An indie, arcade-esque obstacle game, Summer Catchers by developer FaceIT and publisher Noodlecake Studios is a new addition to the countless games Steam has made available this past season. The goal of the game: to “catch” summer (and the ocean), as your character lives in a land-locked world that is perpetually winter. She’s gotten tired of waking up to the cold, dark forest every day. By completing tasks for various creatures, your avatar gets a car built for her, and directions out of the depths of their homeland and out into the wild.
As in the name’s connotation and feelings it emits, Summer Catchers provides a relaxing, simple and straight forward game that one can sit back and easily get through without much energy output. In this pixelated, two-dimensional world, you only move to the right. On your cart, you chug along the landscape running into a cycle of obstructions that you must evade or break through with the tools provided and purchased throughout your journey. This could range from zooming over a collapsing bridge, chopping though totem poles, or hopping over gophers, or many other situations.
This is where my first block with Summer Catchers came up. You only have access to three tools at once picked via RNG to avoid these interferences, but there are more than three types of obstacles (and tools) to avoid. This forces you to either accept getting hit, of which you can only three times before your make-shift cart falls apart, or you must waste a use of a tool to try and get the correct one in the queue. I believe this was an attempt to create a more “challenging” play, or a way to integrate a more strategic gameplay but it just frustrates me. Waste a life, or waste a single-use tool? The choice is lose-lose. Here is an instance where, even with equal amounts of all tools I had available, I ended up with all three of the same kind; and with this tool, you can’t waste uses as it must be used up before you can select it again.
In short, I just waited until I crashed and started over.
Despite this shortcoming and depreciation of video game mechanics, I made it through several levels of Summer Catchers, overcoming the sequential monsters that seem to resist you leaving their ecosystem each time you find the way out.
Each time you enter a new stage, I am blown away at the beauty that pixels can create. Each environment’s color scheme captures a feeling, a sensation, a temperature so unique and endearing that I it frequently takes my breath away. Furthermore, each area has some random even that reveals an oddity — sometimes, several, if you spend enough time in a stage to find out what they are. Not to give too many away, here are two, each from separate stages:
These breaks are essential to the game, because otherwise I would get lost in the monotony and repetitiveness that is the journey in Summer Catchers to find summer and the ocean. How much can you propel over hedgehogs and leap over brambles before you want something different to appear on your screen?
There are a few interactive random events as well, but so far of the few I’ve encountered, only one required different key inputs besides clicking the screen as shown below.
It was fun, but if I hadn’t been able to complete it perfectly on the first chance, I wonder if I would be able to have another go, or how long it would have taken for this random event to occur again, if I would even be given another chance?
In my opinion, this game cannot be played over long lengths of time, as your eyes will blur over and your reaction time will grow more and more delayed as you grow bored at the same goals, tricks, and hinderances. A more creative and efficient way to make the Summer Catchers more interesting and chancing would elevate it, even if it wanted to stay as a basic arcade-like game.
While charming and endearing, Summer Catchers is not the most captivating release of this summer. RNG drags down the storyline and art by becoming a game reliant on grinding out progression.
Final Score: 6/10
Check Out the Summer Catchers Trailer:
Summer Catchers is available for PC and Mac for $11.99 via Steam.
Steam Review
I'm Zepora, a junior at UC Berkeley studying Economics. I grew up attached to my Game Boy playing the Pokémon games, but now I turn to my consoles as break from school work when I'm not busy with lacrosse. I prefer RPG's with a some action, such as Elder Scrolls and Assassin's Creed (which is my favorite franchise) but am also known to play Super Smash Bros until 3am with my friends.
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