[ANN] Summer Session demo preview

[Jack Norton]

Hello,
I'm proud to present the result of the collaboration between Tycoon Games and Hanako Games: Summer Session is a dating-sim game with cool manga art, with 5 different endings and a simple goal: date out one of the girl you'll met at your summer session!

Some Screenshots:


Direct Downloads:
http://www.tycoongames.eu/downloadga...ssionTrial.exe (Pc)
http://www.tycoongames.eu/downloadga...ssionTrial.zip (Mac Intel only)
http://www.tycoongames.eu/downloadga...nTrial.tar.bz2 (Linux)

Game page:
http://www.tycoongames.eu/adventures/summersession.php

We're mostly interested to hear if anyone has problems with interface or other usability issues, since the game should be (hopefully) bugfree already!

[Grey Alien]

I read your thread title as Ann Summers and thought "what sort of game is this!?"

[Emmanuel]

I played it yesterday and liked it. It's a good intersection of your skills (Georgina's storytelling and structure, and your production skills/successful niche of games). I finished the demo and wanted to see what happened with that French guy

Best regards,
Emmanuel

[Nexic]

I did the same thing as Grey Alien expecting a porn game. Well this is at least in a similar genre

This feels like the kind of game that will appeal mainly to girls, but I play a boy which feels odd. Do girls like playing as males? Do girls like dating girls? Seems like I'm getting out of my depth here ^.^

[Jack Norton]

You guys have really a perverted brain!
well maybe the ambiguity of the title is intentional... my original title was Summer Love (very romantic, eh!) but Hanako suggested to change it

It's true what Nexic says, but I know many people that play that game (boys). I must confess I played some hentai games too when was younger (even if this game is definitely not hentai, just funny)

[Maupin]

On the surface, and to my untrained eye, this looks exactly like those Japanese interactive story hentai games where a guy tries to get with as many girls as possible.

I feel the same as Nexic.

A very interactive (and innocent) dating sim game for girls could make a lot of money. I have a searchbox prominently displayed on every page of my portal site, and some of the top searches are "boyfriend games" "games where you have a boyfriend" "wedding" etc. They're only topped by "virtual baby" and "babysitting games."

[Grey Alien]

Interesting searchbox stats.

Given the proportion of male homosexuals vs female homosexuals you'd be better off making a dating game from a female perspective and letting gay/bi men pick a male character and date other men.

[Cray]

Nice seeing one of these type of games that isn't about ...that other stuff.

Quick comments:

• Game started with only half the window shown, had to move it.
• Intro has "roommate" typoed.
• Took me a minute to figure out how to get past secret diary screen.

Good way of ending it instead of the usual 1 hour trial.
Might get a purchase from me later.

[Musenik]

This is the kind of game I would like to like, but after about five minutes I have the following feedback:

The gameplay feels very constrained. I am given options, but they feel fed to me.

The intro listed four or five things about the interface which I promptly forgot after reading them and dismissing the screen. Othewise I seemed to be effective at controlling the game.

The buttons in the preferences screen knocked me for a loop when I first saw them. The aqua hilite color was glaring, and the grouping art looked like big buttons with little buttons in them. (they're all round rects)

I enjoyed the bit of dialog I read, but one piece described what the art work animated. It felt redundant and distracting. I would prefer to let the art/animation tell me as much as possible and read less. (that does not mean I don't enjoy interesting, complex text) This specific incident happened upon meeting the first boy who 'slumped his shoulders forward' while the art slumped its shoulders forward.

I still do not understand the gender I'm playing. That might be very cool, except gender identification is the first question when one human encounters another. I feel I could play this het or hom, and that's why I think it's cool, but I worry a lot of people will feel displaced from their self-identities.

The art looked like std fare manga/anime, but that's okay I've got a lot of pent up fantasies regarding a glasses girl...

The music started out nice, but within the five minutes I had to turn it off. But that true for me with most games.

In final, the only thing that would keep me from buying this is the spoon-fedness. I'll play a little more to see if it opens up to more exploration.