Summertime Madness from Sometimes You and DP Games places you in the role of a painter who made a deal with the devil and must now find a way to escape one of his canvases. Check our Summertime Madness review!
Summertime Madness from Sometimes You and DP Games places you in the role of a painter who made a deal with the devil and must now find a way to escape one of his canvases. It was July 20, 1945. Prague was under siege, ravaged by war. With everything falling around him, a lone painter worked hard on creating beautiful landscapes on canvas as a way to counter all of it. One night, a mysterious figure appears at the house. After reviewing the paintings, he offers the artist a deal: he’ll be able to enter one of his creations to escape from the war.
That mysterious figure was, of course, the devil, which means there’s a catch to this particular deal: the painter must find a way to escape and find a way back home before the clock strikes midnight, or his soul will end up trapped inside of the canvas… forever. Finding himself one step away from pure madness due to what he had witnessed because of the war, the painter didn’t think things twice and shook the man’s hand to seal the deal. In a blink, you find yourself in a surreal first-person experience.
You can play the game in one of three settings: Explorer, Classic, and Advanced. Explorer allows you to take on Summertime Madness without any time limit. Classic allows you to take up to six hours to complete the game. Advanced lower this time limit to three hours in total. Since this is an experience from a first-person perspective, you’ll move your character with the left analog stick and can look around you with the right one. To run, you can press in on the left analog stick, press the R1 button, or press the Square button for a continuous run. You can use objects and confirm actions with the X button. Press the Triangle button, and you can check your clock to get a hint.
As for the trophies, this is one with a full list and a Platinum to add to your collection. The list includes 5 Silver trophies and 9 Gold trophies and will require that you complete the game in less than an hour, complete the game in less than three hours, and complete the game in less than six hours, so if you can speedrun the game, you’ll make all three trophies pop. There’s another trophy for collecting 30 butterflies, for finding all seven instruments in the game, for looking at all the graffiti, and for interacting with four specific paintings. The rest are trophies for completing miscellaneous activities. If you need a guide to help you, check out the video below.
Summertime Madness is a first-person puzzle game with an interesting premise and a great art style that makes you feel like you really are exploring paintings, with a nice variety of locations to visit that are very surreal. You should take your time when exploring this one for the first time so that you can take it all in, and then do a second speedrun to get any of the trophies that you didn’t get the first time around. Summertime Madness is out on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 with a $14.99 price, but each version of the game must be bought separately.
Disclaimer
This Summertime Madness review is based on a PlayStation 4 copy provided by Sometimes You.
