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

Ch. 3.5 Full

In my opinion this is one of those rare VN that can be considered as such.
The compelling story for the inner conflicts of many characters to search for themselves, stories branched through player choices, the renderings and animations are excellent (they are not made as loops of images of a few istants), so far they are not about sex and are used to highlight some dialogues through change of expression and / or gestures, the gameplay appropriate to the type of story, no less the background music that is updated and changes continuously during the game.
A gem for visual novel fans.

3.5
Summary:
An interesting game talks about a damaged mc in not so realistic world with other damaged people, going to college, and trying(or not your choice) to make his life become normal.

Extraordinary aspects of the game:
The character development in the game is unique and good a the same time, sadly it only starts to take full force only around the third chapter.

What is good:
Render - the girls look great. Character development is unique and interesting. Intro animations are amazing with only make those moments stronger with the music that is added to them. Different choices will give different branches of events with is surprisingly rarely done.

What is bad:
A lot of bad.

The world is mostly unrealistic, especially the reactions of people around to some of the events and their behavior to each other. The timeline looks crooked too, the MC gets jacked in two days and the girls blame genetics, I blame fairy magic.

In the first two chapters, there is an issue of the characters jumping to conclusions and leaving the player confused, look at what can be made better to understand.

The flying hair everywhere is weird… but I think that is nitpicking, oh and the flying USB is funny.

What can be made better:
Time issues like the MC getting fit in two days, Victoria getting out of hospital just in half a day stuff like that easily fixed and needed to be fixed, the game shouldn’t be crammed into a week.

Issue of the characters jumping to conclusions:

Examples:
The gun scene at the start of the game, it’s the fucking pouring rain, and the MC talking stupid shit about killing the girl that got into an accident to stop her misery, and immediately the driver pulls out a gun and starts to threaten the MC.

People don’t act like that, the first reaction of people to unexpected situations is doubt, the right move would be is to add a normal human reaction instead of a character jumping to conclusions like this.

MC: “A simple cut.”
MC: “Right here.”
MC: “To save her from the pain she’s going to suffer as soon as she awakes.”
Driver: “What did you say?”
The MC snaps at the driver.
MC: “I said, wouldn’t it be better to help the girl out of her misery instead of letting her suffer because of what you did!”
The driver runs back to the car and grabs the gun and the scene continues as it was.

The Sonya bus drive was another example where the MC just jumped to conclusions and I don’t know if that scene isn’t finished or something but it looks more like a scene between mind readers than a normal human conversation.

And those two are just those that I remembered there more of them in the first two chapters, funny enough this thing vanishes in the 3 and 3.5 chapters.

My opinion:
It’s a really hard nut for me, personally I didn’t like the first two chapters at all. They gave me a strong feeling of an unrealistic world, weird behavior and weird conversations between characters. I even almost dropped the game because of this and was surprised why people gave this game such high scores.

But I sat around some more and got to the third chapter, from there characters get more development they turn from one-dimensional into something more realistic. You start to understand that the MC really got some issues and isn’t just some edgy weirdo that all talks, yes at the beginning that was exactly what I thought.

Oh, right I loved that the MC and the characters around him notice the out-of-character changes you force the MC into(he was a loner but suddenly you force him to be very social), with quite interesting as many devs tend to ignore this.

In the end, the game is quite interesting but the two first chapters leave a bad aftertaste in the mouth, I can see that the devs really have devoted themselves to the game but it still has many issues and because of them, I think that the game is underperforming.

In my opinion, it’s a good game but that is that. I come back to it later to see how it develops I have some good expectations for it.

Ps: I don’t give a fuck that there are no sex scenes in this game I am more of a good story person, and the story only starts to make sense from the third chapter.

If you want more reviews/recommendation check out my list [Link]

Apart from the fact that this game has beautiful renders, amazing animations with good soundtrack and very good looking LI's what makes this game better is the depth of story and character development. It is not some cliche game where MC is hung like a horse and there are Li's who are absolutely perfect and are drooling over him. Every girl in the game has her demons she is fighting and so is the MC. Then comes the mystery surrounding summer.

So all in all it surely is an amazing piece of art

(My first ever game review!) Game version Ch. 3.5 Full]
Okay right to the case this game is fucking amazing!It was "great" before,but now it's almost perfect.First chararacter the varety is wide and yeah they are a bit cheesy like in some teen drama.Really makes you appreciate slow burn story and not just
"Mc:Hi
Girl:Hi!
Mc:Wanna bang?
Girl:Fuck yeah!
I replay this game almost every day.And when there's update i make sure to play every route,every choice is important which is really cool.I would lie if said story is perfect but it really makes you addicted.Renders are out of this world with moles,wrinkles,skin detail.Safe to say best animation quality at the moment in vn 3dcg games.5 out of 5
Oh and word to those 1 star reviewers who are like "Boo where's sex?!Uwaa i want sex!"You have been warned at the start of the game and in dev's notes so stfu!

Unique game with unique characters, Excellent writing, I personally like the character development of MC and renders are beautiful and I like the cinematography and details, This game will be legendary without a doubt .

I noticed this game by accident, and it sucked me in completely. Great, addictive plot, interesting characters with whom you can get along in a way and amazing graphics. That's what I was looking for in VN. Immersion is amazing. The developer also informs on an ongoing basis about the progress of his work, which is pleasing. I was very happy to support him as a patron. I absolutely do not mind the lack of sexual content. The climate is so dense and well built that you want to wait for this type of material. I highly recommend it. It's worth playing if You like this type of game's.

Yep, this is it, the peak of story-driven porn games. The game also has the best renders I have ever seen in my entire life. I literally cannot say anything bad about this game at all, you rarely ever come across quality like this. Solid 10/10

A cringy & poorly written visual novel about a man who's justifying him being shitty to everyone because he lost his childhood friend & first love. Thankfully it has some of the best renders I've seen on this site so at least I have some pretty girls to look at while reading not-so-pretty dialogues & story. 5/10.

This game is the best i have played so far great renders / characters , i love the story building the characters development , relationship development and main character development.

The only sad thing is that i finished the update (3.5 ) i want more

Keep doing what u doing dev cause u doing it great.

"Say No to Ntr , Say YES to Harem" - Someone Probably.

Updated after Steam release, score lowered to 2/5

Not only is the game kinetic, not only are choices being removed, even nudity is being censored now.
Game has 1-2 girls with some screentime (Bela and sister), hundred side girls with total of 10 renders each, progress slower than humanities colonization of Mars and not even no sex, but rather basically no nudity of any kind.

It can't possibly go any lower than this.
If story was at least progressing there would be something good. Kinetic novels can be done well, but there's not even that. It has been remake after remake in effort to make first chapters prettier.
And oh lord, that succeeded, because renders are incredible. But that's it. There is literally nothing to this VN except renders.

What a waste...

**********************

After (another) update to earlier chapters, I'm re-writing the whole review.

Rating stays the same, 3/5

This game initially started as a story about a broken guy that could, kind of, remain broken. There were options to reject girls, act like an asshole, threaten those who insult MC/his family.

Summer's gone, in current iteration, is Kinetic novel. Choices do not matter.

If someone says "they will matter in the future", please keep in mind that it's on chapter 4.5 after 4 years, with ton of rewrites. Future might be 3-4 years down the line.

Renders are absurdly good and girls are incredibly good looking, but that only matters so much when there's no lewd content whatsoever (not a slight against the game, just explaining why good looking characters are not huge point in favor).

I will admit to preferring previous version of this game, where MC had choice of being a douche, outright threatening with murder and similar, over the "you've done something cruel to me, I'll eat your banana in revenge" (actual thing from the game).

And let me be honest, I don't see this game being finished in the next 5 years. A shame really, dev is incredibly talented. Wish we got some finished games.

Game is only through Chapter 3.5 currently, but wow, this is a great game. I've just completed my 2nd run through and honestly...this game is the best I've played on this site and I've played more than a few here on F95.

This developer definitely has my attention - I'm not sure if I've ever played a VN before that built up emotional attachment as well. So far nothing overly dark has happened in the story and I'm praying it doesn't go that route - keep it light, fun, certainly some obstacles for the characters to work through, but hoping things don't get really dark like some VNs tend to do.

Rendering quality is top shelf, same with animations. No sex in the game (yet), but it's not really needed at this point as this developer likes to gradually develop the story and characters so things feel more natural, which is welcome. So far this gave me around 6-8 hours of play-time and was just excellent.

I liked this game enough that I actually signed up on Patreon to support the developer a bit. Praying for quicker releases than some of the other VNs on this site - really slow releases are the only crux of these types of games as you start forgetting what's happening in the story when they take a really long time, so happy to donate a little bit to the dev to help out with hardware, etc. I'd strongly recommend folks to give this game a try if you haven't.

Amazing game if you're down with building deep relations with characters. The personalities are unique and the MC does have a good background even if it tends to be dark sometimes. Good art improving through the episodes, super story, and big blue balls !

Review based on Summer's Gone [Ch. 3.5 Full]

Summer's Gone is a unique and special AVN. Let's get this out of the way first: Oceanlab is a talented Daz3D artist, he knows how to make the eyes truly pop and his posing skill to make his renders look cinematic is beautiful. Definitely at least Top 3.

But sadly, that talent doesn't come with writing skill. Main character of Summer's Gone is insufferable. This is the type of kid back when I was in school would absolutely be stuffed in locker room. That first scene when Victoria was hit by a car made me groan, especially that gun part. I remember in previous version MC was talking about how Vic could end her misery sooner by slitting her wrist. Thank God the reworked version doesn't have that cringe-inducing scene.

As the story goes, you can tell developer is, thankfully, trying to less edgy than what he did on Chapter 1. It's getting pretty good when he tried to emphasize on the mystery part. When he's not overdoing over the top characterization, some of the girls actually intrigued me. So far the focus is mostly on Bella, which is unfortunate because I have zero interest in her.

I'm still looking forward to this because judging on new chapter, it seems like the story is getting less and less influence by Elliott Rodger, plus I'm just a sucker for beautiful renders. My rate for Summer's Gone Ch.3.5 Full is 1.5. Since there's no half star, let's just settle it at 1 then.

TL;DR since Dev loves borrowing lines from popular games, allow me to borrow line as well from a popular cartoon to help me express what I think of Summer's Gone: "It insists upon itself"

What an amazing game!

I have played this game since chapter 3, just finished 3.5. I know the update takes quite some time but damn this game is superb. I have never experienced anything like this before. Downloaded for the graphics, stayed for the storyline. This game makes me feel. Not gonna spoil anything here but the flow of every path and the arc of every characters put you in a different world. I was too engaged to realize this is just a game.

I know Ocean is making this game ALONE so I'm gonna give him a subscribe to help him out with his hardware. Cus I just cannot wait any longer for the next update.

A genuine masterpiece. I'm not sociopathic, but most things don't make me feel, and that goes doubly so for a game inherently pornographic in nature. However, this made me feel things. Some of them deeply uncomfortable, some wholesome, but it did something even few mainstream media has trouble with.

I thought Acting Lessons hits you hard, and it does, but this.... holy shit. Was genuinely engaged, and popped massively when my unfeeling MC kissed Bella. More please.

Most of what I think have already been said by the reviewers below, so I'll make this short.
This game is a Gem. It has the proper mix of slow burn actual story telling and lewdness, and humor, that sadly not many people enjoy or come here for.

Character Design: 5 Stars (Team Bella and Team Nami.)

Character Background: 5 Stars (I hope the girl gets to recover from her accident.)

Story: 5 Stars (Slowed down and left to simmer like the home made stew your mama used to make.)

Animation and Music: 5 Stars (Probably my favorite feature of the game.)

Update Rate: 1 Star: (This is just a reason to not give a perfect 5 out of 5 stars, since it's still incomplete, fans will be waiting for more improvements.)

TBH I wasn't particularly interested by the beginning cuz there wasn't any build up so it felt really abrupt, but once college life begins the story starts to get interesting. It has really beautiful & smooth animations can't believe that I've finished 3.5 & still hasn't seen a single sex scene. But it's quite clear that the story is getting clearer now & has become far more enjoyable. This VN definitely has Gr8 potential & wish Dev all the best

Really, really loved this one and then there isn't any fap fap fap yet!

Good story, likeable characters, I can go in my direction with the MC (always choose the nice alternative, that's me), humor at my level and so on. They girls are different but lovely, all of them. Even if I have a favorite, but no kiss and tell.

What can I give some constructive criticism about? Well, nothing, that's why I gave it 5*.

Keep up the good work!

Absolutely love this game. The story, the visuals and everything is just perfect for me. The only issue is the slow development time. Really hope the dev will get the amount of support he needs to speed up his work.

Dear Ocean. What can I say about your game?! In my opinion, "Summers Gone" belongs on the big screen. The way you develop the characters and the incredible psychological depth of each person in your game, in my opinion, shows your extraordinary talent as a game developer. Everything about your game fits perfectly together, in my opinion. Whether it's the soundtrack (which kicks in at the right time), the fantastic animations, the elaboration of the individual characters. You can empathize with every single character and the story gets under your skin. That's why I think the game should almost be made into a movie. Provided that the story continues to develop so great. I'm definitely one of your supporters and I don't care if the game has sex elements at some point or not. It's a pleasure just to look at these beautiful women in your game. In terms of Storybulding Thank you for your dedication and time and effort. Thank you for sharing this game with us.

The game is not for people who are not able to read between the lines and manage to understand the thoughts and emotions of each character. The intellectual demand of this game is a bit higher, if you look closer and read the story twice.