Kioku: Last Summer

Alright let's talk. For me this is around a 7.5/10. This is a fun cozy game, which feels like it could be reminiscent of childhood, or an idea of childhood. It's a pretty short game, but it tells the story it sets out to tell pretty well. There's a sense of wonder throughout. I enjoyed the graphics and the music. The minigame was also kind of a cool idea. That does not mean the game does not have issues: Yellow tape: A lot of people complain about markers in games. I got lost trying to figure out where to go several times. Part of this was that the logbook didn't update so I had to restart to go back to the last point of information if I didn't remember what I was doing cause I had to step away. Soft locks: There is no hard lock in this game, but there are several softlocks. Areas where dialogue trees won't generate or don't exist and will prevent future dialogue (this happened several times). After one cut scene (part of the cloudberry quest) the game though I was partway through the ground. Each time something like this happened I had to shut down the game in full, and then restart to get it to fix. Language switched(?): One time the games language randomly switched to Japanese (I think?), and one time it randomly switched to German. Once again had to fully exit to fix. Achievements/100%: Stickers: There's no logbook of which stickers are found or are missing. I'm apparently missing two stickers, have gone back through multiple times, and cannot find these. Would be nice to have some idea what's going on here. Maybe have the characters provide a hint when they have a dead dialogue tree instead of having them stare into space? Bike Ride Achievement: I don't know what in the Lumiose City is going on with this, I went back and forth from the map multiple times, definitely over 50, and this still didn't pop. There's no tracker on where this is, which would be nice. Similar mention with the skipping achievement. For the not getting caught achievement, I'd like to know where this applies to? I guess the school? For this it would be nice to have manual save and auto save so if someone wants to go back they can. --------- This is a story game. The MC is a child. It's from a child's POV. I enjoyed it, but understand this is a story. You're not here for replayability. You're here for a story.

[b]NOTE[/b]: This review was written a short time after release. The reason for not recommending it is that at the time of writing, many bugs, soft locks and other issues prevents a functional experience from start to end for me and several other players at least. [b]These issues may have been fixed since then, and if they are I would have recommended the game.[/b]: I'm very torn on how to review this game. On one hand, it's the first game of Lugn Games and the developers there are really nice. I want them to succeed. They have put a lot of work and their souls into the game, and making a game is a huge undertaking. Kioku as a game also has a lot to like. On the other hand, Kioku has been a rough journey with stuttering, many bugs, issues and something which doesn't reach its full potential. The story stands at the center of the game. It's slowly paced with low stakes, where we follow a group of children doing things reminiscent of summer in Scandinavia back in the early 2000s. This is not a bad thing, and together with dialogue highlighting the different personalities of the children there is a serene, child-like innocent tone of the whole game. In this sense, Kioku manages to achieve its goal of transporting you into a world of idyllic, innocent nostalgia. That said, the story explores few original ideas and is very predictable. I think some of the best childlike stories are the ones which also explores themes in interesting ways adults can appreciate too. The Moomin stories does this very well for me, and I find Kioku lacks this extra quality making the story interesting for children and adults alike. The visuals are a bit of a mixed bag as well. It's clear that the game tries and wants to lean into visuals imitating games from the early 2000s such as Zelda: The Wind Waker. The devil is in the details though, and Kioku fails to utilize a lot of techniques which could have helped really strengthening the authenticity of such an art direction. A few examples are how the game has a more modern take on cel shading, where modern shadow and lighting techniques are used. Despite this, the lighting often feels very bland and flat. Kioku's visuals are nice during daytime where the vibrant colors, strong shadows and modern techniques like AO plays well together. This model falls flat inside buildings or in the evening, where everything looks flat or the lighting model fails to unify everything. The games Kioku tries to imitate did a lot of careful work around their texturing and lighting model together with use of graphical techniques. Imitating this in an authentic way is difficult, and doing it together with modern graphics techniques is even more difficult. Kioku fails to do this for me, and it ends up hurting the vision of taking me back to 2000s nostalgia. In addition, the modern techniques greatly helps making my GPU (GTX 1660S) roar loudly while the game lags and stutters a lot at lower graphical settings. This is unfortunate, because the game could have used more authentic techniques over modern ones which would have been great for both performance and the overall vision. The music is a highlight of the game. Especially the calm, soothing main theme and the more upbeat Marubi theme is great. At the same time, I find myself wishing there were more music to the different situations that happens on the island. The best themes also gets a bit repetitive towards the end. This repetitiveness is something I also find in the gameplay. The first half was fun and varied, but halfway through the game a lot of the quests starts repeating. The island is also quite small, so halfway throughout the game I had explored most of it and the sense of exploration and wonder was gradually replaced by frustration over bugs, soft locks and game breaking issues. Minor bugs such as broken localization, wrong UI and characters teleporting around is not a huge deal for me, but it does drag down the overall impression along the way. On the first day of the game I encountered a soft lock. On the third day, I encountered my first hard lock. I ended up having to tamper and modify my save file to be able to progress at all and get the game back to a working state, only to hard lock two quests later again. This trend continued throughout the rest of the game. Towards the end crabs, the shop, quest logs, achievements and NPCs had completely broke down. [b]This makes it difficult to recommend the game as it stands at the time of writing.[/b] The developers have been notified and are working hard to fix these issues. I do believe issues will be resolved and there will be less issues as time goes on. The people at Lugn are great and it's clear that they want Kioku to be as best as it can be. But, from a player perspective I think it would have been better to postpone the release of the game and do more quality assurance to weed out these issues, especially since there's been so many of them along the way. In the end, Kioku is a mixed bag for me. It doesn't manage to truly fill me with cozy 2000s nostalgia, but it is a calm, slow and innocent adventure. It pains me to say so, but my feelings in the end is mixed with being bothered by bugs and issues, a little boredom and a lingering feeling that the game could have been more. That said, I've also had fun playing Marubi, fishing crabs and playing with the other children on the idyllic Kioku island.

I went into Kioku: Last Summer genuinely excited. The Y2K setting, nostalgic atmosphere, and focus on friendship and collecting immediately caught my attention. Unfortunately, my experience with the game left me more disappointed than I expected. The hardest part is that the potential is clearly there. The charming visuals, fun collection mechanics, and overall concept create a strong foundation for a memorable summer adventure. There are moments where the game captures exactly what it is trying to be: a nostalgic trip back to a simpler time. However, the technical issues, inconsistent progression, save problems, and lack of direction made it difficult to fully enjoy the experience. Too often, I found myself focusing on what was not working instead of getting lost in the world the developers created. Right now, I have a hard time recommending Kioku: Last Summer in its current state. I truly hope the devs continue improving the game because there is something special here. With more polish and fixes, this could become the summer adventure it was clearly aiming to be. Pros +Strong nostalgic Y2K premise +Charming visual style +The game clearly has potential Cons -Save/progression issues -Lack of direction -Steam Deck compatibility problems despite being listed as Playable -Collection tracking inconsistencies -Story logic that occasionally feels forced Verdict: 6/10 Check out my full review here Kioku: Last Summer Review - Not Quite Ready For Summer - Screen Hype https://share.google/yy4XrCq5brBwWIoKw

Buggy. Wait until everything is fixed.

Such a cozy, nice experience!

Es un juego muy bonito donde haremos amistades, está lleno de mini juegos y lo mejor es que se puede jugar al ritmo de uno, si no te dan ganas de hacer un mini juego simplemente seguí con otra cosa y ya. Me la pasé buscando stickers por la playa. Es para jugar un rato cuando venís re estresado y querés relajar o mandarle toda una tarde. Puntaje wholesome 8/10

Very cosy game! I'm a few days in and still exploring the island. cute aesthetic and characters, the Marubi minigame is so nostalgic. Love all the little details!

[h3]Not sharing the summer[/h3] I must have picked up this game around the same time I played The Last Hike. And the contrast is huge even though the games share a word in the title. [h3]For the Love[/h3] We play games for the love of the feeling they give us, or at least I do. I have delayed writing up this review for a few months, it's because I like to give small publishers a chance to fix their bugs. As a software tester in my day-job I attract bugs, but have lately had a rash of infections and am writing them up for medical history. Because the number of abandoned games is quite shocking. When the developers are unable to fix a small cosmetic bug in the space of a month, the love has clearly gone out of the pursuit for them. And so it has for us gamers on this one. [h3]The good[/h3] A cosy game for kids, with a minigame with marbles almost like pokemon in some ways. You arrive on an island, and have to make friends quickly with the other children, being the studious type you have a diary and keep track of who is who. That's where the bugs for me started. Some of the people you have met, show in the diary and some do not show. Minor, but a cascade of minor issues eventually add up and soft-lock the game early on where you are stuck in a loop completing the same 2 quests in a row every single day. The quests are fun, as you run about the island making new friends. There are at least 2 kids who don't want to be friends with anyone, and this started to feel like a personal-challenge even, to really understand that being different is OK. You soon get given a bike by your dad, and it emerges yes, he is a struggling single parent. (All your friends who are island residents have bikes already.) And that creates game progression because now you can not only get around faster, but it also adds a minigame, which like the marbles pokemon minigame will also appeal to kids who have good reaction times. You will meet a diverse cast of characters and it' a very fun game until you get stuck re-doing one of the quests. If you really still want to read about the bugs in this game, check the threads https://steamcommunity.com/app/3283310/discussions/0/562532756309135324/ https://steamcommunity.com/app/3283310/discussions/0/562532756309135324/ For games that would have been in a similar class, but have far fewer bugs, check out this list I have made. https://store.steampowered.com/curator/41773079-EmpathyGames/list/90741/

[h2]前言[/h2] 不是，哥们！谁家好人快暑假了转学啊！？也就是国外了，放国内能直接达斯，不过你别说，小时候就应该好好玩，因为长大后真的没有时间和精力。 [h2]游戏介绍[/h2] 《Kioku: 夏日记忆岛》是一款开放探索类型的游戏，游戏采用的是3d的卡通画风，整体看上去非常讨喜，而且游戏的优化做的不错，在游玩过程中没有任何的卡顿、掉帧！ [h2]游戏剧情[/h2] 玩家在游戏里面将会扮演少女阿斯蒂，在夏天跟着爸爸来到了记忆岛，我们将在这座岛屿上面度过自己人生中的第一个暑假，并且在岛屿上面结交新的朋友。 [h2]游戏玩法[/h2] 游戏玩法很简单，虽然说是开放世界探索，但是还是需要完成主线任务来推动故事剧情发展的，任务会记录在背包里面的笔记本里面。游戏目前的内容并不算多丰富，大部分都是通过和人物对话来获取新任务，然后再完成任务，而且游戏的引导方面做的不咋滴，只告诉你要去的位置，但是这个位置说的很模糊，虽然有着地图，但并不是那种实时地图，而是一张岛屿的简略图。不过游戏也有着自己的特色，比如弹珠怪物对战、钓螃蟹、偷果子等等，玩法都比较简单，看眼教程就知道怎么玩了。 [h2]总结[/h2] 游戏整体质量还算可以，画风这块非常加分，小游戏的玩法做的也不错，就是引导不太行，还有就是内容不够丰富，稍微有点枯燥，感兴趣的可以自己试试！ [quote] 闲暇时光，不妨试试游戏。 欢迎关注[url=store.steampowered.com/curator/45653622/] 闲暇時光鉴赏组 [/url] [/quote]