{"id":21095,"date":"2021-03-22T00:01:39","date_gmt":"2021-03-22T00:01:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/?p=21095"},"modified":"2021-03-06T14:15:33","modified_gmt":"2021-03-06T14:15:33","slug":"summer-catchers-switch-pc-mobile","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/2021\/03\/22\/summer-catchers-switch-pc-mobile\/","title":{"rendered":"Summer Catchers (Switch, PC, Mobile)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>If you are ready for Spring and Summer to get here, you may want to pick up Summer Catchers.\u00a0 Play as a little girl who has lived way up north all her life and has never seen Summer before.\u00a0 One day, while out in the snowy forest, she meets a talking wolf who is also a craftsman.\u00a0 He offers to build her a wooden car so she can drive down South to the beach so she can finally see what Summer is like.\u00a0 Summer Catchers is an endless runner adventure available for Switch, PC, and mobile devices, but reviewed on Switch here.<\/p>\n

In the main game, you\u2019ll be constantly driving forward all the time.\u00a0 On the right side of the screen are tools you can use when you highlight them and press a button.\u00a0 These tools include bumpers that let you run into something, tires that let you jump over obstacles, rockets to give you a boost of speed, or a propeller that\u2019ll let you fly a short distance.\u00a0 When you use a tool, another will appear in its place.\u00a0 If you don\u2019t have any good tools to use, you can press another button to swap one out for another, but you\u2019ll have to wait for a cooldown meter before you can do that again.\u00a0 Your car can take a couple of hits, but if you crash you\u2019ll have to start at the base again.<\/p>\n

The base lets you do a few things.\u00a0 There is a shop where you can buy more tools with the mushrooms you collect while driving.\u00a0 The good thing is that I never once ran into a case where I ran out of mushrooms to buy more tools.\u00a0 You can also unlock new outfits and cars, but they are purely cosmetic.\u00a0 You can also talk to the animal friend of that world, and view objectives that animal requires of you.\u00a0 These include collecting certain objects as you play, or using certain tools at the right spots.\u00a0 Once you complete that animal\u2019s objectives, you\u2019ll go up against a \u201cboss\u201d which usually means using tools to outrun a yeti or a tornado for a certain distance.\u00a0 You can also check a mailbox at the base and write letters to previous animal friends, which is cute, as well as buy postcards to put in a photo album scrapbook.\u00a0 Once you are ready to go again, highlight the car and start driving once more!<\/p>\n

The game does a good job of making you feel like you\u2019re on a road trip.\u00a0 Sometimes while driving, the action will pause so the girl can look at something weird in the background, like a giant mountain with eyes or a huge feather falling to the ground.\u00a0 And other times, when you crash, you won\u2019t immediately go back to base, but meet a new character and sometimes play a mini-game like a maze challenge or music rhythm game.\u00a0 Completing these will usually net you a new animal friend that acts as a power up when you jump and touch certain objects.\u00a0 I also like the pixel graphics and some of the music is pretty catchy, too.<\/p>\n

Summer Catchers does have a few problems, though.\u00a0 Even on the Easy difficulty selection, the game eventually just gets too hard, at least for me.\u00a0 I never could get past the tornado boss.\u00a0 And while they explain some of the objectives pretty well, other times you are left in the dark. \u00a0For instance, you get a tool to help you with that tornado, but I have no idea what it does.\u00a0 Plus the progress feels a little slow and sometimes the shuffling of tools makes the game feel like it relies on luck more than skill.\u00a0 It\u2019s a shame, too, because otherwise this is one of the better endless runners I\u2019ve ever played, with lots of charm and things to do.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Kid Factor:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Violence is fairly minimal.\u00a0 If you crash your car, the kid will fly out and land on the ground, spinning around for a bit (sometimes landing on her head).\u00a0 And then she\u2019ll say something funny like \u201cI should buckle up\u201d or whatever.\u00a0 Reading skill is needed for the text, and younger gamers may find it too difficult.\u00a0 Summer Catchers is rated E for Everyone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you are ready for Spring and Summer to get here, you may want to pick up Summer Catchers.\u00a0 Play as a little girl who has lived way up north all her life and has never seen Summer before.\u00a0 One day, while out in the snowy forest, she meets a talking wolf who is also […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":21059,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21095","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-game-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21095","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21095"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21095\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21097,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21095\/revisions\/21097"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21059"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21095"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21095"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21095"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}