Summer’s Story

Summer’s Story is a homebrew game for the N64 by Team Polygon Sandwich and released on 21 August for the 64brew Game Jam 2023. In it, you play as a young girl trapped on a dream island digging up items in the sand. It won 1st place in the game jam competition, congratulations!

You can download the ROM from its download page by using the password diggingyourownhole or by using Drive. You can also get the source code from Github.

Summer’s Story style and gameplay

As the name implies, Summer’s Story is a very story- driven game. It takes place in a dreamlike state where you play as a girl called Summer who wakes up from a deep sleep onto what looks like a deserted island. Your objective is to gather objects that trigger memories of childhood events in order to escape the island.

Summer’s Story is a first-person walking simulator where you walk around an island digging through the sand looking for items that are buried away, hidden from sight. You start off finding a beach ball, a treasure chest and a shovel, but you’ll quickly find out that those are the only items tare are out in the open. The rest have to be dug out with the shovel and are located by following the clues that each object provides.

The game warns you early on not to dig too much, so you will get different endings based off of how much of the island you’ve disturbed, so try to dig only what is necessary.

‘Summer’ theme

The summery theme comes from two places: The character’s name and the beach/nostalgia setting.

Credits

Summer’s story was made by Team Polygon Sandwich (previously worked on Voidblade), which consists of:

• Anacierdem – Programming
• Dc.all – 3D modelling

There were some other people that were going to help with the project including audio and storyline, but they left during development.

Review and conclusion

The gameplay in Summer’s Story is quite unique. It’s a scavenger hunt that has you digging through the sand to find treasures from summers past, which I found to be a very creative way of using the Nintendo 64’s 3D modelling features. Most games typically have unchanging stages, or anything that does change is just an actor or stage object being moved around.

The story does feel very much like a walking simulator, following the inner thoughts of our eponymous protagonist. Even though the story is fairly short and linear, it does help to present Summer’s world though childishly fresh eyes.

The objects’ position does not change through subsequent playthroughs so playing through it the second time onwards is pretty easy, even if you want to get the good ending.

Summer’s Story is a game of atmosphere. It’s all about the isolation, the story, having the unknown under your feet all while digging away at a crumbling island.