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

I never leave reviews on anything, but this game is worth it.

The creator of this game absolutely smashed it out of the park with the story and characters, they are as interesting and well-developed as any mainstream novel.

Seriously, play this game, your only regret will be that there isn't any more to play (yet).

game has potential to be elite just needs more backing and more consistent update scheldule and a light shined on it to achieve it's potentinal .Storyline is great.Art is Fantastic visuals are done perfectly well. sound is done well as well

Game is a perfect blend of story and kink. You come because you think it has nice renders, then you're blown by the story and how deep it is. I would be more than glad to wait months for updates on this game. What a hidden gem

Wow, this game is really fantastic. It needs a little bit of polishing but it really is a gem. The game is pretty mature, deals with mental health issues amongst multiple characters, mainly the MC. It seems there are different routes you can take, namely closing yourself off from others, or trying to heal and get better and accept help from others.

The story is still not very established, we don't really know a whole lot yet. It is clear that MC is having immense troubles dealing with a loss, even other characters deal with seemingly tragic losses.

The renders are beautiful and the game almost is an experience. There are some really cool cinematic shots and it makes it feel more than just a game. I really am excited to see more from this one. It seems that the story might pull on some heart strings and not in a cheesy or immature way. Cannot compliment the dev/devs enough and hope that the game continues the awesome work.

Looking great so far. I like the fact that you can just be an asshole to the NPCs. Really fits the character. So many games are basically just auto-skip to fap. This one I actually want to read how the characters interact. Good job.

Authentic characters, classic college feeling. Beautiful graphics, good writing and great story!

Definitely going for depth, seems like choices will have consequences, also the game deals with quite adult topics.

I recommend playing it!

The plot looks interesting but the game increased my expectations, looks so promising, the story's very intriguing and the characters have their personality well defined, the mc is too much sadic and careless, but I hope the next updates can tell us the way that Summer vanished, maybe that information can explain the behavior of him, so can't wait for the next update!

This is a pretty unusual game. I enjoyed the intro and the main menu music. At first you can see a flashback of the main character and the girl named summer. The flashback itself is pretty normal. But it starts to get very ''oh what'' - like, when the street scene starts. This was very ... surprising. I like the idea of a broken character. The game is not so ''childish'' and it's a real adult game. It seems like the character can evolve in a good way or in a bad way. I'm waiting to see some erotic scene but well, it's version 1 and i prefer that it makes sense instead of just some sudden random sex stuff. The wheel chair girl is a pretty cute one (besides of some scenes on the bed where she looked somehow creepy... don't know if this was a render fail or on purpose. I give the game 5 stars and hope that version 2 will be as good as version 1 or better.

This one goes to my favorite list.
Graphics really good. And the story (the most important thing to me) its really interesting (although we don't see too much of it in the first update), it kind of just drags you into it.
You can really sense how the characters feel about each other through their facial expresisons and lines.

(Chapter 1a)

The main character is mourning the loss of his girlfriend, and has been doing so for the past three years. This should make him a sympathetic character, but I found it impossible to like him as he is completely batshit crazy and bordering on becoming a sadistic psychopath. He is needlessly cruel to people and he fantasizes about murdering complete strangers. I don't understand how we are supposed to get invested in this character.

The actual dialogue is atrocious. There are so many quotes from Mass Effect that I fully expected to see the main character sleeping with a custom ordered Sovereign body pillow. It's truly bizarre. I would be tempted to label it a dark comedy, but it seems like the game is actually taking itself seriously.

There are choices to be made in the game, but most have no effect on anything outside of a single line or two. Which is very strange considering how excessively hostile and purposefully insulting the main character can be. The plot is entirely unbelievable, which makes the whole game a mess. It's a story focused game with a terrible story.

review of version1.
it's just a demo so far, but there's enough content storywise to rival some of those v.0.8 games.
The MC went through something horrible when his girlfriend vanished and his sister, the lovely redhead we see in the previews was his only ally through the dark days. he became quite gloomy and emotionally damaged and it's where you as a player have to step in. college begins and you will decide if the MC will sink deeper into darkness or fight for air and sunshine.
the dialogues are well written with some funny moments, the game is at moments self conscious.
don't expect every girl to like the MC instantly, some are straight hostile.
the main girls are interesting, each of them different.
If I had to describe the VN in 3 words, I would call it "reversal acting lessons"... all the bad already happened and it will go into the good direction.
if I had to find a negative... it'sthe lovely sister, when she's energetic she assumes poses worthy of the incredible hulk. but that just makes her more adorable

The renders are Really good, and the plot hooked me.
the characters are very interesting.
And the choices you have with the protagonist have great variation of personalities


I hope to see more of this in the future.

Crazy story so far but I get the feeling this is might just be a serial killer simulator. In this first installment you have the MC fantasing about killing a young vulnerable girl who was just hit by a car and an option to attempt to murder one of your school teachers. You really have to suspend your disbelief early on as the teacher doesn't tell the cops who show up moments later that the MC attempted to kill and then allows the attempted murderer to sit in her classroom (because that is obviously what people do.... right?).

Pretty dark and rediculous stuff. You have been warned.

On the bright side of things you are not forced to actually attempt to kill anybody and the game does get a lot lighter if you choose too go that way. The renders are top notch! I get its supposed to be a dark theme but adding a little better lighting to some of the scenes would be helpful so we can actually see the pretty pictures.

So you are either playing as a socoipath or a really depressed guy dealing with the loss of his first love. Time will tell.

A gloomy and captivating psychological thriller with an unstable atmosphere reflecting the preoccupied mind of the main character suffering from insomnia .

This game made me immediately remember "The Machinist" .

I'm looking forward to what's next.

I liked the game. It shows a lot of potential. This appears to have a heavy, dark story. Which I believe is a welcome change to the cookie-cutter stories of the games I have seen lately.

WARNING: May contain spoilers.

I am really interested to find out what happened to Summer. This event has really affected the MC to the point of causing his twisted view of the world. And the player, it appears, has the option to allow the MC to continue on this path or to try to help the MC out of his dark mindset.

There appears to be a issue with a few people about the car accident scene and how it played out as well as the available choices the player can make. I don't have a problem with the scene personally. For me, it gives a detailed look into the MC's mindset and how he personally views the world around him. It shows an internal issue that the MC must overcome (which in the game he, depending on the players choices, as well as other characters have both identified he needs to overcome). This is versus the traditional external issues that the MC would have with other characters as a plot device in other games (not that these characters don't exist in the game, they do). As far as the car accident scene goes, after playing through it, I can't imagine the game without it. Especially when coupled with the scene later at the school class room.

Others have commented on the lack of sex scenes. But hey, it is a first release of a game in development. So don't expect much from the initial upload. There is a topless scene as well as what can be considered multiple "fan-service" scenes of the female characters in revealing clothing/provocative angles (cleavage shoots and down blouse views). But what is available looks pretty well done with lots of potential. The renders are really good.

The only real issues that I have were the needless black screens that the player needs to click through in-between scenes, the extra text-less frames that also need to be clicked through, and the minor spelling and grammar issues, but these can be fixed with a simple update fix on a future version and don't detract from the game play too much.

Overall I really enjoyed what this game offers and look forward to what it promises to deliver. I would recommend this game for a play through, but would remind those that it has a dark story starting off with a internally broken MC, so be prepared for that. With that in mind very well done.

Solid first chapter. I don't get why people expect devs to just create an Orgyfest right from the jump. I personally love build up as long as it's done properly.

The story so far is good, moody and dark which is to my liking. You can obviously see that the absence of Summer is affecting the MC's mental. His flippant responses and over the top sarcasm is a dead give away. As far as the characters goes... So far so good. I love the College setting so of course there's a variety of people with stories to be told, so that's good the more the better. Also his sister is a gorgeous redhead so I'm sold.

Renders and art is really good also. I don't really have any legitimate gripes, I'm looking forward to what's next.

Review based on chapter 1.

Until this point, this is more like an intro without sex scenes.
But it sets the ground to a dark, but interesting story. Even this early most characters are feeling deep and meaningful.
The graphics are one of the best on this site, you can clearly see the effort put into this on.
If the devs continues like this, this one looks pretty promising.

Definitely not a story for the faint-hearted. MC has some severe damage going on that he needs to straighten out, and it reflects in his actions. Visuals are pretty incredible, definitely in my top 5 for visual style so far. Well designed characters, good variety to how people look, not 20 girls with the same exact body and a minor difference in hair and makeup. I don't play with sound on, so cannot comment on the audio quality. There are some scenes that may be a bit difficult to see in low-lit rooms or badly lit monitors, but still seems to add a good ambiance to the storyline. Really looking forward to seeing how this game unfolds.

The following review is based off my personal experience with playing this Game/Visual Novel... I try to be as brutally honest and detailed as I can, and these are my own opinions and thoughts, from one or more play throughs... The version this review is based on is Chapter 1...

This is a very odd and rather dark VN/Game... Also, this review will include some Spoilers, so be forewarned...

The visuals that I experienced were mostly darkly lit, so it was a bit difficult to really give a base line of the backdrops and so forth... The character models looked alright, from what you can see of them... The police woman wasn't really dressed for performing police duties, even though she had her badge on... Which sort of threw a kink in the immersion... There were a few zoom in visuals, which did add some production value... But the initial visuals, where it switches from one dark picture to another, prior to the event in the woods, felt rather out of place and bizarre... If there was some narration during that sequence, maybe it would have fit in better?

Now I don't play any VN/Games with the sound on, as I use speakers and not a headset, so if there was music and other sounds, I didn't experience them... And I know that many other readers/players also turn sounds off, so I am definitely not alone in that...

The script is a mix of good English along side some broken English (here and there), as well as the occasional spelling/grammar error... This VN/Game starts off very weird, with a bunch of back to back visuals, that I assumed were either flashbacks or something else... I couldn't tell what their significance was, so I ended up left clicking and they stopped... After that the visual novel part began, with a male protagonist and another woman getting stoned on pot, and almost having sex, right before a female police officer (that was wearing a rather revealing set of clothing instead of what a normal police woman would wear) showed up and took them into custody... From there the story instantly flashes forward 3 years...

The part I had the most trouble with, involved when the protagonist left his home... While standing at a crosswalk, a female pedestrian gets hit by a car (it was night and raining), and that is when this VN/Game began to become very dark... The choices you get presented with, and the way the protagonists talks and thinks, almost makes you think the protagonist is some psychotic... He is very apathetic to the whole situation, with choices to shoot someone for no good reason (regardless if it was blanks or not, because he didn't know before pulling the trigger)… One of the choices, with regards to the hurt woman on the ground, basically involved the protagonist being rather disconcered about her injuries, as she realizes she's paralyzed... What kind of choices is that? Who the hell want's to play a psychopath, with dialogue about slitting the accident victims throat as she lay there possibly dying, and then an option of shooting an innocent driver? I get that the developers were trying to portray a troubled protagonist, but come on... The dialogue and choices are extremely dark...

And it only got worse, as the immersion just went flying off into the wild blue yonder... The cops show up and he just decides to walk away from the crime scene (regardless what choices you selected), without the cops even stopping him... Then he picks up the victims belongings and goes through them? All while the cops are right there? I just had to call bullshit on that whole set of events, and quit reading/playing at that point... As I could tell from all the non-sense, that had already occurred up until that point, that this sort of stuff was probably going to be present through the rest of this VN/Game...

Beyond the non-sense with the car accident, there were some other things the protagonist was thinking, that sometimes made no sense or felt out of place... Before the accident even occured... This could be possibly attributed to some bad translation/interpretation or just poor writing, it was hard to tell... Add to that, most visuals were hard too see, due to very darkly lit settings... The content I did encounter, prior to the car accident, also didn't have the best of pacing... Sometimes it was fine, and sometimes it seemed to be missing something... In the end, I wasn't feeling the immersion, due to how unbelievable some of the event setups were, along with not wanting anything to do with playing a possible psychopath in a visual novel...

Some other issues I ran into, up until I quit reading/playing, were the constant blank text boxes that happened over and over again... Sometimes they were present for scene alterations, but sometimes nothing seemed to be changing, yet they were still there... That is something the developers really should work on removing...

All I could really gather, before I quit playing, is that the plot revolves around a possibly psychotic male protagonist, who gets high with some woman, gets caught out in the woods, gets into the back of a police car, and then it's 3 years later, and he feels bad about something that happened regarding that girl... He is apparently distraught, while living with his mother and sister... From there, he goes from what seems like a slightly depressed guy, to having choices to either be a twisted psychotic pent on murder, or being a normal person... The fact that the options existed for being a possible murdering psycho just made me say, hell to the no... Mixed with the breaks from reality, based on how the story was being told, alongside the odd story telling, I just called it quits...

Overall, from the content I experienced, I could see that the developers were trying to make a story driven VN/Game, with both intrigue and darkness... Some production value was added with a few zoom in's... The darkness of the visuals was probably being used as a way of setting the mood to go with it's darker theme, is what I was guessing... The story text didn't always feel right, as it was telling the story, along with the occasional tiny amounts of broken English, just didn't allow it to read well some of the time... The story, in someways, felt artificial and sometimes a tiny bit forced... Like it was trying too hard to force the dark mood of the VN/Game onto the reader, rather then using subtle hints while leading the reader through the story, allowing time for the visuals and so forth to sink in...

The addition of very dark dialogue and inner-monologue along with very dark and sinister choices, just is not my cup of tea... There are better ways to setup a protagonist as depressed and hurt, over some past tragedy that he may or may not of had control over... Portraying him as this broken and emotionless psychotic, who would rather project his issues onto others through thoughts and actions of violence and murder, that is way over the top... And that type of character is not someone I can immerse myself into playing as... If it had been a kinetic story, with no choices, yet the same thoughts and actions were to take place, I still probably couldn't keep reading it... I don't even know if the remainder of this VN/Game continues with those types of choices, dialogue/monologue, and so on, but I wasn't going to stick around to find out.. There is dark, and then there is very dark...

Will I revisit this one? Not in it's current incarnation... I don't enjoy playing as a dark and possibly very violent character, especially in a Erotic/Adult VN/Game... This VN/Game is still early in it's development, but it is not for me, and probably not for a lot of other folks as well... Best of luck...

EDIT (05/09/2019): The developer and others are trying to play it off (in the thread) as though the protagonist talking about killing the accident victim, was some act of mercy to end her suffering... Who in their right mind, at a scene of an accident, thinks about killing someone as an act of mercy? That is not how normal human beings think... Normal people will either freeze up because they are in shock over what they just witnessed, or they panic out of shock and flee, or they try and help by calling the police and/or attempting to aid the person... Only someone with serious psychological problems immediately turns to thoughts of killing a human being, to put them out of their misery, at a car accident scene... This isn't some stray dog or horse that just got hit by a car, this is a fellow human being...

Also, the fact that the developer offered an option to shoot the witness to his verbal outburst, of possibly killing the accident victim, is a very dark choice, only made worse by the VN/Game actually allowing him to go through with it... The argument that he could have just grazed the driver or missed vital organs, does not nullify the fact that he still tried to kill the driver, if you select that choice... And yet the story continues on, even if that choice is selected, regardless if the developer made the ammo blanks or not... He just proclaimed killing someone in front of a witness, and a very dark option was added that allowed the protagonist to attempt to murder that witness in order to silence her, and only after the cops show up, he just walks away like nothing happened... No empathy for the victim, no remorse for having just attempted murder, he just walks away, takes the victims ID, and goes home like nothing happened...The developer may have had certain thoughts and feelings he/she was trying to portray in that event, but the way it actually plays out, or even offers to play out, is far darker then some players/readers are willing to deal with, or possibly put up with...

And defending the developers choices, or making up excuses to try and downplay the actual content as it currently stands, is fruitless... It does not nullify the very dark story telling devices used and choices offered... There is no defending how it looks and feels for others like myself... No matter how you try and justify it to yourself, or reason out how it isn't as bad as it looks... No matter how you try and spin it, in defense of the rest of this VN/Game... I get it, others may see it differently, but again, these are my opinions and thoughts, and others will probably see it as I do... There is no getting away from that... I take these VN/Games at face value, based on how they actually present themselves, regardless what the actual intensions might or might not have been by the developers... And in it's current state, it shows some very dark content/choices...

I haven't seen such good renders in a long time, I honestly hope this launches forward, I'd suggest OP to make some media promotion and a discord server, people will always ask about the new update which is annoying but I guess keeps the audience alive.. I've just become a patreon because I wanna see more of this for sure.