Summer In Mara Review

Summer In Mara was an emotional rollercoaster. It’s a title with a very strong identity marred by repetition, poorly executed padding and bugs that make it difficult to progress. It lures you in with its charming visual style reminiscent of The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, and an introduction animation that would turn the heads of any Studio Ghibli fan before it forces you through an endless array of agonising fetch quests. Summer In Mara should by all means be an instant gem, but developer Chibig manages to waste this beautiful world filled with incredible characters by ensuring that you can’t have any fun in it. It’s such an emotional rollercoaster of a title that even after seeing it to the end, I’m still annoyed and disappointed that it didn’t live up to the potential it showed.

This potential is constantly displayed through the game’s art direction, fantastic writing and underlying themes of environmentalism and anti-capitalism. The game takes place in a living world and focuses on an evil organisation hellbent on destroying the planet. Told entirely through dialogue, Chibig manages to inject an impressive amount of character into the world. Each character is unique and appealing in both design and personality and they all control the direction of the story in their interactions with the protagonist, Koa. There isn’t a single weak link in the memorable cast and each of them shows Koa that the world is more than her naive viewpoint. Every quest Koa undertakes is a show of development for her character that feels real and allows her to grow as a human being. I’m constantly impressed with this game’s ability to develop both its world and characters solely through dialogue and other developers need to take note; this is how you write characters.

The game manages to interweave its narrative themes into the gameplay in creative ways too. Summer In Mara is a farming sim with light RPG elements that emphasises that hard work and respect for resources is rewarded. Taking care of your island farm by replanting trees and ensuring that crops are growing is the easiest way to progress. If you don’t plan to undertake the game’s many fetch quests by doing the hard work, the local shops will have all you need but for an extortionate price. You’re constantly against the odds with those in positions of wealth, whether it’s from shady shopkeepers taking advantage or the main villains of the campaign determined to destroy the world for its natural resources. The game never lets up on the subtle examples of money corrupting, that people who rely on their wealth aren’t good people and it’s those who deign to help you with no personal profit who are worth keeping close.

While Summer In Mara manages to expertly show and not tell its major themes, it doesn’t manage to actually be engaging when it comes to playing. As previously stated, much of the game’s tasks are fetch quests. In order to complete many of these you will need to craft an item or three from scratch but it never ends. It starts off okay, with characters asking for lettuce and giving you the supplies to grow your own, but it steadily increases until you’re just buried in hundreds of the exact same quest. It’s enough to rip your hair out. One point towards the middle of the game got me very close to that in fact. The following lays out a series of events in the main plot;

Saiki: “Go see Dunna, they’ll help you out.”
Me: *sails across the entire map to find Dunna*
Dunna: “Go away, I don’t want to talk.”
Game: Maybe she’ll talk to you if you have a certain item.
Me: *Gets item*
Dunna: “Oh, you have the item, I still don’t want to talk to you though.”
Taina: “Well, she does live on her own, maybe bring her a salad.”
Me: *gets salad*
Dunna: “Oh, you gave me a salad, that’s nice. I’d like to help you but your hammer isn’t good enough.”
Me: *gets better hammer*
Dunna: “Oh, you’ve got a better hammer? Get a better one still.”
Me: *gets an even better hammer.*
Dunna: “Ok, your hammer is good enough now but I don’t want to talk to you until you have a stable, I’ll even give you a sheep for it.”
Me: *talks to a character, Awan, who can tell me how to make a stable.*
Awan: “I’d love to tell you how to make a stable but I can’t do that until you do something for me.”
Me: *does that thing then makes a stable.*
Dunna: “Oh, you made a stable, that’s nice. Now go away because I don’t want to help you after all.”
Me: *explodes with rage*

It was at this point in the game where I decided it wasn’t worth it anymore and all I was doing was stressing myself out.

During the above series of events was where I encountered my first bug. You see the first item I needed to give the character was one of three unique flowers that grow on your island, however I had already sold these flowers without thinking. After getting in touch with the developers I was told that they are meant to grow back every six in game days, and the bug that stops them growing back was known and was to be fixed in the release day patch. The second bug I discovered was slightly more irritating. I had made it to the climax of the main story and as I pressed the button to trigger the end cutscene, my Switch crashed and closed the game. When I rebooted the game, it had autosaved and skipped to the post game, so it was impossible for me to see the ending. I got in touch with the developers again to let them know and they very kindly provided me a video of the beautiful and moving ending scene. I didn’t get told whether or not this was another bug they had already found and patched in the final update but they are aware, so I would assume it’s either currently fixed or they’re working on it.

Summer In Mara has been a bizarre experience. It’s a game with a lot of promise, a beautiful art style, enchanting world and characters and a masterful use of environmental storytelling, it’s just also frustratingly boring. Whether it’s endless fetch quests or hours upon hours of sailing across the same few minutes of sea between your island farm and the shopping town, it’s not very fun. If Chibig had focused just a little more on making the sailing more engaging, creating surrounding islands actually worth exploring or even simply diversifying the goals set, it could have been amazing.

Summer In Mara has the potential to meet the magic of Spirited Away with the environmental message of Pom Poko, a perfect fusion of Wind Waker and Harvest Moon. What we got instead is a fantastic visual novel that forces you to do hours of chores in between each story segment. I’d watch a Summer In Mara movie though.