Everlasting Summer

Everlasting Summer (Russian: Бесконечное лето, tr. Beskonechnoe leto) is a visual novel, produced by Russian game developer Soviet Games,[5] that tells the story of a 25-year-old man living in modern Russia who finds himself mysteriously transported to a summer camp somewhere in the Soviet Union. It was originally produced in Russian and was first released in December 2013. The English translation was released in November 2014 when the game was made available on Steam. The game includes some adult content which was removed from the Steam release.[6] An online version with restored adult content was released on Nutaku in August 2015.[7]

Everlasting Summer
Developer(s)Soviet Games
Publisher(s)Independent
Director(s)Dreamtale
Producer(s)Dreamtale
Designer(s)Huyase
ArseniXC
SoraSora
OrikaNekoi
Programmer(s)Lolbot
Dreamtale
Artist(s)ArseniXC
Huyase
VVCephei
SoraSora
Veel
OrikaNekoi
Writer(s)Dreamtale
Composer(s)Sergey Eybog (SilentOwl)
Between August and December
EngineRen'Py
Platform(s)Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Android, HTML5, iOS
Release
Genre(s)Visual novel, eroge, dating sim
Mode(s)Single player

Story

Semyon is a reclusive 25-year-old living in a large city somewhere in the early 21st century Russia, spending most of his time in his flat interacting with others on his computer and earning enough to keep the bills paid. One winter day he boards a bus to attend a reunion, falls asleep along the way, and awakens to find it's now summer and he's dropped off at the front gates of a place called Sovionok (Совёнок, "owlet" in Russian). Semyon soon discovers it is a Pioneer Camp populated by youth, including several attractive girls who show interest in him; furthermore, he has reverted to his 17-year-old self and it is now the mid-1980s Soviet Union. In the days that follow, Semyon must navigate the relationships and possibly find love with the various people he encounters, while trying to solve the mystery of how and why he was brought to this place, and how to escape and return to his former life once it becomes evident he may be trapped in a time loop.

The game uses texts and sprites in a manner similar to many Japanese visual novels and runs on the Ren'Py visual novel engine. At various points, the player must make choices which will affect dialogue and determine what path the game will take. The game has multiple endings, some of them portraying Semyon forming a romantic relationship with one of the female characters, while others end badly. Some of the endings are not available until they are unlocked by completing other endings.

Characters

Primary
Semyon/Семён
Semyon, a male of age 25 in the opening but regressed to 17 during most of the game, is the protagonist of the game. He is portrayed as having brown hair. He describes himself as being nothing special and a person you could easily miss on the street. He attended a university but quit after a year and a half, and then continued doing odd jobs for a living. He also once used to be able to play the guitar and his programming skills were said to be above average.
Slavya/Славя
Slavyana ("Slavya" for short) has gold hair in two braids that go below her waist, is a nature-lover, and is the good girl who tries to help out around the camp any way she can. When asked where her family is from, she responds with "somewhere cold". Her loyalty towards the pioneer spirit is shown several times, where she states the rules of the camp and tries to keep the pioneers together. She likes nature and hints at pursuing a career in the subject.
Lena/Лена
Lena, who has short purple hair, is introverted and can often be seen reading a book. She has been friends with Alisa for a long time, since they grew up in the same town, but their relationship has gotten more complicated over the years. During the game she develops a more open and outgoing character that may grow to be fond of Semyon, but might not be as innocent as she appears. She has no problem with being alone and can sometimes be seeing practicing sports by herself, but nonetheless she maintains friendships with other characters like Slavya.
Alisa/Алиса
Alisa has short orange hair and is the more rebellious bad girl, who also plays guitar. She is shown as a very outgoing and aggressive girl that doesn't take no for an answer, but her soft side is revealed later in the game. Her friendship with Lena has led to a complicated situation, but she still maintains a relatively good relationship with her. She is often angered because of people labeling her as a punk girl with no sense of order, but even though some of it might be true, she only does it to escape the boredom and odd looks from being at the camp.
Ulyana/Ульяна
Ulyana is about 3-4 years younger than the other girls and has medium-length red hair. She is the athletic tomboy and enjoys scary stories. She is shown to always be in some sort of trouble, and her childish nature does not help her with escaping the situations she often ends up in. She has become infamous for stealing candy and for other pranks which she finds interesting or funny, and this has led to the camp leader Olga always keeping an eye on her. During her development she shows that she only wants to be accepted for who she is, and not for the child people think she is.
Miku/Мику
Miku is Japanese and has long cyan hair in two ponytails. She can often be found in the music room. She has a tendency to speak before thinking, causing her to often spew out more meaningless words than the main character can chew. She often makes obscure references based on the situation at hand and doesn't seem to be the brightest of the bunch. Yet, she shows talent in music and always seems to keep her head held high. Her story is extremely unique compared to the others but must be unlocked by completing another story first. Her appearance resembles Hatsune Miku.
Yulya/Юля
Yulya is a catgirl with long brown hair, and while Semyon believes she holds the key to the answers he has been looking for, she claims to know very little, even about herself. She can be seen in some of the game's artwork, but she only appears in the story after very specific conditions are met, requiring more than one of the story's endings to be completed. She is shown as a very timid girl that has had no real connection to anyone since her arrival at camp. She spends her time preparing supplies for the winter, which consist of food she pilfers from the canteen and the many nuts, mushrooms, and berries found in the forest surrounding the camp. Though details about her are mysterious, the protagonist is certain that her presence is related to his sudden arrival in the camp.

All of the girls except Ulyana are portrayed as being plausibly 18 years old.

Supporting
Olga Dmitrievna/Ольга Дмитриевна
Olga Dmitrievna, an adult well into her twenties, is the camp counselor.
Elektronik/Электроник
Electronik is a male, gold hair, who spends much of his time at the clubhouse tinkering with gadgets. He is named after the robot character from the Soviet book Electronic Boy from the Portmanteau by Yevgeny Veltistov. His appearance is particularly based on the miniseries The Adventures of the Elektronic, based on the aforementioned book.
Shurik/Шурик
Shurik is a male with gold hair and glasses. He too spends much of his time in the clubhouse building a robot. He is named after Alexander 'Shurik' Timofeev, a character from multiple Soviet/Russian films, who was first introduced in Operation Y and Shurik's Other Adventures.
Zhenya/Женя
Zhenya is a teenage girl with short black hair and glasses, who works as the camp librarian. She is short tempered, cold and sometimes sarcastic. She’s the only teenage girl in camp to not have own route but there exists an official mod with a route for her.
Viola/Виола
Viola is the camp nurse, described as middle-aged, who cares for the sick and injured at the camp infirmary.
"Pioneer"/"Пионер"
A mysterious pioneer, who appears to be Semyon from an alternate reality, visits him on occasion, often to taunt him.

Development

Game development started in May 2008 based off an image posted to the Russian IIchan imageboard. The project soon moved to IRC channels and had some drama and personnel changes over the years. Little was heard from the development team until a preliminary version was released on November 5, 2013, followed by the general release of the Russian version on December 21. The English version was released on November 19, 2014. A web version was released in August 2015 on Nutaku.net. This visual novel is also available on both Android and iOS devices.

Reception

Feedback for the game has been generally positive. Two Russian-language gaming sites, itndaily[8] and Kanobu,[9] gave it generally positive reviews, while a reviewer at Thumbsticks gave the English-language version a less favorable review following its release on Steam.[10] As of March 2020, the Visual Novel Database gives it an average rating of 7.06 (good) with over 1866 votes,[11] and of more than 37,340 Steam users, 95% have given the game a Recommended rating.[4]

gollark: I'm just doing UK A-levels (physics/CS/maths/further maths).
gollark: Ah.
gollark: I have no idea what a DDP is.
gollark: I'm sure you can find interesting safe things to do. Or eventually learn how to do it safely.
gollark: Seems about right.

References
  1. "«Бесконечное Лето», версия 1.1 (релиз)" [Everlasting Summer, Version 1.1 (release)]. Moonworks Blog (in Russian). 2013-12-21. Retrieved 2020-03-12 – via BlogSpot.
  2. "Бесконечное лето". Retrieved 2015-02-10.
  3. "Бесконечное лето". Retrieved 2015-02-10.
  4. "Everlasting Summer". Steam. 2014-11-19. Retrieved 2020-03-12.
  5. Prokhorenko, Stepan (2016-09-29). "Разработчики российской игры «Бесконечное лето» собирают деньги на новый проект" [The developers of the Russian game "Everlasting Summer" raise money for a new project]. dtf.ru (in Russian). Retrieved 2020-03-12.
  6. "Adult content disabled". Steam. 2014-11-24. Retrieved 2015-02-08.
  7. "Everlasting Summer Shows Up on Nutaku (NSFW)". lewdgamer.com. 2015-08-11. Retrieved 2015-08-12.
  8. "Рецензия на игру Бесконечное лето" [Review of the game Everlasting Summer]. itndaily (in Russian). 2014-01-04. Retrieved 2015-02-13.
  9. ""Бесконечное лето": аноны тоже плачут" ["Everlasting Summer": Anons also cry]. Kanobu (in Russian). 2014-03-08. Retrieved 2015-02-13.
  10. Griffiths, Josh (2014-12-03). "Everlasting Summer Review". Thumbsticks. Retrieved 2015-02-13.
  11. "Beskonechnoe leto". Visual Novel Database. Retrieved 2020-03-12.
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