Summer Catchers

Introduction

I just have a weak spot for indie games like Summer Catchers. Even though I have no clue what it was about before actually giving this game a try, the vibrant, yet cute style of Summer Catchers managed to catch my interest right away. Anyway, the title "Summer Catchers" already gives away everything the player has to know about this game: The main objective is to literally catch the summer. This might sound weird at first, however, it does make sense pretty soon at the beginning of the game.

Let's Catch Summer!

You see, Summer Catchers opens with a girl who, one day, suddenly notices that she never got to experience summer. She seems to be stuck in an area where it's always winter and although snow might be nice from time to time, there is simply something missing. After meeting a bear who is willing to help her to a certain degree, she is determined to reach a place where it's actually summer. Anyway, during her journey she will meet a lot of different friends and has to travel around quite a lot, passing all sorts of areas along her way.

In a sense, there is a story available in Summer Catchers. However, the whole purpose is the girl reaching her destination and thus, the story isn't really in-depth. Nonetheless, I had a lot of fun getting to know all sorts of animals who are willing to help the girl, although she has to do something for them in return for their help. Anyway, small tasks are nothing for her as long as she can reach her final destination at the end. All in all, the story isn't anything special, yet it gives the game a certain charm that made me want to constantly help her out.

Rinse And Repeat

Let's move to the actual gameplay of Summer Catchers. The girl can buy power-ups in a safe area, with mushrooms which she can obtain during the levels, and accept tasks there, as well as repair her car to continue her journey. Actually, it's a vehicle but she keeps calling it a car so, why not calling it a car as well? But I digress. Anyway, it's mandatory to successfully complete all tasks for each area, although only one can be activated at the same time. You see, once all tasks are completed, the girl can move to the next area to complete the tasks there, etc.

Once fully stocked and ready, the girl can enter a so-called endless level where she has to overcome multiple hurdles. The power-ups come in handy here, although only three of them can be present at the same time. When using one of them, a random one pops up and thus, multiple of the same ones can show up. Anyway, it's possible to swap a power-up as well, although there is a cool down so it's still important to carefully think about what to keep. That being said, hurdles have a specific power-up that is needed and the girl only has three lives during each run. When she dies, she gets teleported to the safe area once again.

But no worries, the progress of the tasks save for each run and can be continued in another run. Thus, dying didn't matter too much and I didn't have to worry about a thing. On the other hand, when all tasks are completed and the girl moves to the next location there is a boss present that makes the whole run harder and the girl has to survive until the end to leave the area. This part of the game was slightly annoying as I had to get used to the special attacks of the bosses first and died quite a lot.

Difficulty Settings

Luckily, there are three different difficulty settings available, although I only noticed them later on. Anyway, changing them seems to only change the distance of the next hurdles and thus, while it did indeed help, I still found it a bit difficult. The problem here is the RNG which often made me die and annoyed me as I couldn't freely swap my power-ups due to the cool down. In a sense, luck is a huge factor in Summer Catchers

and dying a lot is inevitable.

Special Events

When the girl isn't in a boss fight, she can enter special event scenes. Whilst some of the scenes show up multiple times, most of them only appear once. During these events, the girl has to complete a certain objective and when being successful, she will receive an item, as well as an achievement. The annoying thing here was that once I failed an event, there was no way of completing it, except for starting a new playthrough. However, I didn't want to play the game from scratch again and it didn't help that it's not possible to return to previous locations either which means when I missed something.. Oh well, then it was simply gone.

Customizable Options

With mushrooms, the girl can buy multiple skins for her own appearance, as well as different kinds of cars. While they don't have any other functions than looking pretty, I still liked that the player has the opportunity to customize their appearance and car and with each location, more skins are getting unlocked. This way, the mushrooms can be collected for that purpose as well, instead of only for buying power-ups.

The Journal

In Summer Catchers, the player can collect images when completing a certain task, such as dying at a specific hurdle or reaching a special event. Anyway, this feature felt like a gallery where the player can look up the images they unlocked and I absolutely loved it. In addition to that, there is a feature to take a screenshot of it. This journal motivated me to unlock all images, although it doesn't serve another purpose otherwise.

Co-op

The main difference between the mobile and PC version of Summer Catchers is that the PC one support co-op. So, how does it work? Well, the first player can take care of resources in the safe area whilst the second player runs around and has the possibility of destroying objects to obtain items and achievements. During a level, the first and second player takes turns with the usage of the power-ups. In addition to that, different colors are showing up for each turn which makes it easy to recognize whose turn it is. Anyway, whilst I found that the co-op feature was quite nice, yet taking turns means that both players have to depend on each other.

Graphics and the Immersion

As aforementioned, I loved the presentation of Summer Catchers. Each location felt so vibrant and I couldn't help but admire them. Something that stood out here is that each area was entirely different from each other and contained various hurdles during the levels which made each location refreshing as I had to get used to new obstacles first, although this means that I died a lot in the beginning. Anyway, in addition to that, the small sound effects, such as the noise of stepping on snow, greatly enhanced the immersion, and whilst the game doesn't contain any voice-over, it still felt so lively.

So, what do we have in the end?

Summer Catchers is such a lovely indie game I had a lot of fun with. Sure, it's not perfect and the RNG really annoyed me, however, the progress luckily gets saved so everything the player does isn't in vain, even when they didn't manage to complete the objective. Anyway, it's important to keep in mind that the story isn't in-depth and the gameplay is very repetitive, however, the presentation of this game makes it up to its players. That being said, Summer Catchers comes with its shortcomings, however, it was still an enjoyable ride for me.

Rating: 6/10