Summertime Madness

Between the blustery snowstorms and icy roads making it impossible to leave the house, I find myself yearning for a reprieve from winter's terrible weather. With no way of vacationing on a tropical island, I decided to turn to the next best thing -- Summertime Madness, an upcoming first-person puzzle game that will be bringing a warm breeze to home consoles later this month. And while it may not have kept me from shivering, it did take my mind off of the cars ping-ponging down the icy streets outside, probably racking thousands of dollars in damages. Yeah, winter can be treacherous.

Believe it or not, Summertime Madness takes place in Prague towards the end of World War II. We're introduced to an artist who has taken to painting as a way to avoid the death and despair happening outside, using the war to inspire beautiful landscapes of places he longs to be. One night, a mysterious man makes him a curious offer. This stylish gentleman knows a way to magically transport the painter into one of his works, allowing him to escape the shooting and bombings happening all around his studio. There's just one catch: The artist can only stay in the painting for six hours, otherwise he'll be trapped in the canvas forever. Alone and on the brink of madness, he agrees to the terms, thus setting up a colorful adventure full of exploration and puzzle solving.

We get a taste of this early on when we're dropped off on a small island with little more than a boat and a lighthouse in the distance. Although it's not immediately clear, the goal is to solve a number of brain-teasers in an effort to open up the island and get the artist one step closer to making his way out of the painting. The puzzles start on the boat, but it won't take long before we climb the lighthouse to discover a dangerous challenge high up in the sky that involves rotating the narrow walkways. This eventually leads to an M.C. Escher-inspired stairways maze, a piano boat, a house controlled by gears and more. There's an almost dizzying variety of both puzzles and the locations, to the point where you never know what you'll see next.

And it wasn't just the new types of puzzles I was excited to see, but also what the game would look like. Summertime Madness is absolutely gorgeous and not afraid to dramatically shift tones and styles from one section to the next. The cel-shaded graphics give off a hand-drawn look, bringing both the color and stylish puzzles to life. What's especially impressive is that this comes from a small team of developers in Italy, yet you wouldn't know it based on the variety of locations and beautiful transitions. There are some truly stunning moments to be found in this adventure game, and the atmospheric soundtrack perfectly sets the mood.

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The truth is, I was absolutely transfixed by the first half of the game. I loved how the locations and puzzles would change without notice and how abstract the story was. And the fact that we only have six real-world hours to complete the game added a sense of urgency that you don't normally get from this type of game. The puzzles were also fun to solve, as most of them were challenging without falling into the trap of being frustrating. The first few puzzles are especially strong and set expectations high for the rest of the game.

Unfortunately, it's the second half of the game where things start to fall apart. We go from bouncing from one cool location to another at an almost breakneck speed, only to get stuck in a single stage for almost the entirety of the second half of the game. This game is at its best when the puzzles are small and contained to one small area, like a boat or house, so when Summertime Madness opens up to reveal a large city to puzzle through, that's when the momentum comes to a screeching halt, something that it is never able to recover from. It doesn't help that this oversized stage is by far the worst looking part of the game and half the time is drenched in rain. I longed for the colorful island and warm summer breeze, only to spend most of my time getting wet in an ugly city.

That's not to say the rest of the game is perfect, because you can see signs of problems sprinkled throughout the first half. One of the big issues I ran into involved puzzles that were geared towards trial-and-error solutions. There's a puzzle where you're trying to balance scales using a couple dozen flowers, something that is made incredibly tough because you don't know how much each flower weighs. It's just a guessing game as you rearrange flowers, which is somehow even less fun than it sounds.

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My other gripe is that the gameplay options are severely lacking. Not only is there no way to toggle the camera between inverted and normal, but looking around is slow and sluggish. I also found that the interaction icons didn't always show up, forcing me to carefully inspect every door or button used for the background.

It's easy to dwell on these minor gameplay issues and the lackluster puzzles at the end, but the incredible first half of Summertime Madness more than makes up for everything else. There's a sense of wonder and surprise early on, and while the crummy second half tries its hardest to undercut the whole thing, the satisfying (and shocking!) ending makes this adventure worth puzzling through. Even when it's the middle of winter.