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

This used to be one of the greats to me. Visually stunning, interesting premise, gorgeous LIs and great choices in music.
But sadly, Ocean just can't stop tinkering with everything. It's not just the constant unnecessary reworks, it's that no character in this game is safe from being altered with every update.
You fell in love with Mila? Too bad, now she has tripple D booba and looks like she ate nothing but McDonalds for 2 months. But only for 1 chapter, because she now looks different in every single one of them.
You fell in love with Ayua? Too bad, now she's just the next generic looking girl, no longer the hot Asian babe.
And this just goes on and on. Every dev update you're just waiting to find out who got the ZBrush treatment this time. Maybe it's your favorite LI next? You can bet your ass they'll all get the treatment.

And the worst part is, it's not even just visuals, now entire personalities are being altered mid-development and nothing is consistent anymore.

Spare yourself the pain of watching the characters you fell in love with being butchered in front of your eyes, it's not worth the pretty renders.

Very nice game, very good story with strong and interesting relationships.
Great approach with the depression, the loss and the resulting sexual attitude and dealing with other people.
I would have liked it a bit better if the dark themes that were there in the earlier versions hadn't been removed or toned down, but all in all a really great game

Summer's gone is one of those AVN's that the community love or hate. It's my favorite, so I am one of those that love, so here is my biased opnion. Visually it's the best out there, Summer Heat and Dreamland have similar qualities, but Ocean's work with light is just another level and next season will be all renders in 4k. The Mc is very different from the usual but that's what make it different and unique from the rest. Story wise, it has so much potential to be great and if you played WIAB(Ocean's first AVN) you know where SG is going to.

I like slow burn games but this one is way too slow and doesnt have a single lewd scene.Lagging behind in the main aspect for which we are here.Gave 3 stars for the render quality.Top notch renders but wasted potential

Let me start this review by saying the renders are excellent. Probably the best I've seen in a title. Major kudos to the dev for that - they are a true artist in that regard. As for the rest of the game, however...

Pros:

• As above, the visuals and renders are amazing. Really, really beautiful.
• The characters also look great. I think the girls are all gorgeous, and I love all of their character designs. In most VNs there's usually at least a few that I feel "meh" about, but they all look great here.
• The characters themselves are pretty good also (with the exception of the MC, which I'll get into below)

Cons:

• The pacing and storytelling are just off. There's so much slog in this VN that the story hardly advances at all, even after hours of play. Some sections drag on for WAY too long. For example, the DnD bit was cool - but I found myself rapid-fire clicking through it towards the end. The first basketball scene was another example. I'm not even joking, there were times playing this game when I felt like the dev was fucking with us - like he was purposely wasting our time.
• The main character is a fucking asshole, and not even in a mysterious anti-hero type of way. He's just a melodramatic, sensitive pussy. The fact that anyone in this story even puts up with him is beyond belief in itself, but the way the other characters all swoon over him is just nonsense. Not only would this person have zero friends in real life, but he would be fucking loathed by every person he encountered.
• The writing is beyond cringe at parts. It reads like an American college story written by someone who not only never went to college, but has also never even been to America. At one point the MC kisses a girl - just kisses her - and suddenly everyone in the game universe acts like the two are a serious couple. If you agree to take a girl out for dinner, everyone starts referring to the two of you as "dating". This is not what the real world, let alone what college or even high school is like.
• It's beyond a slow burn. It's pretty much a no-burn. I know the dev has apparently said this isn't a "sex game", but come on. Nobody is playing this purely for the cringe, convoluted story.

All in all, there's potential here - but I played for over 4 hours this weekend and felt like I got nowhere. Maybe I'll check back in a couple seasons with a gallery unlocker.

(A quick heads-up before the review: This opinion piece is heavily influenced by the developer's note that the game is not a porn game, but rather a story-focused visual novel with adult imagery sprinkled throughout. Therefore, it is only fair to give the story a fair critique rather than dismissing it with the notion that "it's just a porn game, so you cannot expect amazing writing." The developer himself says that the story takes center stage, and I will provide a fair critique based on that.)

To start off, I have to mention something that has probably been said a million times in this thread already: The renders and models are probably the best I have seen on this site by a long margin. Nothing really comes close to the level of detail present here, and that alone is why I gave this game four stars.

Now, let's move on to the main focus of the game, which is the story. It attempts to start a genuinely interesting narrative about trauma related to the loss of a loved one and the complete mental shutdown that occurs during recovery periods.

However, the problem lies with the character interactions in this story. The idea that the main character deserves this amount of attention from his family and from literally everyone he encounters for the first time does not reflect real-world behavior and comes off as very "porn gamey" in the end.

To elaborate on the strange character dynamics, let's examine Bella and the main character. Bella shouldn’t care about the main character from the start, but the inexplicable psychic pull that the main character has over her is both strange and often comical. For a newcomer to college to be paired with the hot, popular girl is tolerable as a plot convenience, but the moment the dynamic shifts to Bella constantly trying to get the main character's attention, it ventures into the realm of fantasy.

This type of relationship dynamic, where a guy who acts disinterested gets the attention of the attractive girl due to being mysterious, is reminiscent of how a child might imagine their aura in class, and it has been overused in cheesy Hollywood and Bollywood movies since the 1950s.

A person suffering from severe trauma and anxiety attacks is not typically perceived this way by others. The way every woman at the college swoons over a barely fit main character is poor storytelling and contributes to the "porn game" feel, which the developer wants to avoid.

There were many ways the developer could have made these interactions interesting while keeping them within the realm of possibility. For example, Bella could have been portrayed as a genuine antagonist in the initial chapters, actively trying to harm the main character due to her wealth and power, until she discovered he was seeing her mother as a therapist. This could have given Bella a real reason to stop being antagonistic, rather than the abrupt change in behavior after they see each other in the gym or class and suddenly decide to become partners in crime.

Another major issue is how every woman views the main character as if he is some sort of messianic figure. This is cringe-inducing at best and horribly tone-deaf at worst. He is not a superhero; if a woman approached the main character and he acted nonchalant, she should not continue approaching him unless he initiates contact.

Overall, the story is rather lackluster in terms of substance, with the exceptions of Victoria's arc and the ambiguity surrounding what happened to Summer, which are the only engaging aspects. The only way the next season could be salvaged in terms of storytelling is if the developer focuses on the fact that the main character is not a superhero but a regular person who can face genuine repercussions when dealing with others rudely. Only then would the story make sense, given that the main character is portrayed as someone undergoing unimaginable trauma and shutting out everyone in his life. If there are no consequences for behavior during the lowest points in life, then the story lacks authenticity and becomes just a porn game plot, which the developer claims it is not.

tldr: came her to fap, not to feel.

I've been recently exploring some games from here, and honestly some of them were pretty ok, some of them were great, but they all came down to simple fucking. Just like any non-ambitious porn some plot was there, but its like non-relevant at all and you should just click through it, and mostly thats what I did - skipped most of the dialogs as they bored me. Even games like BareWitness which initially got me impressed with 'a story' and the characters turned out to be quite naive and stupid, as it went really fast to harems/threeways etc and the characters stories got somewhat ignored.

Then Summer's Gone happened. When I started it I was expecting another porn game but damn was I in for a surprise. I haven't even noticed that on my first playthrough I spent like 4 hours reading through the dialogs, line by line. I got attached to characters, to the story, to each characters side-story (which might be super important for the main story), started looking for some secrets, things that are left for the player to discover. Goddamn this game got me good. And when I've seen the S1 end credits I felt super empty and devastated. I had this kind of feeling before after finishing a game, but it was always a serious PC/PS5 game, which was almost famous for it's plot and writing - never an AVN though.

I sincerely recommend playing Summer's Gone, the only disadvantage of playing it is waiting for the next chapters. And since I've finished it 2 days ago I constantly check any of the sources for some news regarding Season 2. The wait is gonna kill me, I need to continue the path of my LI cause damn that story got me good.

Go play it guys! This shit will mentally wreck you but you gonna love every second of it.

I've just finished Chapter 1. This game is a true gem. A true diamond. The storyline is excellent. The visuals are perfect. The soundtrack is excellent. If there is a Nobel Prize for gaming then this game deserves them all because its the greatest game I have ever played. What a memorable experience.
10/10.

Hyped for more to come. this game has so much potential and i love the pacing of the story without blindly letting the MC fuck every girl i hope that the game will keep expanding on its story. keep going Ocean

This game floored me. While the graphics are pretty good, the story is amazing. I don't even know how to describe it without robbing people of the chance to play it themselves.

I actually went out and bought it, and I am salivating waiting for the next installment.

The game is was great, i can get behind the idea of the reworks first because things were subpar after you learned alot and you wanted to have a streamlined product, without a dip in quality . That integrity, wanting your game to be a good experience, without giving to demands of "faster updates" and focusing on what needs to be done, so when you are finished, it's something to be proud of.

Now if you take shit out of it afterwards, in another "remake", just so you can sell you product, you sold youself in the process. While i can also respect wanting to earn money, i cannot justify compromising what you should stand for.

great story.. not all VN is always having sex all time is quite nice change of pace..

I also like the character backstory peeling one by one that being told slowly, because every person have their own pain to heal & not all will like an open book, it will takes time to trust & to mshare..
the question is who will be heal or will be permanently broken?

overall good game & to slowly enjoy

keep the good work oceanlab dev, hope we all can learn to heal our pain & have a happy live

Once a good game ruined by rework because for some reason dev felt to rework the game when it wasnt even finished. Good scenes were cut thatembody certain characters and shows their personality. The new stories are wonky because dev tried so hard to converge SG and WiaB into one universe, removed some adult scenes for whatever reason prolly want to make it streamable, also dev keeps adding eyecandy characters that have no importance to the game, almost everyone look alike because apparently every girl is a super hot model.

Worst of all, dev nerfed Bellas unstable anger issues and unpredictability. What made her so compatible with the MC is her unhinged personality where the people avoids her and the MC is the only one to challenge her authority now she's not that borderline psycho. Imagine removing the core trait of your best girl just to make her another bland character. Smh.
To other devs. Please dont rework your game until you finish it first. Reworks are supposed to be polishes only done after its complete not when the story hasnt even reach its middle part.

This is gonna be a highly controversial review, as the AVN is a cult classic, but this is my opinion and I stand by it.

Pros:
1) The best lighting work in the genre. When the MC closed the curtains on his window and said that he wasn't ready, it was high art.
2) Very good camera work to complement the above.
3) The premise is quite interesting and mysterious. I got really curious what exactly happened to Summer and expected the MC to feel the same.

Cons:
1) The MC. Damn, I hate this guy. When his attempt to save Vic from her accident turned out rather lame, I was okay. I was like, he's going through some stuff, no wonder he lacks resolve. When he took her wallet and left the scene I was like, what the hell are you doing, man? The cops need your info! The victim needs her ID! Then Nami made him do the sensible thing and return the stuff he took. During the visit, he was a complete A-hole, and the only options were: a) to be a moron, b) to be a c***, c) be silent. I chose the last one, despite the walkthrough mod telling me to do otherwise. I purposefully failed my MC. Then, at school, he abandoned his friends for no reason, yet later those people tried to tell him how much they understand him and want to help him. The guy who they barely met. This was where I understood that the whole plot would go pandering to this ba***rd's moody edgelord persona and dropped the game. I mean, yeah, he's going through some shit, but we all have some shit in us, yet the rule is simple: whatever eats you from the inside, you don't let others suffer because of it. The opposite is how monsters are born. And the MC is a burden to poor Nami, I don't understand how she puts up with him. I'm supposed to like the person I'm playing as, and when I want to kick him in the ribs instead, that's a no-go for any game, and especially for an AVN.
2) The awesome premise is underused. As above; I wanted the MC to investigate Summer's disappearance, but he… doesn't do a thing, just moans about it every time. Pretty annoying.
3) Other characters. As mentioned above, these super nice people really want to get into the MC's problems and be his personal free physicians despite knowing him for a day and him never giving them any motivation to do so. Artificial tools for the plotline.
4) LIs. Before I played I'd heard that there were tons of girls, and, true enough, they looked very hot on the screenshots, even though I'm not a fan of such body proportions. As I was contemplating whether to drop the game, I Iooked through some spoilers to find out if I should give the game another chance for the girls. It turned out that half of the current content was given to Bella (who I'd never choose as she is a bully who bullied Nami), and another half was divided between Nami and Mila, with all the other LIs being basically extras. That's just… sad.
5) MC being impotent. Yet another interesting fact I learned from spoilers after playing. Well, I just don't see how the girlfriend's disappearance (many years ago, when they were kids!) made his condition this bad for this many years. Well, it would make sense if someone raped and ate her alive in front of him, but we don't have any info on anything of the sort happening. She just… disappeared. While that's a tragedy, it isn't monstrous enough to damage an individual this much. Something mystical taking place would further stimulate his curiosity to try and find out what really happened. This many years later, I fully expect the MC to have recovered and to be actively researching the reasons behind her disappearance, not letting his angst completely absorb him, doing nothing to find her, and becoming a nuisance to everybody around him.

So, we have an MC whom I hate, a bully with a ton of screentime, an interesting premise that the dev failed to use to keep me involved, side characters who all want to please the MC, and no actual sex to motivate me to soldier through all of it.

2 stars - one for the lighting, and one for the premise.

This game elicits such a polarizing conflict within myself that it has forced me to write my first ever review on here. I've played a LOT of AVNs over the past several years varying between the most popular story-tellers, and the less popular purely-erotic AVNs. I wouldn't exactly call myself an expert critic, but I can confidently say I have a pretty good understanding of what a good AVN can offer. With that said, here's what I have to say about this one:

The Good

1. The renders are top-notch and rival (if not surpass) the renders of most highly praised AVNs.
2. I didn't start playing this game until Ch 5, so I'm completely unaware of the depth this game "lost" through the years that many other longtime fans have mentioned. With the most recent update being my first experience, I still believe this game's story stands as one of the top narratives I have witnessed. The dialogue is captivating in such a way that I never found myself clicking mindlessly through boring conversations. The characters seemed to be actually talking to each other rather than simply talking at each other which is a big problem I've seen in a lot of other AVNs.

The Bad

• There's MANY LIs, but there are only 2 (Bella and Nami) that you can really pursue at the moment. There are 2 others (Vic and Milla) that can you get a decent amount of dialogue and choices with, but they are greatly overshadowed by Bella and Nami. If you aren't into the bitchy but secretly affectionate type, or the quirky, practically-forbidden childhood friend type, then you will be sorely disappointed by this game.

The Ugly?

• While this one has been beat to death already, I feel it's very important to emphasize that when people say this is a slow burn, it is a SLOW burn. This aspect is something I can appreciate, but it definitely is not for everyone. The total lack of sex scenes is what steered me away from this game a long time ago, so I wasn't totally blindsided when I finally took a chance and played it. However, if you end up loving the other things this game has to offer, this part can make you question whether this game is worth keeping up with (especially when we consider the lengthy development time for this game).

All-in-all, if you're a sucker for top-tier renders and engaging dialogue, this game is an absolute masterpiece. That is, as long as you are willing to put up with waiting a LONG time for some lewd scenes or even the slightest romantic interaction with your favorite LI. I loved it, but I can see how it might not for everyone.

Nothing else in the AVN world quite compares to how Summer's Gone makes me feel. Is it perfect? No. No AVN is perfect, and Summer's Gone has its share of flaws, but they don't detract from the mood and atmosphere the story brings. Is this going to take an extremely long time to complete? Yes, it is. Very, very long. It could potentially be in the 10-15 year realm, possibly longer.

So why should you try it out? Once you give it a whirl and play through the content, you'll understand why SG has such a loyal following and why all the naysayers always return. If I could describe SG, it would be something like an ASMR AVN. When you're following the story and getting lost in the renders, and that perfect Vesky/The Intangible song hits, you'll understand what I mean. There's just no other AVN with as much potential as Summer's Gone.

Remember, if you end up loving SG and Ocean's work in general as much as I do, always try to show some support through Patreon, Steam, etc.

I loved the story and characters. The characters are well-developed and relatable, making the experience deeply engaging. The choices I made felt meaningful, impacting the direction of the story and character arcs. The art style and music perfectly complement the game, enhancing the overall experience. I'm eagerly awaiting the next update and can't wait to see where the developers take us next!

Great story, great renders, great characters and great game.
This is a masterpiece of a game, when you come for the porn and you stay for the story, you then know you are in for a treat. Even with no porn I kept playing it and never once got bored. Truly one of the best ever VNs.

Slow burn, excellent character development, can be funny times. The amount of paths that you can take to some of the love interests gives this game a nice replayable quality while you wait for updates.

Terrible rework. I just don’t recognize the game that I’ve been donating for several years. Everything has changed and not for the better. Yes, the quality of the renders is great, but everything else is an inflated bubble. The latest update is like a slap in the face. A lot of Bella’s fans have left .Soon, Sasha’s fans will understand that they are simply being milked while Ocean continues to drag out content with Sasha. At the time of writing this review, the number of patreons has dropped to 1303. With such decisions, the second season will be the last nail in the coffin.