Summertime Madness Review

Puzzle games aren’t everyone’s cup of tea. I know that I myself generally associate them with annoying mechanics that never feel quite right, and challenges that always have arbitrarily complex answers that rarely have anything to do with a game’s world. Summertime Madness changed that for me, acting like The Witness did for many as an eye-opener into the world of what first-person puzzlers can be.

The premise of Summertime Madness is simple. You play as a painter who refuses to leave Prague in 1945. The city is being ravaged by war, so the artist paints to escape it all. One night, a mysterious figure offers him the chance to enter one of his own paintings so he can leave the war behind for a while. The only catch is that he must return by midnight, or his soul will be trapped in the painting forever.

This story sets up the most interesting aspect of Summertime Madness. When you start the game, you’re given a choice of game modes. One mode allows you to explore and complete puzzles without a time limit, the next puts a six-hour time limit on your journey, and the last one restricts that even further to just three hours. There’s a hint system to help you with puzzles, but that costs time, limiting the amount you have left even more.

I’m used to game modes making puzzles more challenging, restricting hints, or putting other challenges in your way to make the experience more difficult. This game links its difficulty with its world and story though, making you feel the panic that the poor artist must have felt when realising this stranger has used his paintings to create a maze he must solve and escape from before he becomes trapped. This dread never really goes away. You feel it permeate every image you explore because of the time limit, the knowledge that you risk a lot more than losing the game if you don’t find a way through the next puzzle.

First-person puzzlers of this ilk are inherently challenging, and this one’s no different. It’s made up of a series of worlds that have structures to build by gradually solving the puzzle or structures that make up the puzzles themselves. These worlds are beautiful, some hauntingly so, reflecting the inner workings of the artist’s mind as he paints to forget the explosions and death around him.

You don’t feel like you have a lot of time to appreciate these worlds, which is why it’s worth playing on the easiest mode so you can explore the themes of each painting and what they say about this artist. For example, one world explores the artist’s faith through a giant statue, while another shows his happiest place in the world, a boat in a river by a lush meadow.

There’s no doubt that the visuals are what makes this game worth playing. If you appreciate nice scenery and no interruptions, then it was designed for you. Despite the areas not feeling in any way realistic, I felt a connection with the artist in every one I visited. Sometimes it’s the elation you feel when everything’s going your way on a particular day, and others it’s the perseverance to get through one more hour, even when life resembles treading water in tar.

In an odd way, the soundtrack, or lack thereof, enhances each scene. Without the interruption of music, you can enjoy a summer’s day in peace. When things look bleak though, and it’s hard to find a path forward, the silence, save for the howling wind, can feel isolating. Less is very much more in this game, and it only helps you identify more with the protagonist’s plight.

The puzzles, however, fall a little flat sometimes, because they feel like they don’t link into the same themes. The aforementioned boat steadily builds into an unrealistic but quirky structure that would feel at home in a child’s dream. Another world though – a series of paths around the top of a lighthouse – feels like a puzzle that was designed before the world itself was considered. Each one is hit and miss, but it doesn’t ruin the gameplay, only the enjoyment you may get from interpreting art.

Summertime Madness is also not without its faults. Any achievement hunters will need to use a written guide to 100% the game, because at least one object doesn’t appear in the Switch port. This too isn’t game-breaking, but it lets the title fall short of what it could be. Likewise, while the controls are fine, the movement in the game isn’t particularly fast, neither in moving your camera or the character. A permanent run feature does speed things up, but the game would certainly feel better if the controls were tightened somewhat to reflect the urgency of the time limits.

Overall, playing Summertime Madness feels great. It’s got a quiet and chilled-out soundtrack to go with the relatively relaxed visuals. It’s the only puzzle game I’ve played that’s caused me no stress, and that’s all down to the aesthetic. While it’s not without its issues, you’d be remiss to dodge this game if you enjoy the beauty in your first-person puzzlers.