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

Reviewing Summer’s Gone [Ch.4 Full] (on Android via JoiPlay)

Below is a 1 to 5 ⭐ star rating on aspects of the game, that from my amateur perspective, I feel contributed to my overall rating.


Lewdness 2/5 ⭐ - As stated during the introduction of the game there is absolutely zero sex scenes in Summer’s Gone, although there is a fair amount of nudity. Most of the nudity is from the waist up, but all of it is artfully done, with only a small amount to below-the-belt nudity. There are plenty of nip slips and “peek-a-boo” nipples throughout the game as well.



Story 4/5 ⭐ - Summer's Gone's story covers some darker topics and is intriguing. The MC’s backstory, history, and the events that are the cause of his depression are being slowly, but have not been completely, revealed in this version of the game. I do feel like that the MC overcomes his long-held depression a little too quickly. Some of the plot points are a little predictable, but not enough to take away from the quality of the story. The choices presented in this game do not seem to affect the direction of the story (so far) but do affect the MC’s relationship with the other characters.



Graphics 4.5/5 ⭐- The graphics in this game are way above average, I can tell that a lot of care and work went into creating the excellent art and animatics for Summer’s Gone. I did have some issues with accidentally skipping some of the animatics because it takes a moment for them to load, and it is sometimes hard to tell that an animatic is loading. The skin also looks a little plastic at times, as most games of this style do, but look much better in this game than most other games.


Models 4.5/5 ⭐- There are a lot of beautiful ladies here with models that don't look familiar to me, plenty of nice eye candy. A few models have overly exaggerated proportions but that is balanced out with others having more realistic proportions with an adequate

Overall, I really enjoyed playing this version of Summer’s Gone and I would recommend this game to anyone that enjoys a good story. I am looking forward to future versions that continue the story. I do hope that some quality sex scenes and animations will be added in the future, but I expect that sex scenes will only be added if they serve the story in some way, the author does not want to add sex scenes to add them, and I respect that (even if I really want them ).

Summer's Gone is a VN where you play as a borderline sociopath as he goes to college.

It's a very pretty game, not gonna lie. I haven't seen too many VNs that have cinematics and I like them here. The girls are cute and their outfits are delightfully impractical, even with the lack of sexual content as of yet.

The number of choices available is honestly daunting if you look at the walkthrough. While this has the potential to be a great strength of the game, it also has the potential to be the opposite. The more options available to the player, the less focused a play-through can feel and the weaker each possible path can feel. There’s a limit to the amount of focus a dev can put into everything in a game, and the more stuff in a game, the less focus each individual facet receives. I hope Summer’s Gone can deliver but currently…

Unfortunately, the story is a mess. It seems to pretend it takes place in the real world, but just nothing that happens seems realistic. The sociopath main character witnesses a car accident and someone pulls a gun on him as he waxes philosophical on how it might be kinder to end the victim? The girl in the accident forms some sort of bond to the person who witnessed the accident and brought her back her wallet? A bunch of people introduce themselves to the uninterested MC, like him, and proceed to drag him around socially? The college gym class consists of attempted man slaughter? The list goes on and on. I'm willing to suspend my disbelief to some degree, or completely if the game is silly, but Summer's Gone is absurd while pretending at realism.

The dialogue trends towards awkward as hell. I think there's some degree of weak English going on in the game, but the fact that the game abounds with “roommates” complicates things greatly. If there’s no incest going on, couldn’t they just be parents and siblings? I know there are rules on patreon and all, but there are times I’m legitimately confused as to how characters are related. It doesn't help that the MC is in college... a place where it's rather expected to have ACTUAL roommates.

Finally, the main character is just borked. He can’t decide who the hell he is and stick with it. At the beginning of the story he’s an anti-social, jaded asshole. Once he gets to college, he quickly starts being friendly to other people… with a rather sociopathic focus on favors, using friendship and information against people, and completely excessive revenge plots. I could sort of run with this transition, if it weren’t for the fact that he’s also occasionally nice to people for no personal gain. It’s impossible to have any idea what the hell he’s going to do next, which makes him a pretty poor main character.

This is personal opinion, but I think it derives from having too much leeway in the amount of choices the main character has. While one path of choices can lead to the main character receiving much needed support and healthy relationships, different choices can exacerbate all of his worst impulses. This would all be great… if you couldn’t do them simultaneously. It’s bizarre to have the generally kind main character be randomly vicious, just as it’s weird to have the vicious main character be randomly kind. Judging from the walkthrough, there are stats that define what type of person the main character is, but it looks like they don’t dramatically affect most dialogue. This game could be phenomenal if this got straightened out, but currently it’s a painful weakness.

Overall, I can’t recommend this game. It has a lot of potential between the beautiful visuals and the amount of work that’s been put into the choice tree, but I’m skeptical that it will ever be able to deliver. There are a large number of characters in the game and already a monstrous number of decisions, all of which guide the story, but few of which seem to close off routes. It’ll take a huge amount of work to get any individual path through the game particularly strong with so many different characters and options. I wish the dev luck, but I’m not optimistic.

This review will mainly focus on the game as of chapter Ch4.
there will be spoilers

This game seems to be in some sort of identity crisis for some time now, but the "remastering" of the first few chapters is really showing that the talent that made the first few chapters is no longer there.
When the remaster of the first half of chapter 1 arrived it cemented the fact that the current dev didn't like how the story was being done, and is instead going for a less dark mood, problem is that this change makes a lot of the game make much less sense, with how it was originally one wouldn't doubt that the mc is damaged, as he would act like it, currently he largely doesn't, and instead other characters note on how damaged he is with no apparent reason other than "he has that aura".
With a remaster came more frames, animations and better picture quality but it was at the cost of story telling and fluidity, the game didn't get more compelling and believable instead the opposite is true.
Imo the dev needs a serious help with story telling and directing the shots, as just improving image quality doesn't make a better game.


Here are a few examples of what i was talking about:
OG: Mc is asked to go see victoria, he does so we see a seemly happy victoria and after some time he mentions that she seems to be handling it well.
"remastered": in the first few sentences Victoria handling it well is brought up, before that is established.
Seems like someone was trying to recreate a story from memory and didn't bother re reading it before making an adaptation, thus missing the small details that make a scene believable and make sense.

another example is when mila has "The talk" with the mc,
OG: mila grabs the mc by the arm after he was stopped from going after Bela
Mc is taken outside and after a cigarette and the required weather talk the "Talk" begins
"remastered": while the whole group is outside she brings it up as one does without anything else other than "aura", in the original she had much more solid grounds as she found him in the act of going after Bella, here nothing of the sort.

TL;DR the remaster makes the scenes longer but makes them flow worse, and the MC's problems are less grounded. a very show not tell kind of problem.

The one star might feel like it's undeserved, and myabe it is. Since the renders, scenes, characters and backgrounds are phenomenal.

But this is a non porn game on a porn website. Honestly, I feel extraordinarily justified in that one star. What is this game doing here? Why is it not tagged as "No Sexual Content", or is seeing a bare ass sexual content these days?

Also, the protagonist is a worthless piece of shit, if you ask me. This comes down to personal preference, I guess. But I just do not like the MC one bit.

Finally, the game writing and choice feel like it was made by somene who's a bit too into getting high on the smell of their own farts. You can't make any meaningful choice. You cannot steer the MC into another direction, one of forgiving, or coping with loss. Instead we get this insufferable trash protagonist.

I cannot fathom what the other people are seeing in this game. I don't see anything worth anyone's time.

Maybe it's the burden of expectation. Had this been marketed as some sort of visual novel with minor romantic elements, no sex, only some teasing. Maybe I'd give it a pass? But as it stands, no. Not worth playing, no matter who you are. IMHO.

The best of all time
I don't expect anything more from a visual novel..
Characterizations, character design, enviromental design..everything is excellent
And above the standards..and guess what? There is no novel whose characters can be compared to this novel..here, we have a bunch of sexy goddesses..all are pretty and stylish
Story is not plot driven kind of novel but its decent and good enough

Well, this a VN with no sex and very few choices, on a porn site, I have to say anything else?

Renders are very good.
The writing is better than usual.
The story it' forgettable.
Even the teasing is very very little.

If you really have time maybe in 5 years it will be something.

FUTA/TRANS TAG IS FALSE: if you found this game by searching this tag then turn around now because as of chapter 4 (multiple hours into the game) there is no futa/trans character to be found. I wish they'd remove this tag because it doesn't apply to this game as of yet.

The game itself was fine. It's a kinetic visual novel with a ton of dialogue and gives you a tiny bit of choice in who you want to chase and what you want to do. The characters are hot and there's some genuinely intimate and real moments going on but there's basically no sex scenes, just a bunch of teasing. Was still hot but this + the false futa/trans tag and some annoying parts in the story that had a lot of dialogue for no real reason is why I subtracted 2 1 stars from the score.

The cover girl in the main post also misrepresents what you can expect of this game. She's a muslim character ingame whom you do not interact with that much. Most of the story is the MC lamenting the loss of his first girlfriend Summer while hanging out with large breasted blondes, so the choice to have her on the cover is odd. Made me think she would be the deuteragonist and the so called Summer who's gone. Absolutely not a problem but I definitely thought this game would revolve around a more eastern setting at first lol

It's still a game worth checking out for the high quality renders alone as well as if you're looking for a game with some really high sexual tension between characters. Just don't expect a lot of this game and don't expect any futas either, contrary to the tag that might've brought you here suggests and don't expect any sex scenes.

A nearly flawless piece of visual artistry.

+ flawless renders and character models

+ excellent writing, captivating story

+ well-written characters with unique personalities

+ smooth and natural interactions between characters

+ a lot of content already

+ visuals and audio blend in perfectly creating a very immersive world


- the hair of a couple of characters seems to defy physics on occasions

- a bunch of characters are the typical bleached blondes, which occasionally makes them look quite similar

- the story seems to suffer from bloating. characters are continuously added to the story even if there are a lot of exciting characters already in that struggle for screen time. I personally don't mind this, since most of the newly added characters are interesting, but some people waiting for content with their favorite character might get frustrated


+/- no sex scenes whatsoever. albeit this cannot be held against the dev, since he is very straightforward and informs everyone at the start of the game


All in all one of the best games on this site. Pretty much the highest quality available at this time.

(Review based off Ch.4 Beta)

SPOILER FREE

I have to admit, this game really makes you feel something unlike any other game. Through the amazing renders, the encapsulating atmosphere surrounding the scenes, all the way to the soundtrack that just fits perfectly for each mood the game tries to depict. And personally, I haven't gotten to experience such a gem in years, which is enough for me to write my first ever review on a game.

PROS:

• Very high quality renders that stay very consistent throughout the game (and even improve as the chapters go on)
• A soundtrack that fits every scene perfectly and invokes the right feelings that the developer wants you to experience
  • *Very big pro for me as a soundtrack can make or break a game, and this isn't just a set of songs that play by default and don't match the mood whatsoever like many games have*
• Actual character development throughout the game for multiple characters which makes the characters feel more realistic and three dimensional in a sense.
  • You may dislike a character in the beginning, yet she may end up as your favorite by the end.
• The animations and cinematics are very high quality, and this is the first time I've seen such cinematics in a game. +1 for that.
• The gallery is actually pretty well made with multiple categories that let you replay what you actually want, whether its just the CG, an entire scene (which is further divided into more categories such as romance/lewd/story, etc.) or one of the cinematics.
• The atmospheres depicted throughout the scenes really add much more to the game and can make you feel an array of emotions.
• Relationship building & pacing is done quite well and lets you choose which characters you want to pursue/continue parts of the story with.
• Big variety of character designs w/ their own unique personalities

CONS:

• Yes, as many other people have said in the reviews, the MC does indeed look like an edgelord with the hair. However, you get used to it and it gets a little better later on.
• Bella's car is just downright ugly, does not fit the aesthetic of the game and looks a tad messy in my opinion. Ayua's car too, but you only see hers for a few seconds.
• Some scenes can be a tad bit cheesy, but they are few and far between.
• Con for SOME people: there are no sex scenes at the moment. However, these first few chapters are meant to be purely story building, so if you're here for a quick fap, this may not be the game for you (they warn you about this when you start the game)

Overall, this game is definitely a must play if what I've said above has piqued your interest. I don't play VNs like this often, but I'm glad I was able to find out about this gem and give it a try. Looking forward to the future of this game and I wish the best of luck to Oceanlab and hope they continue their great work.

5/5 from me.

This game has some great visuals.

I think story takes itself too seriously at times dialogue wise, that's why I'd take off a star.

The girls are super hot, and I know it says it's not sex focused it would still be nice to see a few more lewd scenes integrated into the game. It's pretty solid from top to bottom though.

Damn this game has some amazing renders, and the story is really creatively written, each of the girls brings something interesting to the table and it makes it hard to pick a favorite. Victoria is a bit odd though, she is just TOO nice, was she like this before she got hit by the car? .

Can't wait too see more, the creator of this game has some real talent.

P.S I am a simp for Bella, I just had to say it.

This game is mixed,

Good renders, and some interesting characters mixed in with some rather annoying ones. You'll be forced into a fair bit of content with certain character whether you like it or not.

The writing has undergone revamps and edits so the exact version I even remember vs what is available may or may not even be the same at this point.

This could have potential, but the glacial development means you might want to check backin 10+ years to get to the bottom of anything (0.5 of a chapter in 6months, so 1 per year, and I think I read this is planned to have over 20 chapters or something).

At first I wasn't sure that this VN was for me, it started kinda weird and I was on the point to drop it... BUT THANK GOD I DIDN'T. The music and the character development quickly hooked me up. Each character feels alive and huge thanks to the beautiful renders, their expressions feel so human that you can guess what they're feeling.

I know you're on this site for some sex scenes, but the story and linear character development makes you forget about your friend down there (though there are some nude scenes). This game made me do a whole 180° on a girl that I initially couldn't bear and that I came to absolutely love and ship with the main character (Yes I'm looking at you Bella). Every girl has insane renders, but Cheeto and Bella are my fav.


Overall please give this vn a shot, you won't regret it! (Did I say the renders are insane? )

Approximately twice a year you reservere a weekend all for yourself. You turn down all that important stuff you thought you should do or move it to an another day. You appologies to friends and relatives and says that you won't be available at this weekend. You prepare snacks and drinks, whatever you like. Then, you download the last SG update. You thanks Nami & Sasha for the blueball warning, then you play the game slowly from beginning to the end. You admire your favourite scenes and dialogues as well as you enjoy the new content. Of course, you play different playthroughs for Bella, Nami and Vici. And by the end of the weekend you get yourself reassured again that the SG is still the best VN you've ever played.

The animation is just beautiful and I like how the music mixes well with it

The models are just fantastic too, I really like the effort they've pit in

As for the story, the story is so good and entertaining
(Even though it doesn't have any sex scene and only a bunch of kisses)
But the story won't disappoint and will exceed ones expectations
Especially how almost each one has an interesting personalities and all that has happened so far makes sense in some realistic way

But of course everything has a bad side and all I can say about it in this game is...
How robotic the scenes are but it isn't so bad, but if it was a sex scene I would not like it to be so robotic and image like, maybe when there's a sex scene add a little motion that's allbut there's no sex scene.... So for now I will rate it on how it is in the present

Perphaps, strictly speaking story-wise, this is might just be the best game of the site. Yes, it has no sex scenes, we are painfully, PAINFULLY aware. Yes, the update between chapters are LEGENDARILY long and the supporters of the game have so much patience Buddha must have a statue of them to pray, but it's worth it. The game is worth it. The story and characters are rich, nuanced, and deep. They are charming and real, and don't just fall into one category. I can understand where they come from, and how they think. That's very rare for a game like this. Top 3 best games in here.

If only it had sex scenes XD

Not gonna lie, when I first saw the first images of the game, I avoided it because the Mc's hair looked ridiculous to me, and I judged this single little detail and decided not to play it.
After years, I finally decided to give it a go, and I'm glad I did.
Game is one of the few in its genre that makes me really interested in getting to know all the characters.
While Bella is my favorite for personal reasons, Ocean manages to make every girl likeable and attractive, not a single one of them resembles the other, not only on the looks but on personality as well.
Be warned that this is a slow burn kind of game, but It's totally worth it.

The story is excellent.
I really like the depth of character development especially with the MC.
The character models are excellent. So many different female characters and they all look great.
I love that there are no mini-puzzles or mini-games.

Interesting story with great potential. Much less X-rated material than most in this genre , really more PG, yet still a nice erotic romantic fantasy. Well written and animated including small things like emotional transitions in facial expressions in what in most other VNs are static shots. And much like Eternum it has a game within a game, albeit a largely kinetic one.
The team that's developing this is doing high quality work and I'm looking forward to any future efforts after they complete this one.