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Summer Catchers
It is time to embark on an epic road trip adventure of a lifetime in Summer Catchers, a unique arcade game that mixes racing, story, rhythm and puzzle elements all into one.
Take control of Chu, a young girl who lives in the frozen north and has never seen summer, the ocean or anything but the snowy forest.
With her trusty wooden car you must travel to distant lands full of mystery and strange creatures who ready to both help, and stop you from completing your quest of finally seeing summer.
The journey won't be easy though. On your way through shadowy forests, dark swamps, vast valleys and underground cities you will encounter obstacles and larger than life situations you will need your trusty travel bag to help overcome.
By equipping the right tools at the right time, you can work your way through these uncharted lands and just like in real life, find a few friends and secrets along the way.
Steam User 2
Note: I completed the entire campaign ~8 hours, anything further was additional achievement hunting.
Summer Catchers is a cute arcade racing game that follows a young girl's journey to visit the ocean and see summer. While there are quirks that detract from the overall quality of the game, the mechanics are sufficiently solid with no bugs such that the casual experience is enjoyable. Moreover while the game does not innovate or expand on its already established core mechanic, it is carried by a cute art style and complimentary music that carries the game into a basic but enjoyable experience.
Pros:
* The art style is cute and charming, fully embracing the benefits of a pixel art style.
* The music while not necessarily memorable, is soothing and compliments the overall tone of the game and improves the experience.
* The core driving mechanic is solid and simply works without unnecessary clutter and complication that often muddy similar games.
* A solid story that while basic, serves the nature of the game well. Small details such as messages to NPC's met in past stages solidify the connected nature of the narrative.
Cons:
* A terrible writing font. Given the quality of the pixel art and the title page font, one would be led to believe the quality would carry into the font as well. However, it almost seems as if they developers slapped Times New Roman into a text box and layered it on top of the game for any text they needed. While this may be a symptom of localization and a need for versatility, it is jarring and detracts from the flavor Summer Catchers crafts.
* Questionable RNG hampers the game. You get RNG for incoming hazards, RNG for what tools you can use, etc. It's not the worst RNG, but it does make the game less casual and more frustrating.
* Cannot replay levels/areas. Once you leave/miss them, you'll have to start a new save to get back to them. While this not too difficult, it does mean you can miss content.
* There is no real progression, you cannot get new items that make you fundamentally better such as stat upgrades. You can only get better by getting faster at selecting which tool to use. Which is interesting beacuse there are a significant number of cosmetic upgrades to purchase, so it would have been easy to tie that aspect to strength, but alas.
Is Summer Catchers a bad game? No, it is not. Is it a superb game? Again, no. If there was a "meh" rating on Steam, it would fall squarely into it. However, beacuse of the cute theme and design, coupled with solid if unoriginal core mechanics, Summer Catchers is still a good game to play casually. If you are interested, I would recommend you wait until this game goes on sale to purchase.
6.5/10 -> A cute and solid racing game to play casually.
Steam User 1
I've completed the game with a few achievements left behind (screw the co-op ones). That's because once you miss the chance, you can never go back and do them. I guess Devs made it such way so that people can "replay" the game. That would be fine under normal circumstances, but this is kind of a game that I NEVER want to replay.
You need "currency" to buy consumable items to overcome obstacles on your journey, but no matter how familiar you are with the game, you still have to go through all that RNG (mostly obstacles during the race) you've encountered throughout in the 1st run. In other words, even if you start the game all over again because you want to "complete" the game, you can't just breeze though the levels and fill out the missing part. You need to do the EXACT same thing you did in the 1st run;
Collect currency, buy items, race, crash, buy some more, race, crash, complete quest, buy some more, race, fail side quest (which you can never re-do unless you start the game all over again), crash, and buy some more. For the 1st run? That's manageable. Doing the exact same thing on the 2nd run and so on? With no short-cuts and boosts? No thanks. Big time.
Now for the good part. Pixel arts are obviously very good and sparkling, the story is somewhat cute and fits in the game's atmosphere (the ending, though...). Music played the biggest role for me to finish the game. There are some variety of game play elements as well, but those are just side quests so don't expect much (and don't F'em up if you want achievements).
Over all, I enjoyed the game as is despite all the flaws. However, this game does not convince me to play again because of the frustrating aspect this game offers. The most problem I have is about doing the exact same thing on the repeated runs though, so If you don't care much about the repeated game play, then you'd be just fine.