*Image Taken From Steam*

In February 2024, FUTU Studio released “Shanghai Summer,” a visual novel that has gone largely unnoticed amongst gamers. Despite it going under the radar, Shanghai Summer is a title of incredible quality, containing some stunning visuals, an interesting plot, and solid character writing. This review will give a rundown of what makes the little indie game such a joy and some of the pitfalls any potential buyers should be wary of.

The Good

Graphics and Visuals

The most notable part of Shanghai Summer is its heavily stylized graphics. Filled with pastel colors and life-like character designs, the beauty of this game makes it easy to get lost in the experience. They aren’t just aesthetic, though; they’re also very functional. A beautiful shade of orange indicates objects, places, and people related to progression in the story, and white suggests a non-essential interaction, wordlessly communicating vital information to players. Furthermore, the more simple, color-focused graphical style of this title keeps it an easy 2 Gigabytes of storage—the antithesis of a resource hog.

Story

The most important part of a visual novel is its story, and Shanghai Summer certainly nails that part of the genre. The game opens with a very interesting hook given by the equally interesting character, Black Cat. The protagonist, Baichuan, is stuck in a place between reality and dreams and is tasked with confronting many aspects of his life to make it to the mysterious “Final Inquiry,” which will return him to reality. What follows is a tale brimming with mystery and solid character work, touching on themes of acceptance, connection, and possibilities. The narrative of this title is incredibly meaningful, and with a 5-hour general completion time, it’s not daunting to get through at all.

Quality-Of-Life Features

An unsung hero, the quality-of-life features in Shanghai Summer make it a smooth and understandable gameplay experience throughout. The many choices players make in the game have various effects on the story and character relationships, so FUTU’s addition of a convenient backtracking system is a blessing for players. A simple walk-faster feature is also present, speeding up traversal for players, but needing to toggle the mechanic keeps sightseeing easy. Shanghai Summer has plenty of elements like those two to create a very polished gameplay experience.

The Bad

Immersion

There are few things more important to a player’s experience than immersion, as a game failing to immerse a player loses out on potential playtime, long-term interest, and overall quality. While beautiful art and simple movement make getting engrossed in the title easy, Shanghai Summer still has serious issues retaining that initial player interest. The reason for that lies in the dialogue boxes and the character portraits that exist around them. Due to a lack of voice acting, the boxes are just simple reading instead of having that subtitle-like feel of other dialogue boxes in the medium. This is certainly because FUTU Studio is a lesser-known studio with fewer resources than others, so it is excusable from a production standpoint, but it’s an issue nonetheless. What’s worse, however, are the character portraits, which don’t deliver even a hint of facial expressions throughout the 5-hour title. This can leave a character’s emotions confusing to understand or just flat-out imperceptible at times. Combined, these two create some characterization issues, as it becomes harder for the audience to get the general demeanor and mood of the cast. That is a big problem, especially for a visual novel. It breaks immersion because of how jarring it feels to take oneself out of the experience to infer such vital information about a character, hurting the game and the story it tries to tell.

Shanghai Summer is an underrated gem of a game, and FUTU Studio’s work on it is something to behold. Its visuals stack up to the best in the industry, its story is meaningful and heartfelt, and its quality-of-life elements make it very convenient to get through. That said, issues with immersions seriously drag its quality down, but the title isn’t ruined as a result. Shanghai Summer is a 6.5/10 game, or a 3.5/5 star title if one prefers to rate in that manner. Any fan of a good story should absolutely check it out!