Summer Days

“If I could come across you in summer, my destiny would be changed into other.”

Summer Days is a spin-off after the 2005 game School Days. It was followed by the 2010 game Cross Days.

It is told from the perspective of Setsuna Kiyoura and plays out like the previous Radish series of games, once again revolving around Radish Restaurant and revealing the fate of its original characters. Many previous existing relationships are revealed in this game such as Sekai and Setsuna's parentage and characters such as Youko Inou, Mai Inou, and Shun Hazama, who were teenagers in Summer Radish Vacation, make appearances as adults.

In 2012 a remake titled Shiny Days was released, which extended the story line and added a new heroine, Inori Ashikaga.

Gameplay
Like School Days and other visual novels, Summer Days requires extremely minimal gameplay. At predetermined intervals, the game presents the player with one or two choices to make, or the player can choose to not make a choice. These choices change the course of the story and takes the player to one of the many endings.

Like it's predecessor and unlike traditional visual novels that consist of the protagonist talking to static images of characters, Summer days is unusual in that it incorporates motion and voice, making it similar to an anime series. The player is initially given the ability to pause, skip to the next part, return to the beginning of the current part and return to the beginning of a previous part. The player can also turn on the ability to skip to the next choice, although if the player hasn't viewed a specific part the player will be stopped at those. After the player has viewed a specific part the ability to fast forward becomes available. Progress can be saved at anytime in up to 100 slots.

Plot
Differing from School Days the game takes place during summer vacation, which is a few weeks before the second semester of a high school in Japan. This does not mean the game happens before School Days, rather Makoto happens to be acquainted with the characters before the second semester starts.

Setsuna's enjoying her summer vacation before the start of second term when Sekai comes down with a cold and asks her to take her shift at her part-time waitress job. After a day at the job she doesn't like it but says Sekai is coming back to work tomorrow but Sekai's illness is revealed to be the mumps, since she never got it when she was a child. Setsuna, being sad at having to cover for Sekai again takes a walk around and then runs into Makoto playing with his sister Itaru.

Trivia

 * The Succumbing to Pleasure Ending in which Setsuna and Mai are shown in dominatrix costumes and Setsuna uses a whip to punish Makoto for his infidelity can be seen as an allusion to Midori Nagawa's Queen Ending from Pure Mail in which she also dons a dominatrix costume and uses a whip to torture Kei Ogata.
 * In a scene, Makoto can joke he knows Kokoro from a previous life. This is a throwback to Large PonPon, which has a scene where protagonist Ayumu Inou can tell someone the same thing.
 * When Kotonoha demonstrates her family's katana to Makoto, he jokes that she may cut her love-rival's neck open with it, which she anxiously denies. This is a reference of the (in)famous "Bloody End" in School Days.