Summer Nightmare

Depending on what type of gamer you are, your expectations when it comes to a visual novel can be higher or lower. The minimum would consist of a fairly interesting story, consistent grammar and a nice cast of characters, but sometimes you can even ignore one of these elements if another one shines brighter. However, more critical gamers won’t be happy with a visual novel that doesn’t deliver in terms of story.

Summer Nightmare is an interactive visual novel with horror and survival elements in which you play the role of a young student by the name of Riel. Things are pretty confusing and hastily explained from the start, however, so the plot as a whole is quite messy. You are free to change the story along the way and reach different conclusions, but then again different permutations of bad elements don’t add up to a good experience.

You find out in the first few minutes that every one of Riel’s classmates has been murdered in the past few weeks, but for some reason he is still required to attend school. Not only that, but everyone in the said school is pointing at Riel as the murderer. Things get a bit foggy after that, but not ten minutes into the game you wake up in some kind of nightmare and you are chased by a strange creature around the school.

Albeit not always intentional, there’s always a bit of mystery at play throughout the story. This is usually a good thing, but in Summer Nightmare’s case it is more confusing than anything else. A creepy supernatural monster makes an appearance at some point, you are never really sure of whether the main character is dreaming or not, and you are supposed to become attached to very one-dimensional side characters along the way.

The only thing that impresses about the game is the artwork quality, especially when it comes to the backgrounds and their sheer number and diversity. Every scene features a new angle of the environment, and the color palette is pretty consistent throughout the game. As for the characters, they are not bad, but they do seem a little out of place sometimes.

When it’s all said and done, Summer Nightmare is not a horrible game, but it has serious issues in terms of continuity, logic and character development. Thus, it’s very difficult to stay immersed for longer than a few minutes before something ruins the whole atmosphere.