Summertime Madness Review: An Exhaustive Summer Day

Summertime Madness is a first-person puzzle game where you're transported into works of art and forced to escape before time runs out. With a melodic score and stylish visuals, I jumped into this quirky adventure with hopeful aspirations. Unfortunately, the overly drawn-out puzzles and haphazard story-telling left me more exhausted than excited.

War Never Changes

The story begins in the city of Prague during the summer of 1945. War is ravaging around all corners and an artist is still creating beautiful landscapes and works of art, desperately trying to hold on to those memories and views. A stranger magically offers him the ability to enter one of his paintings, but with the caveat that you must exit before midnight or you'll be trapped in there forever.

This premise sounded absolutely stellar, with lots of potential and exciting opportunities. Unfortunately, the story never really goes beyond that. Instead, it felt like an excuse to create a variety of landscapes and little beyond that. Sure, there are some touchstones that seem to allude to the artist's life, but some are so outlandish and obtuse that any symbolism or personifications felt off. The ending of the game does come around to the very beginning of the premise, but is lost in its own abstractness.

A Fresh Canvas

Happily, the presentation gave way to some stunning centerpieces. Each area is unique and distinct, offering a lot of fun and creativity to color schemes, architectural designs, and visual trickery. The team at DP Games really flexed their muscles to create stretches of areas that were fun to look around and see how they broke typical physics-like expectations while also drawing inspirations from various classical artworks. The score also accentuated each area and provided wonderful atmospheric energy throughout the four hour game.

Hidden Pieces

Summertime Madness transports players into various environments in order to solve various puzzles. Though the main aspect is puzzle solving, I found myself mostly just walking around trying to find what and where the puzzle elements are. Though there were some great set pieces that were highlighted in the movement, more often than not, I was just walking around hoping to find something to interact with. There are even some smaller areas within the game that are so poorly colored that it's impossible to see up from down, identify what direction you're walking, or even if you're hitting a wall. Luckily there's an auto-run option, hastening the pace to get to the next section, and some hints available but even those weren’t enough to produce a sense of excitement to get to the next puzzle.

 Additionally, there is an important choice very early on in the game. You're given a pocket watch with the option to have three hours, six hours, or infinite time to complete the game. However, what the game doesn't explicitly say is that the time referenced is the in-game clock not your actual time. So, in reality, time progresses according to story beats and number of hints used. Something so vital to the game should have been directly provided with information instead of confusingly portrayed.

Breakdown

Game: Summertime Madness

Developer: DP Games

Availability: PS4, PS5, Xbox, Switch, PC, Mac

Reviewed on PlayStation 5

Pros:

+ Visually beautiful 

+ Melodic score

+ Plenty of nods to classical works of art

Cons:

- Overly drawn out puzzles

- Somewhat meaningless story to only layout the puzzles

- Strange design choices with purposefully confusing sections

Final Thoughts

Summertime Madness is an earnest attempt at making an emotionally appealing puzzle game, but ultimately misses the mark. The beautiful art style and set pieces, paired with a melodic score couldn't elevate the overly bloated puzzles and sterile storytelling. I do, however, look forward to seeing what the team at DP Games can accomplish from their lessons with this came and what they can work on in the future.

Reviewed by Harry Loizides