Gameplay
As a visual novel, Summer Days contains extremely minimal gameplay. The game's core onscreen presentation is composed of scenes that are viewed from a mostly third-person perspective. At predetermined intervals, the game brakes, and players are presented with one to two responses or actions relevant to the scene in progress to make, or not make, on behalf of characters. Each selection branches the game's progress up that point in an alternate direction, while also causing the player's love toward a character to blossom, plateau, or diminish, thus providing for a nonlinear storytelling experience. Being an erotic title, relationships between characters may expectedly become sexual; scenes of this kind depict French kissing, masturbation, oral sex, intercourse or combination of the four, and pixelized censors over genitals. Each route the game takes does invariably conclude at some point with an ending specific to it, thus, players who wish to watch additional endings, and notably aforementioned sex scenes, will have to play through the game more than once.
Much like the other games in the franchise, Summer Days is unusual in that instead of traditionally static characters with subtitled dialogue, it incorporates motion and voice, making it reminiscent of an animated series. Cinamatics naturally play on their own, and players are afforded the ability to pause, fast-forward, and even skip those they've seen before; sex scenes, additionally, become unlockable from the main menu as they are reached in the game. Progress can be saved at anytime and loaded from either the main menu or during play.
Limited edition copies of Summer Days were also bundled with the standalone Flash mini-game Ahoge Battle (アホ毛 バトル, Ahoge Batoru?), a whimsical take on School Days ending "The Bloody Conclusion". Choosing from three difficulties, the player controls Sekai, who attempts to fight off Kotonoha by pressing any two configurable keys in quick session. In the case of the highest difficulty, a third is also used. If the player is able to fend off their opponent long enough to fill their end of a progress bar, the game is won and a tally of how many times each key was pressed is recorded. If the player loses, they are given a chance to continue. In an identical fashion, limited edition copies of Shiny Days are expected to comes bundled with Strip Battle Days (ストリップバトルデイズ, Sutorippu Batoru Deizu?), a rock-paper-scissors mini-game based around the disrobing of female characters.
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