Summertime Madness’ title might be referencing the lose plot of war and destruction that kicks off the game, but it also doubles up as a way to encapsulate how I felt playing the title, especially towards the end. What begins as a fairly obtuse, yet still somewhat logical and enjoyable, set of puzzles turns into a frankly maddening set of hoops to jump through to progress. Thank goodness for guide makers, huh?
Let’s back up though. Up until the last portion of Summertime Madness I was really enjoying playing. Played in first person, we control an unnamed painter after he makes a deal with a magical being to escape the horrors of WWII in Prague, 1945, by entering his paintings. This being tells him that he only has until midnight to find his way back out lest he be stuck in there forever, and so we set off to solve various puzzle scenarios based on his artwork. This allows for some abstract and outside of the box set ups, and for the most part these are just the right side of challenging. Each of the areas aren’t so large that it takes too long to explore, and each action has a tangible response i.e a switch opens a door, or a lever rotates a platform etc. The solutions usually require a little more than that mind, with one switch opening and closing multiple doors for example. However, there’s generally a logic and flow to the puzzles that mean even if they’re a challenge we can usually stumble upon a step that moves us forward, which itself is usually denoted by a camera pan or victory noise.
When Summertime Madness sticks to these elements it is a really enjoyable puzzle title. The painterly artwork provides a nice setting to explore, and there’s usually a visual payoff to progress that is its own reward too. We can get through most of these scenes relatively quickly which is handy as the game offers three modes of play. In keeping with the theme of time being limited, we can choose to begin our adventure with three of six hours in which to get to the end. There’s also an unlimited mode too for those unwilling to potentially lose hours of progress though, and that would be my recommendation for first time players. We can keep track of time on an in game watch which also doubles up as hint system where we can exchange a small amount of time for a clue to help us out.
The thing is.
When I actually needed the hints they were not worth the loss of time at all. In keeping with the abstract theme they are more vague suggestions that outright answers, showing us an image that is as clear as mud. This signalled the tipping point of frustration with the mechanics on the level Memories From the Future. As I said, up until here the scenes had been hard but fair, with even the crazy Escher-inspired area being far simpler to solve. Memories From the Future ups the ante to an almost insane degree, offering up far too many pathways to take, all but one of which would lead us down the wrong one. It combines double door levers, time travel, changing level geometry and an overuse use of backtracking that meant I spent far too long going around in circles before finally waving my hands and resorting to guide work. Even following that I don’t quite see the logic in the solution, and it was a hard stop to what had until then been an enjoyably challenging title. Once past this though the difficulty eases off again for the final two chapters, if anything going too far the other way. This one section almost had me walking away from the title which is a shame as the rest of the experience here is pretty good. I’m no puzzle genius of course, and maybe it is more on me that I couldn’t solve it but it felt like to harsh a step for no real reason.
Conclusion
First person puzzlers aren’t rare, but Summertime Madness is a great effort from DP Games to add to the growing entries in the genre. Outside of one incredibly sharp difficulty spike I enjoyed my time with it a lot. If you’re in for an evening or two of abstract puzzling then this gets a recommendation for sure, just have a walkthrough ready for that last section so as to not completely undermine the good experience up until that point.
