Bringing out his latest passion project, the one-man-team developer FYRE Games has released Summerland on Steam as a completely free-to-play game. While the game may be free for the players, there is some obvious hard work that went into the game’s creation. Bringing in real talents for voice acting, this developer has provided a game worth checking out; especially since it is free.
Story
Take on the role of Matthew, a detective finding himself in a strange form of the afterlife where his actions are evaluated by an unknown and unseen judge. In order to properly evaluate his life, Matthew is forced to relive a few important moments of his life. These moments bring light to the values of Matthew’s character and the darkness of his actions causing the gray area of moral questioning. Figure out what Matthew has done and help the judge decide whether or not he is a good person.
Gameplay
There really isn’t much to the actual gameplay as the game is kept to be very simplistic. You can move around, run, and interact with a variety of things in the environment. As a detective, each scene you enter will have a series of clues or actions for you to find and put together. To do this, you really just have to find all the pieces to the scene and the narrative will put the story together through dialogue spoken either monologue or discussion style.
Even when you get lost, the voice lines do a great job to queue you into what it is you are supposed to focus on or do next. It can be a little annoying sometimes that you have to do them in specific orders, but at least when you interact with something that won’t help or too early it lets you know.
In between the scenes, or trials as they are called in the game, you will occasionally be brought into a question room. Here the unknown person will give you a scenario or description and then ask you to answer a question. These questions will have you answer according to your morals and adds to the overall experience this story-based game provides.
Visuals
The graphics provided in this game are pretty standard for what you would expect. I did like the choice to make all character models out of the different light colors instead of actual models. It lets you focus on the narrative and trial more objectively by taking away the distraction of an actual character model.
Sounds
There isn’t a lot of music, but when there is it is very fitting to the situation and brings out the moment in that part of the story. The voice acting very well done and the sound effects were accurate without being a distraction of their own as well.
Replayability
You can always go back and see what the other moral choices would do in affecting the ending, but the one I got was left to be an open ending where I decide what happens to Matthew. I would imagine that that is just how the ending is regardless.
What Could Be Better
Games like these are always better with actual puzzles. You gave us the role of a detective, but we didn’t have to solve any puzzles in the entire game. While this may have been a specific choice to omit in order to provide the experience they wanted, I don’t think a light puzzle in a trial or two would have hurt. Or even just let us put a couple of clues together rather than just handing us the answer because we clicked on the right interactable object.
Conclusion
Summerland is the epitome of simplistic gameplay meets intriguing storytelling. I enjoyed my playthrough of the game, even with it being a short experience, and think that just about anybody could enjoy this walkthrough-style game. The storytelling is solid, the voice acting is well done, the sounds used were fitting, the music was expressive, and the gameplay is easy to navigate. My only gripe is that it didn’t really offer anything for an actual gamer and focused heavily on the experience, but that could also be this game’s benefactor depending on the player.
