Tag: Video games

writ­ten 07/04/2022

Sum­mer in Mara is an Adventure/Simulation game released by CHIBIG on June 16, 2020, for Nin­ten­do Switch, PS4, and Steam. You play as Koa who was res­cued from a ship­wreck by an elder­ly Qui­do named Haku and raised on her island in the sea of Mara.

Rat­ing: 3.9 out of 5

Price: Paid $9.49 out of MSRP $24.99

Rec­om­mend­ed: Yes

One Word Descrip­tion: Relax­ing

• Pros: Decent graph­ics, good music, relaxed game­play, farm­ing, craft­ing, fish­ing, cook­ing, build­ing, sail­ing not annoy­ing, sto­ry­line, many side quests, east­er eggs, quick jumps avail­able
• Cons: Back forth fetch quests, no vehi­cle to make main town island eas­i­er to nav­i­gate, hunger and pow­er meter, anti­cli­mac­tic end­ing, bug­gy game­play, some quests unclear, unsat­is­fac­to­ry end­ing

Game Review — The game starts off with young Koa run­ning around the island and Yaya Haku being the stern but lov­ing grand­ma. The tuto­r­i­al turns out to be a flash­back and all of the sud­den, Koa is old­er, the island is in dis­re­pair, and the only reminder that Haku exist­ed is a lit­tle shrine dec­o­rat­ed with shells near the mys­te­ri­ous stone gate. She’s been bare­ly sur­viv­ing on her own and con­tin­ues to sub­sist off oranges, black­ber­ries, and fish until one day a strange crea­ture she names Napopo hap­pens by. With sud­den inspi­ra­tion, Koa fix­es the island, makes new tools, and even­tu­al­ly repairs the boat to explore Mara!

First stop is Qalis, the main city of Mara, which is the main island in the game. There Koa meets with many new char­ac­ters and thus starts the game. Sum­mer in Mara is a quest-cen­tric game. Fin­ish­ing tasks for the inhab­i­tants of the sea unlocks new quests, items, tools, char­ac­ters, and most impor­tant­ly: the map. There is a good rhythm to the flow, offer­ing many choic­es to the play­er. The time ele­ment gov­ern­ing night and day has no bear­ing upon things aside from shop times and forc­ing Koa to rest. The lat­er it becomes, the faster the sta­mi­na depletes, and no amount food will ful­ly sus­tain her until she either sleeps at her house, at the inn of Qalis, on the boat or in a sleep­ing bag/tent.

As a gen­er­al rule, when new things are avail­able to be built, build it! Often­times, the act of build­ing on Koa’s island will unlock new recipes allow­ing the play­er a sigh of relief and the fun of dec­o­rat­ing the island. Cut down, burn, replant trees as you like. The game impos­es lim­its on num­ber of trees, but build­ing wells increas­es that amount. Col­lect­ing ani­mals who then pro­duce items when fed, encour­ages farm­ing of crops. Ini­tial­ly, the one-time-use items and lim­it­ed mate­ri­als can be anx­i­ety-induc­ing, but most items can be bought if you have enough mon­ey. How­ev­er, the game is extreme­ly gen­er­ous with ran­dom free items so long as the play­er spends time sail­ing and speak­ing to mail crabs. Speak­ing of mon­ey, it’s easy to sell items for cash, AND the nice thing is that aside from a 99 item cap, there is no inven­to­ry lim­it.

The main sto­ry quest can be…frustrating. There’s a lot of back and forth and fetch­ing this and that, and deal­ing with irri­tat­ing, stub­born old peo­ple. While that is eas­i­ly for­giv­en of side quests, main sto­ry quests are bet­ter off being more straight for­ward in my opin­ion. Thank­ful­ly, I spent so much time gath­er­ing items that most quests were quick­ly and eas­i­ly dealt with. The sto­ry is most­ly told through char­ac­ter dia­logue, but some­times there are ani­mat­ed sequences. Try­ing to pro­tect Mara from enter­pris­ing aliens was sur­pris­ing­ly mak­ing me angry for the inhab­i­tants, and I was excit­ed­ly look­ing for­ward to the big end­ing as the events were reach­ing a cli­max when–

–an error occurred, and I got back into the game only to have missed it all. It had thrown me direct­ly into post-game con­di­tions. I had to go dig­ging around on YouTube for the cutscene only to find that I missed almost noth­ing. The ani­mat­ed scene was short, a lit­tle con­fus­ing, and not all that sat­is­fy­ing.

Hmm. I decid­ed that I would actu­al­ly fin­ish the rest of the quests out and spent sev­er­al more hours dig­ging up chests (appar­ent­ly, I nev­er knew about the shov­el the entire game!) and mak­ing mon­ey. I kept hit­ting more and more game bugs as it went on until I thought I hit the biggest bug of all: an unfin­ish­able quest! How­ev­er, as is turns out, it’s not a bug. You lit­er­al­ly can­not fin­ish all of the quests because accord­ing to the devel­op­ers it sym­bol­izes the idea that quests nev­er end in Mara :). Buh. While I under­stand where they’re com­ing from, that does­n’t sit well with me… does­n’t give me clo­sure. Ugh. I wish they’d come up with a dif­fer­ent way.

So, basi­cal­ly, I qui­et­ly fin­ished the game and…I guess…that’s it…?

Gripes

• Some things are unclear. Like some of the quests sent me to the search engines because I sim­ply could not fig­ure out where to get some things. I kind of wish they’d men­tioned some­where that build­ing items on the island would help unlock new recipes. If they did, I def­i­nite­ly missed it as did many oth­er play­ers accord­ing to the forums.
• Run­ning around on Qalis was hel­la annoy­ing!!! It’s nice that the island is well laid out, but geez, run­ning lit­er­al­ly back and forth to oppo­site ends of the place over and over again was get­ting seri­ous­ly tir­ing. Plus, I think the ZR but­ton on my Switch is per­ma­nent­ly affect­ed by con­stant depres­sion. I wish more devel­op­ers allowed con­stant run­ning tog­gles. Rune Fac­to­ry 5 did a great job of that.
• A horse, or roller skates, or a bike would have helped tremen­dous­ly on Qalis
• BUGS. GLITCHES. From ran­dom tele­por­ta­tion, to get­ting stuck on things, to menu lim­i­ta­tions. Admit­ted­ly, it was­n’t game-break­ing and only one sig­nif­i­cant glitch (though I think that might be Switch and not soft­ware?) that pre­vent­ed me from see­ing the end cutscene.
• It would have been nice to have more access to workshops/kitchen/tool mak­ing out­side of the home island. The con­stant need to go back because I need­ed to make ONE item was irri­tat­ing. Maybe make it a boat upgrade?
• There are 3 types of trees that need to be plant­ed on high­er ele­va­tion. That’s kind of cool to have that con­sid­er­a­tion, except that the only place on the island to grow the 3 fruits was so super tiny! Why!?
• I real­ly wish there was more post-game con­tent. Some­thing like restor­ing the old Navy Acad­e­my would have been neat or estab­lish­ing a new Navy alto­geth­er. Per­haps as a reward for com­plet­ing all of the quests, it unlocks that! Or maybe com­plet­ing the colos­sus. All in all, too short.
• Some of the islands seemed use­less. Like the GIANT island in the north that became a waste­land because of the Elits and hous­es a giant bun­ny. Or the two map squares that are com­plete­ly emp­ty. Even the weird Hal­loween Island.

Over­all, a cute game! A lit­tle bug­gy, but very sol­id. I def­i­nite­ly rec­om­mend it to any­one who enjoys fetch-quests, farm­ing, cook­ing, craft­ing, fish­ing, div­ing, and sail­ing. It is extreme­ly relax­ing with no time lim­it (aside from parts of the main sto­ry that requires you to sail and there­fore can’t quick jump), so you can explore, or craft, or build, or what­ev­er at your leisure. The mechan­ics work well, the hunger and sta­mi­na meters are fair. There’s a col­lec­tion ele­ment, and there aren’t too many lim­its on build­ing. Devel­op­ers crammed lots of lit­tle details into the game and got many things right! Very enjoy­able and I will always have fond mem­o­ries of it. The 4ish stars out of 5 are for annoy­ing back and forth run­ning, lack of sat­is­fac­to­ry end­ing, and all the glitch-bugs I kept run­ning into even if they’re not game-break­ing.