Ren'Py - Summertime Saga [v21.0.0 wip.5597] [Kompas Productions]

I consider STS to be the apex of the RenPy format, if not the apex of the entire adult vn genre. Others appear to feel the same way, as it has been consistently in the top few entries of the F95Z ratings and discussion thread length for months, if not years by now.

The illustrations are amazing and the animations are well crafted and sexy. The writing is top notch, the characters have distinct voices and motivations. The MC is pleasant to spend time with. The supporting characters are fun and complicated and leave me wanting to know more about them. The plot is perfunctory, but at least it moves along fairly snappily.

The weaknesses are minimal. It is a bit slow to start and then crowded at the end. The mini-games are pointless and grindy. Many of the plot-gates are obscure and require waiting around for triggered time/place events. Some of the flavor-text banter wears out its welcome. Some of the characters are unnecessarily stereotypical.

The biggest issue for me is the jarring change in tone from respectfully seducing your French teacher at the beginning to a bank heist and multiple murders while assaulting a mob lair at the end. But really, a vn where the major problem is a discrepancy in story tone is still pretty amazing.

The plot follows a friendly, impressively-endowed young man as he solves problems around town, seduces or is seduced by every woman he meets (2 dozen?), and investigates the mystery of his father's murder by mobsters. The scenarios cover a huge range of vanilla and mildly-handled fetishes. From bikini contests to lactation to glory holes to implied incest to consensual cucking to ... sea monsters!? And more that I won't spoil.

A lot of the plot beats are kind of weird, but some are surprisingly profound. The MC's evolving relationships with his sister and his two girlfriends at school are particularly thoughtfully rendered. Certainly Evie's story is one of the one of the most romantic and sweet stories I've seen in this format. I even felt a little bad for her and her family when the MC would "cheat" on her in other independent plot threads.

The inside jokes and current pop culture refs are fairly fun and usually not super-intrusive. And when they are intrusive, they are still pretty deftly handled. Who wouldn't want to hang out with Iwanka Rump, the surprisingly friendly and super-sexually-generous daughter of corrupt Mayor Ronald Rump?

Production quality is top notch. A very few minor misspellings. No missing scenes. Some weird plot-dialog inconsistencies that could be easily fixed with a little more QA.

This is an indie game and the dev team apparently make decent $$ from Patreon subscriptions ($74k/month!). They deserve every penny and more, in my opinion. Overall, STS is head and shoulders above any other vn out there.

(Review based on 2nd play-through)

At first kind of charming, in a way, but gets repetitive and tedious and silly (not in the good way) soon, and then drags on.... The same was true, for me, for the art: Refreshing at first, but not able to keep interest up in the long run...

Yes, another 5 star rating for one of, if not the, best adult VN currently in production. Summertime Saga has a wealth of content for you to experience currently. There are a lot of girls with completed stories and there isn't a single character arc that feels poorly written.

The art is fantastic. It has it's own unique style that makes the game's new content always feel like something you haven't seen before. The girls are all interesting with multiple erotic scenes and that makes playing the game with every new update worthwhile.

There are some mini-games that can feel a bit tedious and prevent you from getting to the good stuff too quickly, but none are difficult to complete. There has been more and more time between updates as the game has progressed but as someone who has no experience with making a game, I can't criticize it too much for that. The only other nitpick I have with the game is that I don't like branching story lines, such as Mia's or Eric's. I think in some cases these choices are fine when it doesn't lock you out of content, such as during Tony's and Maria's story, but they should overall be avoided. The creator thankfully stopped these for the most part in future updates and hopefully changes the already completed ones down the line so that all the scenes are available in one save.

If you haven't played Summertime Saga yet, it's definitely worth your time. I can't wait to see the updates yet to come.

So many characters to interact with. Stories for each character suits well too going well with the main story.Art style is excellent in sex scenes for a cartoon type of VN. Expecting more in the future. The quality of the game makes up for the long intervals between the updates imo.

this game is a 5 stars for me. I really enjoyed the game :
pro :
- lot of mini stories to unlock with several girls.
- sense of humor. One of the most hilarious game I have ever played. Ireally liked the way the author choose furniture in the rest room in the garage...
- there is a main story, and it is really interesting to try to undestand the final word.
Con :
- graphics may not enjoy evrybody, but it stick to the global parody feeling. I think that some girls could be redrawn to be sexier (especially for the face).
- all the stoies you can have with the girls have an end, and if it's could for some reasons, when you reach step 2 of the main story, all these secondary stories got nothing new. it can be frustrating, and I belive that author could add some new scenes easily.

All the fricking "Minigames" are fricking horrible, especially the "Qicktime Event" where u have to press a ton of arrows in a short time & any mistake gets u killed. The scenes are okay, BUT all the minigames are just a big NO. If u wanted to make a game filled with Skill based minigames then make it & don't force them upon ur playerbase.

Definitely a 5 star for, plenty of story and contents. Nice minigame which is not overly tedious and not too grindy. Just the right amount of time consumption.

Hope to see more in future updates. Would like more scene with Roxxy and Tammy.

(v0.20.8)

Minigames in this game... It's pointless, meaningless, unnecessary, boring and waste of time.

There are too many minigames in this game and it's really annoying. Especially for mobile. Sometimes it becomes impossible to finish the mini game on time. And the mini game I came across in the last update really made me tired of the game. Since I couldn't do it on mobile, I installed the game on PC and still couldn't pass the same place. AND IT'S REALLY ANNOYING. IT'S JUST A PORN GAME AND WE CAN'T PROGRESS THE MAIN STORY OF THE GAME BECAUSE OF THIS FUCKING SHITTY MINIGAMES.

Why ? That's the question, why ? Is it more fun ? Does it feel better like this ?
Unfortunately... NO.

This game was better before. I don't know what changed (clearly more minigames) but now, game's direction is far to be good. Game is becoming boring game and i don want that. This game was one of my first games, but it becomes 2 star worthy im afraid.

boring game, bad game.
It is an overrated game, it takes a long time to do everything and the theme is usually boring and obvious.
I really don't understand how a game of so many stars gets to be.
although if I like how it's drawn, I don't think it's worth the stars that people put on it.

I used to rate this game highly. It was the first adult game that I played years ago, and at the time I loved Jenny and Eve and all the stories in the game. The sandbox elements were nice, the writing was good, and it was really high quality in my eyes. I couldn't wait to see where it would go.
However, it has easy to see flaws that go beyond its snails pace progress and its toxic, abusive community. Instead of spending valuable time doing things correctly, they decide instead to remake artwork, dialogue and entire character routes over and over again, which is likely why the current game is currently bland and has around 1 hour of new content per 6 months.
There are other issues too, storylines that nobody cares about, and pointless minigames for the sake of having more annoying minigames, and I mentioned it before but the community is more like an angry mob than anything else.
There are developers that I know that deserve more than what they get, and yet the over 'support' on this game has completely killed the spark that it used to have. And it's really sad to see, because this was a fun game.

In spite of having a team, the updates are very long and lack content. But the art and animations are decent and the story line.. exists. Anyway without a good development pace, the game is but a shadow of it's past. 3 stars is the most it deserves right now.

This game is simply on the top. Starting with quality of renders which is absolutely awesome. DarkCookie made them all by hand which makes them really unique. Also this type of sorta comics-ish feeling is very nice. Animations are amazing as well. Well, I didn't want to rate the story when it was unfinished but now I can and simply top, interesting plot and really good writing, those Easter Eggs are simply hilarious. I've been playing this game since v17.5 so that's wrapping up how long. But even if we have to wait for updates, it doesn't matter, every single one is worth it. Well, I surely recommend this game and also DC's streams... it's really fun there with good mood and atmosphere. 10/10. [v0.20.8] .

solid game, the routes are interesting for the most part, the references are funny, the lifestyle aspect is great. do wish that there was an additional time zone and that the mini games were a bit more refined. Like the variety in characters a lot. 8/10

Nice story and artstyle. It has a nice plot and really sexy in times. Also the story choices are there but not enough i will say. It has the pontential of being on of the not the best on its' kind. But it need more content. I have played the v0.20.7 and i have got over a day of play through.
This games and its story really intrigues you.

This game has a lot of pros and cons. Maybe not quite 4/5, but definitely more than a 3/5. It is also clearly a work in progress and it isn't a polished game. Some interactions are a bit strange or need to be done in a certain order.

Pros:

• Humor (one of the better aspects of the game. The humor is best in the earlier stages of the game.)
• Range of appeal: wide variety of situations and characters.
• .

Neutral:

• Storytelling: it is decent, but not great

Cons:

• Lack of meaningful choices: there are choices, but there are limited consequences or lasting impact.
• Simple animations: they often don't add to the experience and additional still images in the form of a cut-scene slideshow would be more effective.
• Discontinuities: some events can be repeated with no additional benefit and they often retain their original dialog even when it is no longer applicable. e.g. Studying with Mia.
• Fickle character interactions: sometimes talking to a character in a different location doesn't allow the player to complete the current quest. The player needs to hunt through all of the places that character visuals to find out which one will allow the quest to complete.
• Lack of meaningful character progression. There are stats to level up, but the way they are increased is uninteresting, except for the rap battles -- although that is only interesting due to the dialog, not the player's actions in the minigame. Also, once everything is maxed out, the player will still say they haven't been working out of practicing. At the start of the game, it made promises to the player: get ripped and you'll be able to get with this athletic girl. Learn to fight and you can beat this bully. Learn to rap and you'll earn their respect and they'll leave you and Evie alone. In the current version, none of those things happen. It feels like the workout option should work, but maybe I didn't do the story in the right order and broke it.
• Fap to story ratio: 1 fap to 10-30 story. I'd hope a heavy story game would have a well written story, but this one is just so-so. The game is still interesting, but it feels unrewarding in gameplay, story, and fap. I guess the 4/5 is because it has a bunch of content and I have hope for future releases.

Best adult game ever!
I love when you have mini games and you need to figure out where to go or what to do. animation is great! the story is good and you even have different outcomes so it's very repayable, a must play!

I Think it is too Overated even though it is popular and it was mention a lot yes it has good art and sex script also what I like the renpy engine is that they have done a work that other didnt do was open world map in this game, but sadly the update is too slow then it will be perfect game.

SummerTime Saga was my first game of this genre. I immediately loved it. Several good points: the graphics are good. the story is gripping. lots of characters to interact with. There is humor too. Now I am looking for a lot of games of the same genre.

Bueno el juego implementa muchos personajes y todos se pueden desarrollar unos mas que otros pero es bueno el juego pero en muchas ocasiones tanto texto aburre y mas si el ingles no es tu lengua materna ya que cansa un poco leer tanto ingles.

The whole Summertime Saga could be splitted in 2 main parts.
The 1st one, the good one that approximately was released almost 2 years ago and the 2nd-actual one, which is only a bland attempt of struggling in keeping the game alive, or mostly people hooked with the promise of releasing new content within a X date. There're lots of fanboys on this forum, most of them don't even accept a negative review or attack others, nothing wrong with that within certain limits and if you really like something, but the excuses I read over months-years are getting r-i-d-i-c-u-l-o-u-s. Patreon is indeed made for supporting an artist, but when the same guy takes advantage of it(as it's basically now his job), then you can't justify further. It'd be interesting to see the same situation with Kickstarter and eventually deadlines to respect.

Apart that why 3 stars? (scroll down for the newest rating)
For the reasons explained and as I enjoyed a lot having fun with Jenny, the sexy auntie and the puzzles-interactions with old characters in-game. They were funny, not soulless and mostly you had somewhat a story to follow, excluding the lame-coding, which after years it's at the level of a beginner or amateur(same with the Rick and Morty's game if you know that).
The negative part comes instead from the lack of interesting updates, an atrocious new plot and so many fillers regards stereotypes and politics that I was almost tempted to skip the whole dialogues for a while.
Remarkable it's instead the short Halloween release, mostly as I like the goth girl, but it can't fix 2 years of delays and low quality.

For the rest SS is a game that I'd in any case suggest to fans of genre and similar games,but that over years lost what made it interesting. Moreover I'm pretty sure the game won't be finished in other 3-4 years and still people will justify the dev, no matter what and in a neverending circle.

EDIT(update 0.20.8): I think the game will follow 2 directions now, that is random updates, or releases based on patreons' tastes, even more than before and introducing new(useless) characters. In any case the main story was pretty much rushed, after all these YEARS I was expecting a little more, even the Aqua's quest chain was more interesting than this. 5 months(7 if you exclude the small halloween update) for such a dull and common story is a joke.
The new scenes? Boring, not detailed, again a side view and you can't see a damn thing. The only one I'd save is the 2nd scene with Nadya on the sofa and that's it. If you don't understand my point try to compare them to 2-3 years old scenes(Roxxy,Eve,even Debbie's oldest ones). That's why I'll decrease my rating. At this point I don't even see a reason for being a patreon or just to follow this game further. The fanboys will keep defending him, they'll never admit the game has gone downhill, people with a bit of common sense will understand that he's pranking his own patreons.