Kyoto-based studio Denkiworks delivers a warm tribute to rural Japan with Tanuki: Pon's Summer. Set in an idyllic countryside centered around an aging shrine, the game captures the lazy potential of long summer days.
Table Of Content
You play as Pon, a tanuki who let the shrine's grounds crumble while eating chips and playing video games. After tanuki gods pressure him to fix the shrine before a big festival, Pon takes a post office job and spends a summer month delivering mail on his BMX bike to earn the needed money.
BMX Mail Delivery Drives Tanuki: Pon's Summer
Each in-game day begins at the post office, where Pon packs mail into his basket through a Tetris-like minigame. Although the overall storyline is linear, you can tackle deliveries across the small, dense island in any order you choose.
Riding the BMX bike is the true heart of Tanuki: Pon's Summer, especially since Pon cannot jump on foot and walks slowly. Fortunately, the town features ramps, handrails, and sunny rooftops that turn every delivery route into an informal skatepark.
Pulling off aerial tricks requires simple directional stick movements and button inputs, while stringing together combos takes more practice. Beyond occasional optional challenges and timed resident requests, the game lets you wheelie down roads and bounce across rooftops just for the fun of it.
Quirky Islanders and Mixed Minigames
Rather than focusing solely on Pon, the story highlights the bonds between the island's eccentric residents. Over the month, Pon helps soften the feud between rival sushi and yakitori chefs, assists a creatively stifled photographer, meets a tough guy with a soft spot, and helps reunite an estranged artisan father and daughter.
Helping these neighbors introduces a huge variety of one-off minigames that rarely repeat. You might skewer meat and vegetables for yakitori, stack sushi to order, serve shaved ice and foamy beer, ring up convenience store customers, play drums for a musician, or hit home runs at the local baseball field.
Many of these brief activities capture the playful spirit of childhood summers. However, slower chores like sanding logs at a snail's pace, cutting down excessive bamboo stalks, or rolling boulders through a maze drag on and interrupt the brisk momentum of riding Pon's bike.
Optional Shrine Decor, Runtime, and Bugs
Alongside mail routes, Pon can gradually unlock wide, empty patches of land around the shrine to decorate with furniture earned from quests or bought from a lingering kitsune. While fans of Animal Crossing: New Horizons may appreciate the option, the decorating lacks clear parameters and feels extraneous compared to the faster-paced bike traversal.
Finishing the main story, side challenges, and plenty of freestyle riding takes about 10 hours. Because game-breaking pre-release bugs caused lost progress and the autosave feature is not very generous, players should rely on manual saves frequently in case issues persist past launch.
Source: Tanuki: Pon's Summer Review
