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The Summer Is Magic!

Hello!
It's summer 2021 but let's go back to summer 2010, or to be precise back to...
RMN Midsummer Dreams 2010, created by the community and for the community by YummyDrumsticks in, you can guess it, 2010! And sequel of RMN Christmas Card 2009 that I will probably review... later... well maybe for Christmas, makes sense, I guess!

YummyDrumsticks, or YDS was a developer I appreciated in one of my past reviews for the brilliant (and sadly incomplete) Vanilla Villain. But which characteristics of style of Vanilla Villain can be found here too? Two things: an extremely good use of the RefMap tilesets on aestetically pleasant and coherent maps, and lots of weirdness (to tell the truth all locations shift between these two styles: the realistic, detailed cute world and the total wackyness of some surreal maps with absurd backgrounds, that recalls the first and second half of the Vanilla Vllain demo)!


Calunio's section is probably the creepiest part of the game. Being based on Beautiful Escape: Dungeoneer, that's no surprise!

But what's RMN Midsummer Dreams 2010? Simply a short community game, a cool little adventure about a vacation. The hero is YOU, that is invited at ̶C̶o̶s̶t̶a̶ ̶D̶e̶l̶ ̶S̶o̶l̶ Casa Del Sol, a seaside resort where he is tasked to completed four different little quests in order to help organizing a summer festival.

Ok, so do not expect an rpg or difficult puzzles, just exploration of the hotel and the beach, funny dialogues and a couple of minigames. To complete the adventure you will have to explore all the locations, but you can spend extra time to talk with everyone and interact to everything so you won't miss every funny part (that will be extra funny if you know the contest of some details and situations).
A thing that surely is just a coincidence is that the minigame related to Calunio is somewhat similar to Nightmares of Jumping Bunnies (since that one was made in 2012!), and it was fun and annoying at the same time! Heh!


Look who's here! Our favourite Rm2k character, now in RefMap style!

That minigame is probably the only one that may give some difficulty, anyway it's not too bad, really! But the rest of the game is totally easier, just interact with everything and you will be done. So for the most part this is a walking simulator or adventure game, and a simple one.

But this is the purpouse of a community game, to make a simple adventure with all the... members of the the community! Now, the bad thing: typos! There are many of them, anyway I am not one that think these are really threatening to my fun, sometimes they can also be amusing, and enjoyed ironically. Another weak part is probably the music, let's say that it's just ok, while there are some weird and unexpected sounds that surprised me, but I told that in the beginning: weirdness!!!
On the other hand I found no bugs, errors, maybe maps aren't always perfect (in one of Calunio's parts you can walk on water, but maybe it's just a wet floor with almost no depth! Who knows for sure?), but they look good: dimension is ok, and the main hall and beach are especially nice to see and filled with cute characters... the Rmnrs!


Good old Max McGee (no surprise that his charset is identical to a character from his Iron Gaia!) started a flame... literally, this time! (I ALWAYS appreciated your games, by the way)


Let's write a verdict!
From the cute and funny introduction to the equally nice ending the game won't take you more than 15-20 minutes to complete, and I am one that check everything and talks with all characters. All of them! It's also a look to the past and to the Rmk.net world of ten years ago (meet all the legends like Kentona, Liberty, Ocean, Stangeluv, Darken, Solitayre, Max McGee, AznChipmunk, Calunio and many others, besides YDS of course!). Ok, nostalgia time!

Anyway, let's say I enjoyed this little short romp. The rating here is more for the value it had at the time, but even if not everyone may appreciate this kind of work, no one can deny that there are some cool parts in it and YDS always used the RefMap resources really well (it's maybe a cheesy game but that was clearly the aim of the project, it's a parody and sequence of gags that cannot be taken too seriously)! FUN and with a certain historical value too!

Posts

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Frogge
I wanna marry ALL the boys!! And Donna is a meanc
18536
As someone working on a christmas card fangame, I absolutely agree that YDS makes amazing use of refmap and weird humour. I agree that these games are historically really interesting too, a look at members who have since left the community, moved on to other things or occasionally someone you'll recognize, it's a really nice little monument if that makes sense.

Every time I see people praising these games for being short and sweet though I get slightly worried about how big Christmas Card 2020 is because it can easily go up to like 2 hours even without the post-game content xD
author=Frogge
As someone working on a christmas card fangame, I absolutely agree that YDS makes amazing use of refmap and weird humour. I agree that these games are historically really interesting too, a look at members who have since left the community, moved on to other things or occasionally someone you'll recognize, it's a really nice little monument if that makes sense.

Every time I see people praising these games for being short and sweet though I get slightly worried about how big Christmas Card 2020 is because it can easily go up to like 2 hours even without the post-game content xD


Hello to another Master of the Refmap Style! ^_^
YDS made some cool maps and a great intro also in Vanilla Villain (where she also took some resources from other sources like Psycho Platoon Final), I will probably check her other games too.

I absolutely love this and the other community games I reviewed in the past like the Alex series (that is a different kind of community game, since it is more like a chain game made with contributions of various members, still very interesting when looking back).

Wait... TWO hours? Whoa I did not expect that. Now I am curious. Here I spent... uhm 20 minutes? And 10 with Calunio's part. Yes, half of the game is Calunio's adventure.
AWESOME.. I will wait for Christmas then!
I remember this game; YDS suddenly asked me on IRC to say something out of the blue one day (not knowing what it was initially for) and she put down what I said as my dialogue for the game, lol.

author=Frogge
Every time I see people praising these games for being short and sweet though I get slightly worried about how big Christmas Card 2020 is because it can easily go up to like 2 hours even without the post-game content xD

Don’t worry about it. If anything, I like games with a little bit more meat on the bone. Besides, 2 hours isn’t that long.

(Also, TheRpgmakerAddict, YDS is actually a chick, not a dude.)
author=Addit
(Also, TheRpgmakerAddict, YDS is actually a chick, not a dude.)

Buuuut... the profile said "male"!!! -_-'
gosh, ooook I will correct!
(I always try to stay generic, anyway maaan this time I even checked the profile before... also the charset chosen did not help! Looool)
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