Summer Islands

I'm convinced that there is a good game in there, somewhere! The gameplay itself is okay. The pixel art is really good. The music fits the retro style of the game. But the game lacks polish and a clear direction, especially when it comes to the UI/UX. Some of the UI/UX design decisions are just baffling! So much so, that I cannot recommend it.

This is just after playing the game for 30 minutes:

• What is with the font rendering that makes some of the text hard to read? You can even see it in the screenshots.
  
• Why allow zoom levels that render the good pixel art incorrectly?
  
• Why can't I uncheck the graphics options individually?
  
• Why is the main menu centered but the the in-game "main" menu pops in from the left side of the screen?
  
• Why show settings in-game that I'm not allowed to set in-game?
  
• The circular layout of the Building Plans is a nice idea but it's hard to read the buildings. That you can zoom already tells you something is odd about this menu. This is not Path of Exile!
  
• The scrolling with the mouse at the edge of the screen seems to have different speeds depending on the direction of the scrolling - horizontal is faster than vertical.
  
• If you have great pixel art in the background of your main menu, why blur it!?
  
• Why render the version information in the main menu in black, against a colorful background image? It's difficult to read.
  
• Why hide parts of the version information behind a plant?
  
• Why do all the in-game menus that are opened by clicking on the left bar, each have different designs and colors?
  
• What is the game "calibrating" at every start?
  
• What's with the wall of text at the beginning of the first campaign mission?
  
• What's with the huge generic looking pixelized avatar in the campaign mission window? Why doesn't it resemble the person in the story animation? Why do we need this avatar at all?
  
• I love the parrot, it's good pixel art, but why does it have to be scaled that much? Retro does not mean inconsistent pixel sizes.
  
[*]Why do some windows have big pixelated borders and others don't?

Remember this fun little tycoon game called Holiday Island that was released back in 1996? Well, this is probably the closest you will get to playing it again on a modern system - obviously, Summer Islands comes with a lot of modern QoL tweaks on its own.

Been following SI since it was in early access and it was really nice to see a developer that kept polishing their game until it was fully ready for an "official release" without neglecting its playerbase or bug reports. For that, plus the fact that Summer Islands is, at its core, a fun game, I really encourage you to support the devs and give Summer Islands a try!

I love this!
Holiday Islands was such a great game back then and this is a great homage to the original in every way.
I really enjoy all the additions to the original formula, my only "critique" is that I would love to see even more content and additions to this project.

14,79€ well spent!

This game reminds me so much of Holiday Island - going way back to the 90s. All in all, it's pretty good.

If you loved Holiday island this is a great way to relive the moments. It still has some issues with performance when in the late game and it's more of a match buildings together to make them happy and every X number of tourists add more utility plants but it makes for fun, short and relaxing gameplay.

Nettes kleines Aufbauspiel mit dem man gut und gerne ein paar Stunden Spaß haben kann. Zum Ende raus fehlt ein wenig die komplexität, man wiederholt quasi nur das was man davor gemacht hat, nur mit anders aussehenden Gebäuden.

Just like almost every review here, i used to play holiday island and that's why i bought this game. Even, i decided to "try" the version before the official release and having fun with it. After trying the official release, it's good and much more stable now. But, it also felt harder. There's also this minor bug when saving, where you have to press the in game keyboard to press space. It's annoying, but didn't ruin the game at all.

Overall, it's an intresting building sim to play around.

Definitely some work to do still on polishing, QOL, and bugfixing but I do very much recommend this gem! Amazing game and very entertaining. Multiplayer always seems to work flawlessly, which is rare these days!

This is a great little Retro style management game. The Finances are well thought through and the terrain tool gives you a bit of a challenge. The soundtrack is well made without it getting to repetitive and annoying. I see great potential in this game and would recommend it.

My only wish at the moment an Auto terrain option for us dummies (me) who cant seem to get along with it or too lazy. The cost of the terraforming can be then added to the building cost.

Im looking forward to see how it develops further !

This is a true successor to Holiday Island.
It has its fair share of nostalgia paired with the right amount of new functionality and game mechanics. Looking forward to really diving deeper into this. Compared to my first time playing the demo, the devs also fixed a couple of bugs. Solid for an indie game in 1.0.

There are a few rough edges, though. The control (mouse) could be better. It seems that (especially right) clicks are not registered correctly. The build menu could save its last state so you can select the building you just had to leave the building menu and take a loan for right away...
Only one thing bothers me in the gameplay itself (mainly applies to campaign): Setting goals to achieve a certain amount of money create a 50:50 game experience. 50% of the time, you're trying to get as many lucrative buildings as possible and the other 50% you spend watching and hoping that the money will reach amount X at time Y. Going rather into the direction of real estate value (as is possible for user created scenarios) or some more KPI-variety would be a bit more fun to me.

All in all: Great work so far. I hope it gets even more love and care in the future! Thanks for taking me back to Holiday... ehem... Summer Island! <3

Summer Islands is the reincarnation of Holiday Island, a more than 25 year old game about managing a holiday resort.

You received 1 million from your uncle to leave your boring office job and start a new life as a executive manager caring, bulding and growing your vacation resort.

The grapical style is leaned on this 20 year old game so don't expect anything more than in the screenshots. But it has also no high hardware requirements. The graphic style suits well suited for this particulary game. The ingame music is also a resemblance of its older brother and catches the holiday vibe. The occasionally occuring sound effects for instance building noise, bicycle bells and others in your vacation domicile are a great addition. It has all the neat additions like multiplay in so different that you can have fun together ruining your opponents vacation plans. 😛

All in all it is a funny gaming trip doing something special instead managing all the same how all those other economy management games which I can't stand somehow.

What I am missing are a bit more detailed sprites in the game and more diverse occasionally occuring sound effects. If possible I would also pay for additional dlc's like the original game did adding more optional variety for instance more campaign challenges, auctions, sound and other creative developer ideas. 😅

Thanks for remembering those (holi)days, developers. 👍

clean simple graphics and menu got me up and running quickly before doing the tutorial. I enjoy painting my island with houses, attractions, and parks and sometimes manage to get neighbor building positive effects. Still early access and UI to set up a map and 'resort' name is a bit clunky with keyboard over or under responding. Seems to be enough variables when setting up a new game for various play styles. still conflicted with 'island paradise' and 1M tourist capacity, a standard 30yr game tends to be more busy town than relaxing holiday destination.

Loyal to the original with nice upgrades. This is a good game. I hope it gets more attention.

Went to Polaris yesterday and had a chat with the dev.
It's a really small team and you can really feel their love for the genre and the old games this is inspired by. The look and feel is based mostly on Holiday Island, but there are other influences like Transport/Rollercoaster Tycoon, Theme Park and Sim City.
If you've played any of these, you'll feel right at home.

Building works exactly like you'd expect, save for the terraforming, which takes some trial&error to get used to. The busy-factor feels about right (cars, bicycles etc.), same goes for vegetation (maybe fix the palmtrees growing in the water?).
Soundtrack is upbeat and cheery, but not annoying in any way. Same goes for the effects (but where is the thumping from the disco? XD)

So glad i found this game and even waited for the sale to be over

Was searching if there exists a new implementation of "Holiday Island". I loved the game back then. Then I found "Summer Islands". I love it. Wholesome gameplay. Very active development. Haven't played for months because I am waiting for new updates to come. Release date might be 21.12.2024, so I might not play it for the next 2.5 months and wait for the release instead. Very good replay value btw., as I'd expect it from this kind of game. Very well done. Support the developer, buy the game, have fun with it.

This is a good resort management game.