Ren'Py - Summertime Saga [v21.0.0 wip.5258] [Kompas Productions]

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.

Rating: 9.5/10, one of the best porn games (Like top 2-3) on Earth.

Pros:

• Good storyline
• Great gallery of characters
• Great artwork/animation
• Good amount of content
• Pretty cool mini games

Cons:

• Not much to say besides slow updates

When the game first came out I couldn't get enough of it. It was, in contrast to the 3D games, something different and I liked the style behind it. That hasn't changed yet. I still like the game very much and believe it or not, 6 years ago the game was updated every month and I was happy to support the developers financially. And now we come to the real problem: What I don't understand is how the game can continue to be supported when it is more than obvious that the development is being artificially protracted. It's been 8 months now that they've been working on a "tech update"... with an approximate budget of 70k per month. Guys honestly, keep your money and force the developers to get off their asses and deliver new content.

Maybe the ultimate reference of all games in this website. Honestly, it's extremely hard for my to find any big flaws for this game. The story in itself is pretty much well written and well paced, there's an INCREDIBLE amount of scenes (and good ones), the mini games aren't repetitive and quite useful (if you're not cheating) but I'd say that the best part of this game are the characters: their personality, their uniqueness and over all, the growing attachement that we get towards them as we move forward in the game. Can't wait to see what's coming in the next updates!

many years ago when porn games were still a bit niche, this was definitely a marquee game. the times have really passed by for this game. summertime saga showed up during the boom of the incest games, 2d art style was different when compared to the early genesis models and tk model type games at the time, and was a simple and straightforward sandbox game.

a years worth of "pre-tech" updates with little to add to the game,and a vicious cycle of redrawing art have slogged the games pace. updates are long and infrequent and they're always bottlenecked by art or coding. if you've played this game a few years ago, it might be hard to notice some of the changes.

overall the game is ok. the art is different, the story is easy enough to get through, you'll find some characters interesting, and the polish in the game is pretty nice. but, the minigames are often tedious and mundane, a lot of the characters that were introduced in the beginnings of the game still have no content, and you might have to wait a few years before a decent update hits.

[v0.20.12 Pre-tech - Part 2]
Ok, where do we start? It is very unfortunate never thought I would give this game 1 star, but it is what it is.

The Goods:
- Unique art style
- Good animation

Between good and bad:
- The character development (It seems good but kind of bland and straightforward sometimes)

The bad:
- For the amount of support this game gets the development is slow as f
- Storyline inconsistency (It seems the developer is just adding new things as we go on and sometimes it just doesn't make any sense. This in my opinion, is to keep dragging the story.)
- The grind (It is as real as it gets.) and annoying minigames
- If we remove the annoying gameplay very little amount of content considering the amount of time this game has been under development
- The MC lacks personality

This game may have deserved more credit if it was being developed 4 years ago. But currently, there are just far better games in terms of character design, storyline, art, gameplay, graphics, etc. But for the amount of support this game gets, it pales in comparison to the newer ongoing popular games.

This is pretty much the ur-example of its type, which most other porn games of this variety aspire to.

Summertime Saga, on its own merits as an example of its subgenre, is a 5 star game. But, in the greater context of its release schedule is probably a 3.5 or 4.

So, as for the game itself? It's what I call the "Suburban Harem" subgenre. The protagonist is always an unassuming everyman. Physically lean, unoffensively attractive in a boy-next-door way, with a boring haircut and boring outfit. His personality is generally kind and thoughtful, of average ability and intelligence. His horniness conveniently lands him into all sorts of sexy hijinks. So, par for the course, he's unexceptional in every way except for the size of his dick, which is an absolute unit. He lives with the classic Doting Milf archetype, and the bitchy Hot Sister archetype. There's no father figure around, and as the protagonist steps up his presence as Man of the House, the sexual tension that's already at a 99 out of 100 boils over into sexy schenanigans.

What sets this game apart is the cohesive, gorgeous art style, humorous and endearing writing, memorable characters, and plotlines that actually engage beyond contrivances for sex. It also has a strong through-plot about your late father being bumped off by the mob; this framework narrative is something many of its contemporaries and rivals lack.

The adult content is absolutely stellar, being some of the most consistent in the entire industry of porn games. There's a plentiful variety of girls for the MC to dick down, from the two aforementioned (totally not) mom n sis, to the artsy scene chick (along with her artsy tattoo artist sister and their busty goth friend), to the Mean Girl bimbo crew, to your friend's hot milf mom next door, to the religious girl next door, to stand ins for Melania and Ivanka Trump, to actual monster girls, to gmilf inspired by Pixar side characters of all things. Most of the scenarios are in the vein of "Teen T&A" movie, except taken to an X-Rated conclusion. If you're into being a big-dick everyman that literally every woman wants a piece of, you can't do much better. There's even a trans gf option, and there's gay content in the works, if that's up your alley.

The game's overall structure is a point and click sandbox. I'd describe the content as "clusters" that occasionally bounce off each other, with recurring characters moving and appearing in various viginettes, which helps make the world seem alive. Various groupings of women are gathered around a plot thread, such as the artsy girl, her sister and their goth friend being confined largely to their own path, but mingling with a couple other characters briefly. Most games of this type feel very shallow, but here the world feels vibrant in a way I haven't seen done in any other example of the Suburban Harem subgenre.

The actual gameplay itself is simple point and click adventure stuff, with occasional simple quicktime events and minigames. There's a typical time-state mechanic that's pretty common to these kind of games. All in all, it provides a skeleton to see the sexy art assets and enjoy the romantic/erotic stories, which is why everybody shows up.

HOWEVER

If you're unfamiliar with this game, be forewarned: The release schedule has become a problem. As of this writing, it's been over a year since the last major content update, with an interminable drip feed of tiny, minor updates months and months apart, and no hard date set on the next one, which is merely a technical update, not a content update. Now, for most smut indie games it'd be distasteful and rude to comment on release schedules, but Summertime Saga pulls in a bigger cash budget (via crowdfunding) than most indie devs producing more intricate and ambitious games could ever dream of, it's not wrong to expect more from this developer. They have the resources, they should be making better progress by a long shot.

Given the basic gameplay of this project, it's not what I would call a good look to take this long to release content. I'm not sure what is actually holding back this project from being finished, and simply crowdfunding a remaster or simply starting a new project on a stronger foundation.

If this was a minor thing, I'd give STS a 5/5. But it's really not prudent to ignore it. Play it, but don't pay for it.

Chapter 1 of this game is pretty good. This game has good art and have a good impregnation system.

Too bad that in the 2nd chapter the games goes into politics (the intrigue is centered around political characters in this chapter). That's not something anyone want to see in a porn game...
This game also has a lot of grinding.

Still had fun impregnating most of the girls in the game. More content with Josephine and more girls with pregnancy would be cool.

Man what an amazing game, the art style is super nice and the city feels like its alive, what i love about this game is one the MC, who is relatable and a good guy exactly the type of guy who deserves big booty bitches in his life. and secondly the dev because the amount of love he puts into the game is incredible, he also streams his progress on twitch witch is really cool.

The story is extensive and always has you entertained, and while there is a bit of grind with the stats its no where close to being a deal breaker, and even though there is a slight grind the renders make up for it ten fold, there is something in this game for everyone from vanilla sex to MILFs in cow costumes, fetish scenes and even some mermaid stuff!

This game deserves your time!

Genuinely Love this game. Had a great time with it and ended up being a member on the patreon. The sad thing is I feel like the updates take forEVER. This is no doubt one of the best porn games out there right now, and it pains me to give it 4 stars just for the updates but I just feel like I have to. Love the game, the story, the art, it's all amazing, just wish there was more content quicker (and I think I have the opinion of many when I say this).

70k dollar monthly for a year yet this game get no big update just fcking amazing man really amazing i dont even wanna talk about final part of story lol after that buildups we get nothing mc stay weak same as start with just extra nothing more.

Come on monthly 1k dollar or less patreon games gives 1 2 month updates yet this one hardly gives 6 7 month update and other updates just fixes nothing more this is amazing I waiting Judith update like a more than year but nope still they gonna add that lol man this is always happens when makers gains too much money without price they become greedy more than anything they need use that money for game not for their private lifes you know if you get near 1m dollar in year you need give like monthly updates otherwise this is just unfair to patreons or fans.

Yeah i know i really throw lot of bad words to this game but my main problem is that this is big budget game even more than Subverse and this is not 3d shooter or 3d sex game i know this game art is handrawn i know that thats can be hard and i dont know artist is problem or author here you know maybe one of them lazy and dont wanna work no idea sorry for that if i insulting you all but still still if you gain 70k monthly you need gives 10 20 times more than this content otherwise this is just sad and bad game really i love this game personally %70 really well done other %30 feels like rushed this is sad nothing more.

I still give 4 star for first half of game and really this is sad you know when things get big this happen they %80 of big games like this they hardly update or they just gona MIA sad just sad still thanks for making game likes this but believe me this is just unfair with that amount budget yes having money not means you can make perfect game but still you can buy better pc and other things welp i try wish in the future this game becomes even better.

This was the first adult game I played. Yep this game brought me to this immersive adult gaming world. After playing this game I searched for many games like summertime saga. Sadly didn't find that much. Search for many 2DCG games but it didn't picqued my interest and deleted that games. I often disliked 3DCG games. But often time flows my interest also changed. I played many story based 3DCG visual novels and absolutely loved many of that. So now if you ask me is this game the best game in the adult game industry. I'm gonna say no but there was a time I believed this was the best game ever made.

But this game deserves 5 star. Because game got nice art style and some humor. Overall stor may feel a little weird but it is still better than many games. And some story lines are very interesting and some are mysterious. If you look deep into the back ground images of the game. You will find many things are interesting. There are lot of quests in this game. And fair amount of gameplay. Waiting for the completion of this game.

truly a great game, art, characters, most everything is well done in this ren'py adventure game. some of the mini games were basic and easy but they fit well with the story and did not seem tacked on. Background Music was well selected. plot does have some incest which can understandably ruin it for people.

This is the best porn game i've ever played, seriously, so many options and if you just want to enjoy the game, activate cheat mode when starting a playthrough and you don't need to grind anything anymore, a huge variety of characters, from milfs, to gilfs, to teachers, to any flavor of teen that you can think of, and even a emo gf that can be a trap (wich is my favorite of course), i've played taffy tales before, wich is pretty much like this game but have a more polished art and don't have animations, differently of taffy tales, this game don't have timed events nor chance of misstime if you don't do something in X days or in a particular day, summertime saga don't "punish" when you play the way you want, wanna fuck every school chick before completing the first sory arc? Sure go ahead, you can fuck or get to see some naked ass for most of them in the first arc, some require the second arc, but if want, you can, wanna fuck some chick and her whole family at the same time, without ruining your relationship with any of them? Sure go ahead, time only flow in a character's route, progressing someone's route don't affect others.

One of the best h games I've played.
The art style is great, huge variety in characters, and a nice and long storyline (took about 20 hours for me to 100% while skipping some dialogue). The story is above average and some of the dialogue is genuinely funny and made me laugh. +++ The characters have more personality than most other h games and scenes feel satisfying when they're earned without feeling like you had to grind for it.

Many times, these kind of games have a time constraint that you have to try and do everything in, but this game has no such thing, which is a HUGE upside, meaning I have more time to dick around, pun intended.
I also liked how certain scenes are entirely avoidable, such as gay scenes or futa/trans/pregnant. The game also allows you to almost entirely avoid anal if you want, which many games just force you to watch even if you don't enjoy it.
My only gripe is the grindy aspects of the game, but that's my personal preference, but is easily circumvented using cheats. The wiki is also very helpful.
Overall, once of the best games out there, not to mention the game's still ongoing.

A really nice game. I mostly enjoyed the side stories as the main story is a bit cheesy. The art is really beautiful. It's also funny from time to time although the dumbness of the main character is a little frustrating.

This is one of the best game in this genre ,Period .

PROS: *The art style is beautiful and vibrant
*There are a huge number of characters all with their own sex scenes
*The sex scenes are pretty good
*Its writing is better than most porn games out there (there are many funny easter eggs all across the game)
*The dev is also one of the best (he has mon - fri streams and interacts with the audience in them)

CONS: *Sex scenes/positions start to get repetitive sometimes
*The update takes some time (mostly because the game is completely hand-drawn )

Rating only the gfx & h-scenes bc I'm not brave enough to actually play the game, judging by the premise, time in development and the sandbox tag.

So, hand drawn animations in 2d h-games is kind of a big deal for me, at least partially due to the scarcity principle. And this game has them in spades. Most of them are genuinely technically excellent, very detailed movements (within the limits of the art style... ugh, see below) but a substantial minority are half-assed. Nonetheless, judging by that criterion alone the game is superlative in the 2d genre.

The art style however just doesn't work for me. Saw a few reviews mentioning the female body types in the game aren't appealing. I disagree with that, but imo the problem is they're straightforward expressionist representations with soft crayon colouring that falls flat on the eyes unless you squint. The genuinely diverse body types and races on offer are uniformly reduced to the rudimentary lines of the dev/artist's style, and the effect is ironically the opposite of what was intended.

The overall feel is that of a neatly filled up colouring book that a primary school headmaster might call 'admirable'. It's a shame bc the artist is very likely more than competent enough to produce actually sexy lewd art, but he's fixated with this style and evidently so are thousands of others. I'm giving it 2 stars for the hand drawn animations. Just for being there, even if I can't fap to them.

I think that the game is solid for what it is, and there was a time when I was genuinely enjoying the content, but over time, as other's have mentioned, I have also grown disillusioned from multiple fronts.

Pros:
1. The art-style is unique and personally I found a number of characters to be really attractive (now I did like the old art more than before he reworked some of the characters to look more "smooth" so the art change was a downgrade)
2. The story progression and characters are decently written so I'd say that it doesn't get in the way (for the most part)
3. There's a decent amount of content in the game for now, with a large variety of characters and tastes that are catered to. I'd say that with his resources he could be doing more, but I'd say that the amount of content in this game is still pretty good and a pleasure for any new players.

Cons:
1. He could be doing more - old saves not being supported, the resources he gets vs his output, etc. The game itself is 5+ years old and over time the updates and content amount has slowed down (even though the resources he gets have increased and he should have a team working on it now).
2. Politics - as others have said he has injected his political views into this game, which is kind of a bad connection between the real world and a game where we're looking to separate from the real world.
3. The grind is real, going together with point 1, the spacing of events, the levelling of skills, doing various time consuming silly tasks, there being skill-checks and money requirements, all of that is built to get in the way of you and the stuff you're playing this game for.
4. The sex scenes are rather rudimentary, you get a few looping images, you can get x-ray and that's the scene, followed with point 3 which is farming/grinding for the next scene.

I'd give it 2.5 as a total score, but if I were to break it down:
Art: 4/5 - I liked the old art more, as mother looked slightly older and the face lines gave a nice style to all characters
Story: 3.5/5 - most of it doesn't get in the way.
Content 4/5 - Again, nice amount of content
Gameplay 1.5/5 -Frankly the minigames, the grinding, all of that stuff is tedious. It might be related to always having to start from the beginning with each update, but I've completely given up on this part of the game, only in case I am desperate for a wank and my mood matches one of the character's art styles in the game, will I go for it.
Immersion 1/5 -Usually don't use this in a review, but I think it's relevant. There are walls built between you and your goal that are redundant and contrived. The politics injected makes some of the content taste sour. The rudimentary sex scenes, while the art is good, the sex scenes don't have enough images and don't really feel inspired in any way (I think each scene only has like 1-2 poses at most, with maybe some having 3-4 if you're lucky).

I think that if you don't care for the grind, love the art, and don't mind the immersion factors I mentioned, then you will likely enjoy it a lot more, and I would still recommend it to people, just because the overall production value is really good (I mean with the amount of resources given, the dev should do at least that much) and the amount of content and tastes catered to is really nice.