Bientôt l'été Reviews

"8/10" According to My Own Rating. Highly disturbing. Actually, the most disturbing romantic non-game game I've ever played. "I'm a little frightened." "I will die." "Help me, I beg of you." "I cannot continue." "I would prefer you did not love me." "I have to go." "It is over." Yeah.. very romantic lines to pop up in a conversation with a spectral representation of a soulmate in another dimension. Anyways, this non-game is highly recommended especially for romantic people. It's an awesome thrauma generator. Just dive into this world, embrace pain and loneliness, let darkness fill your heart. "I wish you were dead."

The "video game" label might create expectations that might disappoint some people. I would call this something more on the lines of "interactive art". It's suposed to be a contemplative experience. I feel like this could be on a modern art exhibition and it would receive more praise than it does here.

A highly experimental game about nonverbal communication and/or a parody of depictions of French romance in popular culture, Bientot l’ete is constrained by its budget and asks the players to fill in a lot of gaps; but it’s still a memorable experience, and can be considered a historically important precursor to the still-nascent genre of ‘relationship games.’ Note that you need a willing partner to play this game; it can't be played solo or with random people on the internet.

[h1] DISCLAIMER: This is a full review, and NOT a first impressions review [/h1] [quote] PLEASE NOTE: I recommended this game with some exceptions, overall if the game did not live up to just a tiny expectation, I would not have recommended it at all, so please read the review carefully if you are thinking of buying/playing this game [/quote] Bientôt l'été is a game developed and published by Tale of Tales and my, oh my what a grind this game is... The game has some really nice environments and the graphics are really well designed and laid out The game does suffer with some repetitiveness at certain areas of the game but a fun game nontheless and is a massive grind to either walk as slow or run... this is definitely the low-point of Bientôt l'été Bientôt l'été overall, however, is a fun game to play in short bursts and a good casual game to play! It's definitely not for everyone, but if you be patient and follow the game's interesting story and concept, you will find an indie gem of a game [h1] RECOMMENDED :) [/h1] [b] REVIEW SOURCES: [/b] [list] [*] None

After playing this, you may have two feelings: 1. The author is a genius and has perfectly outlined the pressing problems in a new light and has discovered something new for me. Helped to look from a different perspective. 2. Either I'm dumb, or there's nothing remarkable about this project. For me, this project caused the emotions described under paragraph 2, since I did not understand the "tactile message" of this game. The execution is extremely poor, there is practically no content at all. If the game is trying to show the monotony of life and make you think about something, there are better ways to do this

It's one of those games you can never be sure whether you will like it or not before you give it a try. It's short but unique in its narrative design, especially when you find an actual person to play this with. You collect thoughts from the waves of the ocean and share them with your lover by using the pieces on a chessboard. Very slow-paced, but soothing and poetic. There are certain design aspects that might seem counter-intuitive or rushed, such as the slow walking speed, the bare landscape, the scattered irrelevant objects that appear out of the blue, etc., but it is really hard for me to say their design is objectively wrong. It's more about personal taste and sentiments.

[b][u]Short:[/u][/b] + Relaxing "walking simulator" + Eerie, dreamy, surreal, transcendental design, music and ambiance + Bold multiplayer concept: People are strangers, no direct means of communication - Lack of any significant, forward-driven narration/story/plot - Lack of any significant, long-term gameplay - Odd/Awkward, not exactly comforting (keyboard) controls - Multiplayer barely works for the lack of people playing this game (workaround: joining Steam group and timing online time with other people) [b][u]Long:[/u][/b] Interesting from an art-ish and ambiance-related point of view, lacking gameplay-wise, and with an irritating control scheme. Badmouths may call it a boring walking simulator. It provides less exploration and narration than for example Dear Esther, but a bit more than for example Proteus, and has it's own unique graphical style and ambiance. The graphics, sounds and music give you an eerie feeling, it's dream-like, surreal and transcendental, and for this alone it's interesting to look at and listen to, eventually even admirable. You select a male or female character stored inside tubes. "It's nearly summer" you are told. You appear with your character on a simulated/virtual beach shore and walk it. Random phrases will appear drawn onto the ground. You "collect" ("remember) some of them by closing your eyes, you also hear them voiced in French then (they are always subtitled in the language of your choice). You collect some object "hidden" beneath some worldly, "holographic" thing (a tree, a bush, a crane, ...) that disappears to reveal this object (chess pieces mostly, and one more unique and confusing one which leaves room for interpretation). You enter a house, meet with a virtual partner of the opposite gender in some sort of bar, put your objects in turns on a chessboard (freely, you don't actually play chess - some spots trigger the words/phrases you previously collected to appear on the screen and be voiced), take a smoke, drink some whine or select some pre-set of music tracks to play music-box like in the background. The lines you collect and make appear are circling around the two characters and their relationship, who are or used to be lovers After that you leave the house, walk along the shore again, collect more phrases and another object and enter the house again. This you repeat as many times as you wish, at some point the simulation starts over again with you collecting about the same pieces again (the game however seems to remember all pieces you once collected - I've just started up the game again and could place all the objects I once picked up many months back when I first played this game). The partner in the house is either A.I.-controlled or an actual human who is playing the game at the same time as you do. You don't see his/her name, he/she is a stranger, there is no text or voice chat to use, you only communicate with the words and through symbolism you can do with the chessboard and the objects, and the only indication whether there is someone else playing/waiting in the house is - from what I've been told and noticed - a window you see from the outside that has lights on. I haven't been able to meet up with a real human yet, because either the mechanics to match you up with one are not working too well or this game was never played by too many people to begin with. There is a Steam group one can join, and sometimes people try to group up through it. However this is a bit of a misleading way of playing this game, since it was obviously intended to meet strangers, an idea Tale of Tales originally came up with in "The Endless Forest", but which isn't executed too well in this game. A game that did this better was the PSN game "Journey". But I guess one must probably consider that "Journey" was a larger success than any of Tale of Tales' games ever were - the more players play these games the higher/better the chances to meet up with them. At some point no one will play these anymore, I guess, not even "Journey". The control scheme isn't entirely bad but not exactly too enjoyable. This is a problem I keep seeing in the games made by Tale of Tales. You look around by moving the mouse to either side of the screen, you walk by holding down the left mouse button, you close your eyes with the right mouse button and run with spacebar. It feels odd/awkward and not very comforting. They could adapt to the more classic control schemes that games with a first- and third-person view give you, the usual WASD and mouse-look thing. I don't see any good reason in doing things differently there. Has it to do with being different for the sake of being different? Or are they inept and don't play their own games? I don't know, and I don't like being harsher to them than they deserve. You can play with a gamepad too, maybe I should try that and will feel better then.

This hits a very niche market... and not very well. I typically really enjoy introspective forlorn romps through artsy settings, but this is a bit of a streatch even for me. Spoilers follow: No seriously, there's nothing to this game, so litterally anything I say past this point will "ruin" it for you. Don't read further unless you've either already played it our have no intention to. So the idea is that you go for long walks on the beach reflecting on this relationship you've had. Sometimes there's something on the beach that will drop a chess peice which you can take to the house and use on a chess board to hold something resembling a conversation with an online partner... The dialouge seems to suggest that these two love each other out of necessity and not for any actual romantic reasons... they don't seem to actually like each other but are bound to eachother anyway. It's really sad...These two need to see other people, but it's clear that there are no other fish in the sea, so to speak. Oh, and once you've collected all the chess peices, the next item to drop is a gun... well that escalated quickly. You can use the gun on the chess board like a peice. It does nothing in particular, but I think it's more meant to be a metaphore for putting an end to the relationship more than anything. To sum up the game: Help I'm trapped in a holodeck of angst and regret! I don't know what love is and I want to kill myself because I'm so messed up about it!

Game developers should be encouraged to challenge the status quo with narrative and mechanics, but I feel that there are certain best practices for game design that Tale of Tales often overlooks for no visible reason or benefit to the game. While Bientôt l'été has the most conventional controls and straightforward instructions of their games to date, it still suffers from the same problem: some strange design decisions have little to nothing to do with the concept, and may even hinder it. Imagine the PS3 game Journey: two players meet at random in a surreal world to make a connection. Except in Bientôt l'été, both players are chat robots stating phrases at random while smoking cigarettes, drinking wine, and playing chess (with a catch: you have to find the pieces first, but one at a time). The highlight of the game should be the multiplayer, but unfortunately it doesn't seem to be very populated (a symptom of its avant garde concept, I guess), and the interactions are severely limited. What should be a virtual date with a stranger in a surreal world becomes tedius, with no real interaction or connection with said stranger. Unlike Journey, which limits your characters' intractability to serve the purpose of the mechanics and design, Bientôt l'été's design stands at odds with its concept, preventing players from creating any kind of meaningful connections.

Before noting that I said I do not recommend this, please understand that it's not bad. With this confusing statement out of the way, let's get started. Bientôt l'été isn't a game. It's an artistic piece, and this needs to be understood. From what I could gather, the goal of it was to demonstrate how people can communicate, even if limited by language, actions, or possible phrases (as seen by the chess board in-game). However, this requires that someone somewhere is playing at the same time you are, unless you want to talk to an AI. It's a beautiful experience when it works well, but this is so rare I can't recommend a purchase at any time other than during a sale. Due to the game's artistic goal and nature, it was heavily slammed upon release, driving away potential players. Without a community waiting for another person to chat with, more people slammed the game for not having a community. This is Bientôt l'été's biggest problem, without players it simply cannot achieve the desired effect. For this reason I suggest buying this when it's on sale. More players are likely to be experimenting with it at the same time as you, and you're more likely to see the beauty of limited conversation with a complete stranger.