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About the StorySummers with the Sea King is a short interactive story written for ShuffleComp 2023. It was inspired by the songs "Sea King" by Eisley and "white summer and green bicycle, red hair with black guitar" by The Pillows. Game Details
Language: English (en)
First Publication Date: January 7, 2024 Current Version: Unknown Development System: Twine Forgiveness Rating: Merciful IFID: F3E4ABB5-67EC-4215-90EB-0DD4013F62B9 TUID: aw74mkv8p2t5tljw |
Awards
3rd Place, Game Goodness; 2nd Place (tie), Use of songs - ShuffleComp 2023
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Member Reviews
| Average Rating:  Number of Reviews: 5 Write a review |
A nice, brief love story about summers and what goes unspoken, January 22, 2024This game was entered in Shufflecomp.
It has beautiful styling, with an easily readable font and nice color choices.
The game plays naturally, and tells you upfront what stats are being tracked, which made it easy to plan out overall paths through the game while still maintaining agency. I liked that.
The story writing is very strong, talking about a young person and the strange boy they fall in love with at a young age. Only during summers can they meet, and as the player ages, they soon must part.
The two paths contrast each other well, and overall the story is scoped just right, with a nice narrative plot arc that rises, has a climax, then falls to a denouement. I had chills for one ending. Very well done.
Summer of sadness, January 16, 2024This was a linear short story where you reminisce about summers from your childhood, and the time you shared with a friend (or was it more?). The entry contains 4 endings, which are dependent on both your choices throughout the game, and one specific choice. Though it is overall linear, your choice will bring quite a bit of variation throughout.
The path I ended up getting was full of melancholy, with the looming unescapable crossroad of adulting ruining everything the magic of summer for those two. Between the want of everything to stay as is and the practicality of things, the writing really portrays how relationship can come and go, and words - written or oral - have more impacts than we think.
Apparently, that ending is one of the saddest one, but it strangely felt satisfying to get (even if I tend to prefer more sweet/good ones). Growing up can suck a lot, and nothing ever stays the same, whether you fight it or not. It felt so meaningful and inline with the choices I had made (granted, I didn’t take the most hopeful ones…)
Also, extra points for the adorable UI!!
Emotional story with meaningful choices, January 11, 2024This game really hit for me emotionally, partly because it captured some feelings/experiences that I remember from childhood but also because it's just well written and evocative. The magic of a beach vacation, friends you see once a year and don't have any contact with otherwise (us millenials may be the last generation to have that particular experience), uncertainty about the way a friend feels about you... it's all conveyed so well.
As I played through the first time, I completely forgot that there was any state tracking going on, but when I remembered at the end I was impressed by how that aspect worked. There aren't a lot of choices throughout the game; more passages end with a "next page" link than with a choice. But the five or six choices you do have, determining what you said to Caspian at certain moments in several childhood flashbacks, what direction your adult life has gone, and one action you take in the present, subtly interact to result in one of at least three different endings. After playing through the first time and getting a very satisfying, fitting ending, remembering that I'd brought about that ending through my choices made it all the more meaningful.
Playing through several more times revealed that the game is also subtly responsive to your choices throughout, in ways that heighten the emotion. So all in all, this is just what I look for in a narrative game: a good story that the player is able to help shape.
I adore this game., February 7, 2024There are multiple things in the game that hit me personally. The UI of the game and the backgrounds of the page are an excellent example of combining them to make the experience that much better. I loved Caspian.
Alone, I am moved by the game, but with the pillows playing (as recommended), I am beyond tears.
Truly a wonderful game and I had a great time reading it.
Nostalgic love story, January 24, 2024This one didn't resonate with me as much as it did for some other people, maybe because I've never had a relationship like Kai and Caspian's. (The protagonist's name and gender is customizable, but I'll leave them as "Kai" for simplicity's sake.) I've never fallen in love with one of my friends, and I've never had a friend I've talked to consistently for more than a few years, actually. Which is kind of sad if you think about it.
But hold up, this isn't supposed to be about me! The game itself is pleasantly nostalgic, it rides the "childhood summers by the beach" vibe hard and does it well. My favorite part, though, is the endings. I found three different endings you can get, based on your choices - either (Spoiler - click to show)Kai doesn't meet Caspian and sells the house, doesn't meet Caspian but keeps the house, or meets Caspian and gets taken underwater by Caspian where presumably Caspian reveals that (le gasp) he was a merman all along! And then they live happily ever after.
The happy ending's fine, but the sad endings attract me more because that doesn't happen. Count on me to like the depressing stuff. They're made even more melancholy in context, when you realize everything Kai has lost forever by giving up on their dreams and succumbing to the dreariness of daily life. Abandoning their dreams of music to get a "real" job, moving away from their childhood beach home because their grandparents are dead. The ending I got first, where they just stare out at the ocean while thinking about everything they've lost, was a good one. There's no resolution there, just a friendship that ended on a sour note and a person they'll never meet again. Lost childhood memories you won't get back.
I dunno. The thing about the past is that you can't relive it, no matter how hard you try. So in this regard the happy ending feels like a fantasy to me and the tragic ones are more true-to-life. But maybe I'm just depressed.
Playtime: ~15 minutes
This is version 3 of this page, edited by Faedrian on 9 January 2024 at 8:59am. - View Update History - Edit This Page - Add a News Item - Delete This Page