a WIP game so I'll keep it simple without detailed grading).

Ocean, keep doing what you're doing. Amazing game so far.
Lots of varied characters, yet you have the skill to make things less clunky. The game feels very organic, enjoying every part of it so far.
The slow burn feels right and it makes the game more organic, and when the lewd arrives, the payoff will be evergreater.

Characters, animations, renders, style, music... everything is spot on. I read there will be changes due to legal reasons, but I know you'll do a good job replacing stuff.

Overall, my favorite VN on this site. Keep up doing the good work.
I'll update the review once the game is finished some day.

Deep story, appealing and charming characters, crafted in such a way that you can connect with the main character. The content is a little edgy. As of chapter 4, there are no sexual scenes, yet everything is already a little steamy. I returned for the narrative!

Wow now i wonder why i waited so long to try this. Maybe because of the no sex content? But this game have so much more to give. I tried many games here but Summer's Gone is the first that succeeded in putting me in a particular mood, difficult to say what it is espacially...probably because in some way i can relate to the protagonist. But it was not a bad one for sure.
SG is an experience that makes me wanting more..and no its not the lewd that comes first to my mind.