Developed by a single person, Summerhouse is a small but perfectly formed building game that has no goals or objectives to meet. It is a sandbox for your creativity that allows you to build small, quiet, countryside nooks that you’d want to nestle away in. Summerhouse scratches a couple of very specific itches beautifully and its a game I want to shout about.
Each game begins with you choosing from one of four areas to build in. You can be in the desert, mountain range, country or seaside town and all of them have a slight Japanese tinge to them. From there you are dropped into your chosen area to get building. The interface is very easy to understand. You have different block types on the left to choose from and when you choose a wall for example, you click and paste the blocks where you want them to be. The blocks look initially purely 2D but they do have some depth to them as when you scroll left and right, you’ll see blocks moving back slightly through end walls and shadows. You can then choose doors, windows, decorations and nature to paste around your roughly 6 or 7 screen long area as you start to create the world around you with ease.
Summerhouse works on height and layers. Initially everything is on a single plain but you can move objects into the background or foreground depending on how you them. This means you can fill in trees, bushes; grass and rocks around a rickety old barn, or fill up a restaurant or café with tables and chairs. You can create empty quiet buildings that look like they are being reclaimed by nature, or go for a densely packed row of buildings. Its entirely up to you. Then flick from sunny day to a rainy one, or night time to see you build in a different mood and hue. There are also pixilation effects you can turn off and on to suit your mood too. Add in a whimsically warm ambient soundtrack and you have a quiet Japanese village crossed with a slice of life anime feel. These places feel like you want to visit them or experience them in a slow paced anime. The developer Friedemann says he wanted to recreate the feeling of walking around on summer vacations as a child, discovering old buildings. He nails that vibe perfectly.
The more you play, you start to unlock a few bonus blocks. There aren’t loads of them but they usually bring a human or animal touch to the game. A kid with a Halloween mask, a women sipping wine on a balcony or a cat sat on a air condition unit. These add to the whimsical charm and go some way to making Summerhouse feel slightly bigger than it is. Building pieces are certainly themed by colour or material but you can happily mix and match as you fill up the 20 save spaces. Whilst you won’t find 500 pieces to build with, there’s probably around 175 unique pieces to use. When combined with the relatively simple space and layering, Summerhouse manages to eclipse many other sandbox games by being streamlined to enable players to build and complete something really detailed and fun in 15-20 minutes. The tools make it easy and fast to build and the environments and choices mean you aren’t overwhelmed with a game without rules. I found myself happily building away at 4am without realising it and that says a lot for a small sandbox game.
Making completion effortless are some additional fun things. A randomiser tool picks things at random for you to build, which you can make your own personal challenge if you want. You can use a pipette to pick a block and clone it so you don’t have to dive into any menus. Every asset can be flipped into a horizontal mirror of itself too and deletion in a simple two clicks away if its not something you want to undo or redo. When you are finished you can then press the play button. This then quickly rebuilds your level just how you built it but over the course of a few seconds. Its satisfying to watch and reminded me of the post level recap from Power Wash Simulator.
I’d certainly welcome additional DLC for environments or expanded decorations or base materials. The core tools are so easy to pick up, its one of those games where all I want is more of the same to get artistic with. This is a breezy title that gave me a bit of nostalgic ennui mixed with intense satisfaction as I build another effortlessly beautiful panoramic view. Summerhouse is a superb builder for those of us who only have 20 minutes and want to feel masterful. Don’t sleep on it, no matter how sleepy your country hotel looks on screen.
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