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Natsu-Mon: Nostalgic for a time I have never experienced. The game explores a small Coming-of-Age story of Satoru, the son of a circus director, during his summer vacation. While making a very strong initial impression and featuring solid gameplay mechanics to support exploration of Yomogi Town and the surrounding area, it also suffers from some rough presentation and lackluster content towards the latter half of the game.

Story and Setting
Spending his summer vacation in the rural village of Yomogi Town, Natsu-Mon’s narrative is split into the immediate experiences the player makes alongside Satoru: meeting people, making friends, and going on his adventures. The second aspect is the occasional narration of adult Satoru, who might chime in and explain how certain events have shaped his life in hindsight.

Especially early in the game, dialogue and general interactions with the world are charmingly written and believable. Considering Satoru himself, it is a fairly difficult thing to write a kid believably and to capture their view on the world. Regrettably, dialogue can also be pretty sparse. As such, most NPCs will cycle through only a sentence or two unless they are part of an event. This can occasionally make interactions feel pretty plastic. Events are a mixed bag as well, ranging from very mundane, brief dialogue sequences to scenes that feel thoroughly impactful to Satoru as a person.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3403543149

A big issue with both characters and story events is mostly that there is too little of either of them. Characters tend to just not have a lot to say—if anything at all, and likewise events are already few and far in between, and then continue to just grow thinner and thinner as the game goes on until the last week or so feels almost lifeless.Where the game is at its best is when Satoru interacts with other local children, forming what feels like genuine friendships, whereas many adult characters are more prone to being written into stereotypes.

Overall, Natsu-Mon’s writing is decent for what it is and merely suffers by it being stretched too thin across the entire month during which the game takes place. Apart from Satoru, only a few characters experience any sort of palpable development, and regrettably many characters don’t get their own time to shine through events at all. Overall, this makes the story a little disappointing, if still serviceable if players are fine with a greater focus on the adventure aspect of the game.

Gameplay
Natsu-Mon fundamentally presents the player with a big sandbox area to explore, with no “main story” objectives to guide you, but rather imploring the player to really put themselves into the shoes of a kid on summer vacation. Running around, catching insects, fishing, and climbing spaces they really shouldn’t be. There’s no fail state, though there are side quests Satoru can embark on that are always worth it, if only for the little heartwarming scenes they tend to provide.

To facilitate this sandbox, Natsu-Mon immediately provides the player with a fitting checklist; all of the insects the player catches are immediately sketched with charming crayons into Satoru’s notebook; every notably tall location is noted for climbing, and so on. It isn’t so much a quest log, rather than a list of suggestions that the player can reference if they ever find themselves with nothing to do.

And sure enough, there is always something to do in Natsu-Mon. However, the big question is more whether it is fun. And whether even such mundane tasks remain fun over the course of an entire playthrough.

And that’s a tricky question to answer. For me, personally, it was similar to the narrative slowly drying up about halfway through the month. To reiterate, almost every task in the game rewards the player by expanding their stamina gauge—not only allowing them to run longer but also enhancing their jumping and climbing abilities. Expanding it directly correlates to how much you get to do every day, which places to reach, and thus, it is also extremely rewarding to be awarded with.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3408682604

This, too, however, has its limits, and by about the middle of the month, I had gathered enough stamina to climb even the tallest mountain of the map, and inevitably this opens up the question: ‘What’s the point now?’. Similarly, while early on you’ll find a new item, a new insect, a new thing to discover around every corner, eventually I found myself running laps around the map and just not encountering anything really worthwhile to pursue, driving the formerly pretty engaging activities into monotony.

A good example for this is fishing. You have regular fish and rare fish. These had become my bane, as fishing copies of regular fish will not “award” you with anything. No new sketchbook entries or anything similar. However, hunting for rare fish is an insane endurance test, as even if you fish at the right place, at the right time, with the right bait, you are still at the mercy of the fish actually spawning. And as such, I spent multiple in-game days doing absolutely nothing but standing around and fishing. And similar experiences will be encountered with most other activities in the game when pushed far enough.

Furthermore, these activities aren’t mechanically complex either. Complexity isn’t the point of them; however, I would also lie if I said that I wasn’t a little disappointed when even unlocking the ability to set up circus acts turned out to have no more interactivity than anything I had done before, and it just being an additional money sink.

Graphics and Sound
Natsu-Mon is heavily stylized, and it usually works in the game’s favor. It’s bright, soulful, and almost evocative of older Slice of Life Ghibli movies. Almost. Regrettably, the art style isn’t entirely consistent, and especially some adult character models can look downright uncanny. The game also suffers from pretty insane pop-in, which can frequently ruin the otherwise beautiful landscape.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3404048820

Music is generally pretty great, although it also has an issue of starting and ending pretty abruptly as you enter a new area. Voice acting is pretty consistently solid, though once again it is a little underused due to the sparse dialogue.

Technical Issues and Performance
Overall, I had no performance issues during my roughly twenty-hour playthrough. Likewise, I encountered no bugs or glitches of any kind.

Final Thoughts
Natsu-Mon is a game that you need to be in a very specific mood in to be able to enjoy. It’s a game that is drenched in nostalgia for the late 90s and will resonate at least a little bit with people who grew up during this time, just at the cusp of modern technology, when you would still go out and meet your friends outside and were just fine with those simpler things in life. It is great to see events that feel mundane clearly being written to shape Satoru’s outlook on the world and experience that in a very immersive manner. However, the game does ultimately feel a little unpolished by virtue of lackluster character development and undercooked activities that fizzle out alongside your ‘need’ to do them by the halfway point of the game. Perhaps it is asking for a little much at full price, but if the experience of such a summer vacation resonates with you, then Natsu-Mon is worth a try.