Review for 0.20.13, 2nd april 2022
I have a special attachment to Summertime Saga. It was the very first lewd game i played almost 5 years ago in 2017 and introduced me into the genre of lewd games. The concept at the time blew my mind; an open-world lewd game with plenty of characters, all of them having their own unique stories and progression, with a beautiful 2D art in an era where everyone and their mothers were using basic Daz characters.
The game has an amazing potential to be without doubt among the best and most influential lewd game of it's time.
Yet here i am, giving it merely a 3 star rating. And the reasons are pretty simple; what makes the game good and original on it's own, is also the very same things holding it back.
Here's why (You can scroll all the way to the bottom for a resume TL;DR):
Story wise, the game could be considered by many as a complete game. There is a main story, a huge number of different characters with all kinds of sex scenes and some fetishes (Such as incest, pregnancy, harem). A significant portion of them have complete stories of their own, essentially like small chapters that you can achieve on your own time. And some of these characters are memorable and easily my favorites from any lewd games (Eva and Roxxy, damn).
However, this caused a huge drawback; with so many characters and so many locations, and so many conditions making up for the story, it became a very convoluted task to make all of these different puzzles pieces fit together. The end result is a story that lack consistency, is filled with plot holes and lack evolution to the characters. Your MC for example is an annoyingly shy, awkward, good-hearted but dumb and spineless guy at the beginning. After beating the main story (which would set anyone to basically grow up and change from these events), your MC is still a annoyingly shy, awkward, good-hearted but dumb and spineless guy. There is no evolution to his character anywhere else but specifically in the main story line and it's related events.
Same goes for some of the side characters, such as the sister, Jenny. She is a typical angry and sadistic older sister that bullies her younger brother for almost no reasons, but when you complete her story and even the main quest as well, she still hate your guts like no other.
And it doesn't have to be this way. Roxxy for example start as your typical super sexy hot popular girl in the school that bitch and bully people around, but ends up as a surprisingly sweet, thoughtful and caring girl that battle with an ignorant, drunk and uncaring mother and is the main source of her problems. Still is one of the best character story they did.
The final nail in the coffin for the story; this adds up a HUGE amount of time in order to create, develop and fit those stories into the game. More on that later.
Graphically, the game looks fantastic. The 2D CG art made by DarkCookie is charming, colorful and detailed. All the characters have unique traits and looks that make them easy to distinguish, and most of them have various sexy features that can fit all tastes (Small tits, big tits, blonde, redhead, MILF, girl next door, emo, etc...)
It's basically a real visual pearl.
And also by far the largest issue with the game.
You see, with 2D art, the amount of time it takes to create a single pose of one character can take multiples hours. You have to make a first draft, pose the character and the emotions, then do a first rough pass, then a second one, modifying and improving the art. Then you need to make the colors, make the touch up, etc...
I won't get too much in details about things like layers structures, technical exports methods and animation because we'll still be there tomorrow.
Basically; it takes a long ass time to draw 2D art. And you have to constantly work the character again and again, making sure you are consistent with your drawing style and quality. Whereas 3D art require some initial time investment to create, but then you can create things such as poses and animations MUCH more quickly.
This creates yet another huge bottleneck for content creation, even more complicated than dealing with an open world story setting. Again, more on that later.
Sexual content wise, the game has plenty of it, with almost all the characters in the game having at least a few scenes. You have pretty much of everything, footjob, blowjob, titjob, vaginal and anal sex, foreplay, toys, etc...
It's relatively vanilla in that aspect but it's really not something i mind.
So here's comes the issues again: since the art is all 2D art, you can generally expect only a single point of view most of the time for the lewd scenes. There is quite a few who also have different views, but they are the exception rather than the norm.
This cause a segmentation of the content; since there is so many characters, the lewds scenes can vary a LOT in quality and quantity, and are sprinkled all over the place. Some characters who had their contents relatively recently will look good, decently animated and will have plenty of variety. Others literally never had any new scenes for years and are still using the very basic old style of sex scene.
So you can a big ol' mixed bags of old and new content. And if your favorite character is an older one that hasn't been updated since the beginning (like Judith), you'll be let down by how very few scenes they have. So you'll have to skip ahead and hope that it eventually gets an update. Which won't come for even more years, most likely.
THE MASSIVE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM
All of these problems adds up to culminate into the lack of scheduled content. On average, it takes very well over 4 to 5 months to get a new update, which usually adds about an hour to two of new content. And at the time of writing this, the last major content update (Main Story part III) came out in March 2021 (and didn't had much sexual content or significant end game content). So that's a full year without any major update, since the devs have been working on a really dividing "tech update" that is supposed to overhaul the technical aspect of the game. And from the progress reports, we still have a decent way to go.
The next scheduled Rhonda update will then take at least 4 months on its own, and the Annie one will be the same, etc... All of that while still racking up an immense monthly budget of 90K (CAD) a month! That's more yearly budget than many indie game development studios with 20-25 people will ever get. And those guys can pump out A and AA quality updates on a regular basis.
I fear that the devs of Summertime Saga have now set themselves in a place of complacency, where it doesn't matter how much more money is put into the project, it will never get any faster. Because they do not have a good incentive to do so. If they complete the game faster, then their main revenue stream will dry up because there won't be a need to support the game anymore, since it's development is now complete.
TL;DR: the game is a marvel for any new player. It will be a deception for veteran players that want new content for this game.
Due to the very structure of the game, content updates in the future WILL be slow and WILL be relatively minor in the grand scheme of the game. So you cannot expect a particular character that you liked to have an update anytime soon (unless it's already scheduled, in this case, Rhonda, Annie and Judith).
The game is overall very fun and exciting, but new players cannot expect new content to come around fast. You will have to play the game as it is, as a complete experience. Once you're done with the game... Well that's it. Hope you enjoyed it.
