Summer in Mara

Summer in Mara is an addictive, family-friendly adventure with a handful of various elements to keep players entertained from start to finish. Personally, the absolute stand out feature is the sheer quantity of both side and main quests! This is not a short Indie game by any measure, with approximately 30hrs of content and plenty of means to casually farm, craft and sail around Mara, this title definitely has a lot to offer, however it is not without its shortcomings.
Pros
+ Expansive world with many islands, characters and over 300+ quests.
+ Gorgeous cinematics (only featured at the beginning and upon completion).
+ Day/night cycle and random weather events.
+ Maintain your own island! Plant and harvest crops, decorate the island with trees and feed your farm animals.
+ Customisable character.
+ Beautiful, vibrant colours with an equally uplifting soundtrack.
+ Heart-warming story about growth, responsibility and friendship.
Cons
- The quests are all fetch-related and some are more taxing than others, especially having to farm enormous amounts of coins in order to proceed.
- Koa tires far too easily.
- Various bugs including a glitch where the time freezes at 8:30am.
- No fast travel, except to the main island and that costs coins.
- Navigation is a tad confusing, it also does not display the pirate characters on the map, I always had to try and remember their locations.
- Strange, unappealing NPC black speech bubbles.
Story
The protagonist, Koa is a young, determined and courageous girl who learned everything about life from her grandmother, Haku. Haku taught Koa how to live peacefully and sustainably, to respect the world of Mara, careful not to overuse resources and to always be grateful. With these teachings, Koa was prepared for life on her own and when the time came, she decided to explore other islands, meet other people and grow as a person.
We meet a variety of different people along the adventure with troubled histories and unfavourable preconceptions. Every character in Mara is designed to reflect a life-lesson and our young protagonist soon discovers that everyone has their strengths and weaknesses, and not everyone from the same background is alike. This becomes especially apparent around halfway through the game when a wicked, greedy corporation called Elit try to take over and destroy the world of Mara, to over-farm the earth for its natural resources, indifferent to the chaos left in their wake. Koa cherishes the land and ocean, believing that it is her destiny to halt this pollution and destruction and to restore harmony once more.
Gameplay: Farming
Summer in Mara has an undeniable focus on farming, and it is perhaps one of the more fulfilling tasks throughout the game. Right from the beginning, players must prepare the land for crops, watering them once a day to accelerate their growth. Seeds are obtained either through exploration, quests or by purchasing from the various stalls and blueprints for better tools will become available to players as they progress. Each crop will display a number of days above it until its ready for harvesting, with random rain events also hastening the process.
Once farm animals are acquired, players can not only pet them, but also feed them to gain eggs and milk, which is handy for selling or using in the many recipes that we can cook. Koa's home island is also a treasure-trove for supplies with the ability to both build and expand a mine for minerals, numerous trees to harvest fruit from, honey, wood and more. An interesting element is that all of the resources can be reused. For instance, if players chop down a tree, a seed may fall, allowing the tree to be replanted.
Gameplay: Quests
Quests are the heart of the game and majority will involve crafting, farming or travelling to a location to fetch something and bring it back. With approximately 20+ characters to interact with, there are a bucket-load of side quests to choose from, but for some to be unlocked, progress with another character’s quest must be adhered to first. All quests are easily tracked through ctrl and supposedly able to find where to navigate to on the map, however more often than not, this was not the case and I had to try and remember where to go, as the location of the quest item itself was not marked, only the quest-giver was noted.
With my 22 hours, I have completed the main story and copious side quests but am still yet to 100% it, this demonstrates just how enormous and time-constraining the quests are. Although I enjoyed majority of the gameplay, some main tasks involved a tremendous amount of grinding for 1000-3000 coins and the only way to get this was to just farm, travel and sell, repeatedly. This did make me lose my motivation a few times but luckily, there are only about 3-4 of these style tasks.
Sailing
All travel is accomplished using a boat, to traverse from one island to the next with a substantial amount of fuel. However, there is no fast travel and just involves sailing to either NESW on the navigational compass to pass through to the next area. Despite being able to dive, fish and collect some items along the way, a fast travel option would be much more beneficial.
Graphics & Sound
The beautiful art in the cutscenes at the beginning and end of the game is absolutely stunning, along with the interactions with characters. Yet, the extensive downgrade for the graphics of the main game took me by a bit of a surprise. The world is still vibrant, just not well-rounded and smooth as some of the other scenes appear. NPC's around the islands just display an odd, rather poor looking black speech bubble and all character models appear to be reused, all standing extremely still and many angles actually block the text from the speech bubble, making it impossible to read.
The soundtrack is extremely uplifting with its strong instrumental cues and created a Peter Pan, fairy-tale atmosphere, making me feel like I was truly going on an adventure.
Bugs and Glitches
Koa tires extremely easily and will often pass out when I am just trying to walk from A to B, resulting in her respawning closest to the nearest 'rest' area. Most rest areas on islands other than Koa's home island require coins and if she sleeps in the boat, the maximum energy gained is only half that. Sometimes when the protagonist would tire, the day would forever be stuck at 8:30am and the only method of rectifying this was to restart the game, which at least it does always auto-save and I never lost any progress.
Travelling to other islands and trying to park my boat was equally frustrating and many times there is an invisible wall near the shore, forcing players to dock far away from the ground and having to swim over, tiring Koa further. Furthermore, players are unable to jump/climb when in water and I frequently found myself stuck, unable to clamber up a tiny wall and having to swim all the way around in order to find a slope to walk up.
Overall
Summer in Mara is an enormous adventure title involving farming, crafting and exploring, all combined with its wholesome story. Although I do think it could benefit from perhaps being shorter or to add more depth to the quests, rather than relying on pure grind, it is undeniable that the developers have put in an extensive amount of effort to create a world with an abundance of different features that all casual players can enjoy for a considerable amount of time.
Rating: 7.5/10
This product was reviewed using a key provided by the developers.
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There are SO MANY dark and depressing games on Steam. I was happy to find Summer in Mara. Finally a game that is lighthearted. I was so excited for it to go on sale after playing the demo. The second it went on sale I bought it and downloaded the game. Played it right away and wasn't disappointed. The music is beautiful and moving, the cartoon scenes are great and the gameplay graphics are good.
Edit: I removed my complaint because the problem was solved. There are a few glitches with missions. Like the map will send you to the wrong island for a mission and some items you need to finish missions are hard to get like WALNUTS or ANGELFISH BAIT. But I love the game so much I play it daily.

This is the most "good-bad" game I've ever played. The stuff it does well is fantastic, the stuff it does poorly is absolutely awful. It feels like the untested alpha version of a great game, and it honestly should've been released in early access or pushed back a few months. But even though it's not a well-implemented game, I still think it's worth playing if you like this kind of game (farming sim adventure).
First, the good- the artwork, music, and story. The game looks amazing despite some awkward animation and the music is catchy and fits the game perfectly. The environments are well-designed and the first time you leave your home and see the main island is actually a breathtaking moment. The characters are charming, even the ones who seem annoying at first, and the story is interesting with some mystery to it.
Now, for the bad- the gameplay and lack of polish. This game is partially a farming sim where you need to grow crops for the hundreds of quests where people need cabbage or something. The crops take a few in-game days to grow, but that doesn't matter at all because you can just keep going to sleep immediately until the crops grow. Other farming games prevent this by having your crops die if you don't water them or having events that you would miss if you just keep sleeping. This game has neither, so the farming aspect has no point.
Another huge aspect of this game is crafting. Unfortunately, you can only craft on your home island, so every time someone gives you a quest you have to travel back to your island, make the item, travel back to the person, and then they give you another quest that you have to craft for. It would be nice to have some places where you can craft on other islands. Even just making it so you can craft on your boat would improve it a lot.
Finally, the game is just not polished. I've run into numerous bugs- just in the tutorial alone, I hit two bugs where you had to restart your game. I've had the game refuse to load, hud elements getting stuck on the screen forever, randomly teleporting back to my boat when I try to pick fruit, quests updating when they're not supposed to, quests not updating when they're supposed to, and more. Hopefully most of these bugs will be fixed now that the game is out.
Anyway, despite all these gameplay problems, the game manages to be super addictive and I can't stop playing it. Even though the gameplay can be tedious, I'm always like "just one more quest!" and keep playing anyway. So in the end, I do recommend it and I hope they work on it more because this game has real potential! It's just not all the way there yet.

I would say I completed this game in 23 hours including main and side missions and gained 46 of the 53 achievements. I have one side mission that I believe is bugged and I cannot complete it (I think I may have needed to complete this before the main quest line but have contacted the devs to inform and seems to be a common issue on forums). In a summary this is not purely a farm sim and it isn't purely adventure. It's a mix in between for those who want to chill out, shut off from the real world and sail around the seas pleasing as many people as you can in a bright and beautifully designed world.
I followed the progress of this game and awaited its release and after playing I would say it is different than what I expected. I wasn't disappointed but it perhaps came across more farming sim than it did quest adventure. This game is VERY heavily fetch quest based and farming only helps you fulfil these quests unlike Stardew which is more farming and you can fulfil a quest if you choose. The actual farming aspect is, what I would say compared to Stardew or even a Harvest moon, limited. To make a comparison to Stardew is unfair as this game is it's own style but I'm just trying give insight to those who are looking for a Stardew alternative, I don't think this is it; however still a lovely game.
The story line reminded me of Jax and Daxter, saving your home and island from a dark powerful force. Even the Elits structures art style looked like precursor technology in J&D. I do feel like the first "cut scene" after the tutorial left me feeling lost and it wasn't until I explored the island I realised what had to happened; the cut scene felt a little cut off emotionally. Like most games it takes a couple of in game days to get going on the main adventure.
There are some brilliant parts of this game but there are also some pain staking parts as well as a few bugs still lurking.
If you like Wind waker it definitely has the similar style with exploration, sailing around, without weapons or enemies. One major thing I love is how customisable your island is. You can walk anywhere, jump down anywhere and place objects anywhere you want. You can fully make your island its own when you unlock all the items and explore finding unique crops. That makes it quite nice and personal. A unique aspect I don't believe I've seen any other game have.
Character designs are really nice, some of the interactions are good. Although some characters are just rude and childish to the point where it is annoying. I can't even count on one hand the amount of time "adults" would tell me to go away and leave. I feel like the majority of the quests in this game, with British slang, you're getting absolutely mugged off. A lot of quests there is no reward, you can spend ages growing crops, exploring for loot and crafting an item for basically nothing. This happens A LOT. Your character is too nice and helps too many people and gains nothing 80% of the time. If you like doing a game for self satisfaction this is it. For example, the absolute worst mission is a quest in which you need to get some ink. To get this ink the banker wants you to collect his debt, to collect this debt you have to use YOUR OWN MONEY to pay off the three ladies' debt. The lady even says to you that you can make the money from buying and selling in her shop. WHAT. So you buy from her, to grow crops, sell those crops to her to then pay her debt. *Facepalm*
I've seen a couple of minor criticisms that I wanted to address, someone mentioned that when you harvest your crops you don't get a seed to replace. You don't in Stardew either, you have to buy the seeds again. Nor Harvest moon games. I think it's unfair to knock the farming mechanics for this reason. Secondly customisation, some games you can't customise at all so I think that this games small amount of backpacks and clothing is sweet and simple. I don't think customising your character should be an aspect of this game when it is story based driven.
This game has a fast travel option but it is costly and travelling around the map when you open up the full area becomes extremely time consuming. Especially with the guests that get you to travel from point A to point B which is four areas away. Then travel back to A to have to travel back B again etc.. Fast travel should either be free or cheaper as by 3/4 of the game you really start to get fed up travelling the same routes over and over.
I think I enjoyed the calm essence and wholesomeness of this game. I pretty much binged this game so although it has some negatives, I completed it. It needs some polishing but as it's this developers first major exploration release it's a great start. Their future games can only go upwards and that is quite exciting. It may seem like I've pointed out quite big negatives but these are what make the game what it is and some people have different expectations. I don't think this game can be continued after completion as theirs no reason too do anything but while you are playing just take it slow and enjoy owning a farm and designing your island.

Summer in Mara is a farming sim. The player controls Koa, who oversees her home island after her grandmother's passing and learns how to travel the sea with the help of Mara natives.
Think of Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker, without combat and dungeons.
==Pros==
+ Beautiful graphics
+ Many islands to explore
+ Loads of items to craft
+ 20+ characters to interact with and do quests for
+ Very casual, no combat or overly difficult moments
+ Tons of items to collect
+ Fast travel
+ Can continue to play after completing all of Koa's quests.
==Cons==
- The worst thing about this game is the huge amount of running back and forth on Qalis, it's a chore within itself.
- Some grindy moments (coins, recipes, etc.)
- Tutorial is pretty lackluster
- Inability to change default keybinds
- Occasional grinding (nothing too intense though)
- Spelling/grammar mistakes
- Qalis has a bunch of weird invisible walls when trying to jump over certain areas.
- I haven't seen many, personally, but there are several known bugs, errors, and glitches.

Backed it up on Kickstarter after which it got delayed a couple of times, but I didn't mind, the more time they get, the better it should be. That, however, raised my expectations, which sadly weren't met completely. The game world is large, the game is lengthy, but that's both a pro and a con. There's a lot of quests, but very little variation, exploration is fun until you see everything there is, then traveling around the same areas gets boring and repetitive.
Game world opens up to you in stages, and is all connected via quests, if you want to explore you need to progress the story, if you want to customize your island further, you need to progress the story... This wouldn't be an issue if majority of quests weren't copy pasted fetch quests.
Island customization, as well as exploration, were my favorite parts, but these are again locked behind repetitive quests, if you want to get new recipes, items and plants to use, you'll have to follow the story. The game was advertised as a farming, crafting and exploration game, but I wouldn't even mention farming with such a system. It's really shallow, with preset field locations and not that interesting system. Animal keeping is also very basic, you build their habitat on a preset location and that's it, lost potential.
I cannot make this review without comparing this to Deiland, and to be honest, Deiland is a much better game, on a smaller scale, but everything it has, is much more fitting and much less repetitive. Majority of mechanics in SiM are taken from there, and a lot of those just don't fit here, and are even downgraded.
I enjoyed my time with the game, but I don't see myself playing it again, it has some issues, render distance for example seems to be cut down, probably to have a universal version over all systems, so PC squad got the short end of the stick again. There are some bugs present as well, hopefully they sort these out. So I will recommend it if you don't mind grinding and want a more casual game to pass your time with.

If you like fetch quests, chill games, and exploration, this is a summer you'll probably enjoy. It strikes me as similar to Yonder: The Cloud Catcher Chronicles with the exploration elements of Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker. The devs seem to be responsive to player input based on the QOL updates since the game launched. If you're not into the "bring me # things" or "go talk to Y person" style of games, then this may not be one for you, but if you enjoy just helping people out, exploring the world, and just seeing what there is to see, then consider giving this one a try.