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

Unfortunately I have to follow the latest negative reviews and say that this project has become a little too clever for my tastes.

I'm fine with a slow burn story, the slow building of the characters and the lore of the world is but there is a limit to everything.

The author is a good dialogue writer and until now seemed to have kept the bar straight towards a specific story.

With this latest update tho, more characters continue to be added which causes a significant sense of dispersion and frustration.

Other than that, the main story didn't make any progress other than a few little clues scattered here and there. I Initially thought that the author already had the whole story in mind but I'm starting to think that he still doesn't have a precise idea (secret project inspired by Greek mythology? Great conspiracy of the rich and powerful?). The fact that the MC don't have a past is another clever ploy to be able to insert anything at a later time, a time that never arrives by the way.

Furthermore, another very important issue remains to be resolved: what genre will the project refer to? Full harem? Forced choices? And at that point, will there be the possibility of having more LI? And again, which kink will the project focus on?

None of these questions have been answered and this is starting to weigh on us because the project does not seem to have a precise identity despite the excellent technical and writing work.

That said, there is still time, and hopefully with the closing of the first chapter and the beginning of the new one, the project will begin to acquire a precise identity and give some answers.

If that happens, I'm ready to revise my vote.

I was a big fan of this game until chapter 5 then I suddenly realised that with the development time of this game the plot hasn’t gone anywhere since the first initial release. I was hoping chapter 5 was going to expand on the story and give us information about summer you know the character the whole game is based around and her mysterious disappearance but the majority of the updates just feel like filler content adding new pointless characters to a already bloated cast and exploring their backgrounds when we haven’t touched the backgrounds of the already existing characters.

Unlike others having no sex scenes doesn’t bother me I just want the story to progress and it unfortunately doesn’t feel like it’s going anywhere right now. How many more years will we have to wait to see some actual character/story development.

Could be good in 5-10 years but with how long the update time is there’s just no way to get behind the story right now and some dialogue has me scratching my head. Losing scenes just so you can have music in parts bothers me a little bit I mean I can just Spotify most of them anyways Oh and 0 info on summer for like 4 years now.

Really tried liking this VN, but the dialogues between characters is not very engaging. Most of the time the characters just talk shit to each other and story so far is uninteresting to me (we still dont know shit about Summer and the point of this VN).

The fact that developer keeps reworking earlier chapters and breaking saves makes you replay it and the story doesnt get any better.

I dont understand where these 5 stars review come from.

The only great thing is the renders and good looking females, so a great way to make it worth our while is to have some lewd content, but nah nothing so far and we are probably years away from it too... our MC is pretty much a eunuch.

Save your time and play something else if want spicy sexual content, a good laugh or a interesting story of substance.

To me with this chapter 5 , Summer's Gone ends in a big disapointment, probably not helped by all the hype i had read before reading.

And it had nothing with the removal of some explicit part in several scenes in order to sell it to the german part of steam, as i was more interested by how the story was progressing and how the characters were explored, especially with the adult themes of trauma and mental issues that Summer's Gone is supposed to revolve around.

Summer's Gone v4.5 had some good potential to me, there were some things i didn't liked or felt was mediocre but when i learned the dev was going to rewrite most of the chapters, i thought it could only then be better .

And after being at first interested in seeing that some new scenes that were added to improve a bit the story background, i was then really surprised on how the scenes and dialogues that were rewrote actually removed a lot of the emotion and some of the important psychological setup for the MC i saw in v4.5

Additionally some dialogues felt so strange that often i was thinking "but none talks like that" or "i guess it shows that it's a man that is writing that woman" , though this may probably more have to do with the dev not being an english speaker.
"bibi" "wormy" "tiddies" felt annoying as it made those adults often feel like if they were 10 years old talking to each other, though fortunately there are not too many of those (in fact it's much worse in the other game from that dev in which those words are used a lot more)

Now for the renders, while some are good to very good, i was annoyed at several of them using terribly choosen camera angle or being very strange (like some of the women hairs "flying" as if there were some winds despite them being indoor).
Related to camera angles : I know people have their kinks and etc.. but when you make a specific point in the story and dialogue that the MC due to his past trauma is uninterested by some women "assets" when he talks to them, fact is that several of the renders showing the characters during those talks have the camera zoomed on either the butt or the breasts while the women are talking to him.
This just break totally the illusion that the MC had some mental trauma.

Would have been much better to make this butt/boobs camera focus only happening progressively through the story to visually show that the MC was starting to overcome his issues.

Overall v5 got worse to me than v4.5 while i expected improvements unfortunately
2 stars but if the system allowed it it would be more a 2.5 stars to me

The renders are great, sure. But beyond that you'll see nothing but a badly-written Euphoria parody. The dev thinks he's writing some serious mature story, but what you're getting is some juvenile high school drama shit.

And what kind of MC do you play, you ask? Well you're an emo loser edgelord who looks like one bad haircut away from being a school shooter. You're kinda like the Western version of the incel hentai rapist but dumber. And for plot reasons every person who has a vagina finds your socially-challenged personality hot and mysterious and wants to hop on your dick.

So did they hop on your dick, you ask? Fuck no, because MC is too depressed to be horny, I'm not kidding. He can't get hard even with a pair of naked tits in front of him. All because of Summer.

Who's Summer? Nobody knows, she died or something, not even the MC remembers. I don't think the devs remember her either.

So instead of, idk, getting your shit together and bang some chicks, you larp as Light Yagami thinking you control the school or something and all you did is hang out with some crazy bitch named Bella and do some childish crimes together, great.

What else did I forget, oh yes, basketball drama again, reminds me of that other shitty harem game about basketball. What else, you also assaulted a librarian because you were harassing someone? And also a pointless but unspoken requirement in every Renpy game to have a DnD session with the girls.

Oh most importantly, this game has no sex scenes, zero. Zilch. Nada. Nothing, just competitive cockteasing like that milf game. After years of making this game, it gets nowhere.

It's official, this game has gone south.
-Story: A young man that has some kind of post-traumatic stress disorder after the disappearance of his girlfriend some years ago when they were 13 or so. He isolated himself from people since then, and now after all those years almost alone thinking in his missing girlfriend, MC is depressed, asexual, has the body of Gumby and even suffers from erectile disfunction. But he has to put his shit together and get out of his isolation because he starts in college. That's the starting point of the plot. But for some reason nothing of that actually matters. The mystery of the missing girlfriend doesn't have any impact in the story since nobody, include MC, try to solve it. Also, MC suddenly gets the body of a Greek statue and becomes handsome, dark and mysterious, so every girl and women around falls for him. Apparently, all girls in this game feel attracted by clinic depression and other mental issues, for some reason. Maybe because some of them seems to be mentally challenged too.
After that, it's just a collection of random cliché scenes without a lot of meaning. In general, the characters in this game do not speak or relate like authentic human beings. It's been years of development, and It seems that the story has just been set and we don't know where it is going or what kind of story actually is. Right now, just a pile of scenes with little connection between them, and many of them, completely absurd.

-Renders: So good that are actually bad. The dev is trying to make this game so aesthetic, so beautiful... that overdoes and makes it look like one of those meme videos of "Balenciaga" generated by an AI for YouTube. The ridiculously long eyelashes, the girls always dressed, haired and made up as top models in a fashion show even if they are just at class in college... It doesn't make the player think "this is beautiful", but "this is absurd". Of course, the dev doesn't refrain himself from giving most of them unrealistic bodies to make them look not even porn actresses, but like silicone dolls on the shelf of a sex shop. Poor Mila is the worst of them.

-Gameplay: Just a few choices, and not really meaningful so far.

And now, the dev has decided to remake everything. I thought at first that he was removing the worst over the top scenes and elements, like the female teacher hitting poor Victoria with her car and then flashing a gun to MC when he's trying to help the girl. But what has mostly done is to change some bodies -for worse- remove most of lewd scenes, and add some fancy sceneries. Now, some of the dialogues have no sense, because are related with elements that were removed, and there even aren't lewd scenes to make the player think "the game is bad, but at least is hot". No sex after 5 chapters and several years of development, by the way.

Holy shit I love this game, chapter five was incredible, man it's incredible how waiting for months is always worth it in the end.
Bella and Nami, two incredible characters that I can't stay away from; the chemistry between Bella and Nika is simply incredible


The writing of this game is incredible and the setting is also amazing

Oh boy where to start with this one....

The renders are the only good thing about this , because jesus the story makes no sense, and the little sense there is is so bad.

The plot could be summarize with Mc has a heartbreak, he's so sad and mysterious that every female character wants him, but since he's so sad he can't get his dick up.

No developpement for female character either. Don't know who they are, what's their story or maybe we will get developpement in episode 15 in 2050.

If at least we had some good sex scenes, but nope we can't get some since MC is impotent.

As for the developper, his time he split between two big games so we will never gonna get an ending.

Stay away from this, it's not worth your time.

Confusing at times, sometimes strange in the way the characters appears... But hell... This is just outstanding!
Not the typical AVN but in a lot of ways simply superior to anything out there.
Animations, renders, storytelling... Worth every (cruel) day of waiting for the next chapter ;-)
Just keep it up, Ocean!

It's been ~4 years and all we have are a FEW lewd renders. I've read his reasoning but in my opinion, the story and characters aren't making up for it.

When this game was created, the characters, story and renders were god tier and it had practically zero competition. Now, however, while the renders are still amazing, I'd say we have games with better story/characters AND 90% more content, be it sexual or non-sexual.

In the beginning, I loved this game and had so much hope for it to be one of the best ever and for the author to be up there with DrPinkCake, Mr Jet, PhillyGames, etc... unfortunately, I think it will either be abandoned or take years until we have any sexual content.

I've played a lot of games with questionable story and storytelling choices in this site, but none of them comes close to having an mc with erectile dysfunction, in a porn game. I believe that, a hot girl grinding on mc, while he is unable to get hard doesn't create the emotional impact the dev was wishing, on the contrary it always makes me laugh and break my immersion in an otherwise captivating game. I know from his other game he does a good job with sex scenes too, so I am really at lost why he is so adamant on not putting at least a super vanilla stuff.

A little masterpiece. I've completed two playthroughs and really enjoyed them. The game shows its strength with interesting and mysterious dialogues while featuring beautiful and remarkable art and music. There are some memorable dramatic scenes that really make the game a unique, outstanding and exciting experience. I'm glad I gave this game a chance.

But the changes in the story do not give confidence for the future.

Renders are pretty good but that is. Storywise this is bad even for the College power fantasy type of game. The MC is an emo but for plot reasons every girl falls for him. That wouldn't be bad if he wasn't impotent, I'm not kidding you.
Constant remakes of old content, a dev with unrealistic ambitions for 30 chapters, no sex scenes after years of development.
Stay away from this waste of time.

The renders are amazing, the girls are good some were better and here we come to the problem.

1. Constant changing of the girls (yes he said he is done with the reworks but nah in all honesty not really)
2. So many restarts since old saves would not work cause of the reworks.
3. Now in 5 beta he removed so much old content that was good...
4. My guts say his projects will get abandoned sooner or later..

apart from the graphics, a very average VN, at times it feels like the writer cant decide who the MC is, and so, he is an introvert and then a leader, he claim to be able to control his emotions yet his main concern at one point is that he cant control his emotions... ?¿ he knows how to fight and is pretty much a genious, able to read a seasoned psycologist with a simple gaze and go from wet noddle to mister olimpia in a single update.

Definitely up there with the best AVNs I've played! The game is a slow burn, but the story and characters make up for it. Bella is amazing! The renders are some of the best I've seen and the music is great. The board game was the only part that felt a bit tedious and unnecessary. Can't wait to see how this game unfolds!

Pros: Bella... .

The best looking renders in any vn i played, story is good, Bella's and mc path from hate to love is amazing so far (ep 4.5).

The build up is amazing i dont really care about sex scenes tbh.

Cons: dev is making 2 games at the same time so we might not see the end of this story sadly, (32 episodes or something planned btw) i hope im wrong tho.

BUT the game is great, so far my top 3 for sure might be even better for me than Badik in the future with the phone added and stuff...

This is my first review of a game on this site, so that might say something, have a nice day.

The renders are really good, and the plot is pretty nice but a very slow burn haha
the characters are also pretty well made.
And the choices you have have great variation of personalities

Waiting for the next update

Very great slow burn!
Sasha is the best AVN model in all industry

Only bad thing is this AVN is MC

I love the choice that affect the story It's kinda like witcher 3 things
The story are very good and so easily to got hooked in
The Render are one of the best in this kind of games

I really feel the MC though he's not the same as me but we gone through kinda same shit and I can truly understand him to be like that but sometimes I feel MC is too much if he's always wannabe sasuke like that in real he'll have no society or no friends. He doesn't need to act like a dick or the time

MC have a weird unnatural grey skintone too and a little bit ugly and his dick isn't work so no sex. I'm okay with no sex but sometime it's annoy me

And yes it's really hard to choose someone because I really feel all of the main character but I feel like if I go with one it will hurt other so I have to keep it neutral

I hope I have someone like Nami in my real life and my mental state will not be like this

Thanks for a really great story!