TANUKI: Pon's Summer - Switch 2 Review

A shrine in disrepair, no income, an understaffed post office, and one BMXing Tanuki who just wants to play video games and have a lazy life. Relatable. TANUKI: Pon’s Summer is a cosy BMX game, where you rebuild the town's tanuki shrine in time for the once-in-a-fifty-year festival, at the behest of the Tanuki god. To get funds, you pick a postal delivery job and start delivering packages around the island while finding people to fix broken fixtures around the shrine.

The Good

TANUKI: Pon’s Summer has adopted a stylistic art design that adds some zany character designs and it’s adorable as can be. Pon himself is such a little cutie that has some of the most fun reactions as his form of communication. Your boss at the post office is also a standout design that brings a smile to my face every morning you start your day. Also, all the creatures that you can catch are some of the most adorable depictions of animals I've seen, very plush toy-like.

I would describe TANUKI: Pon’s Summer as a cosy BMX game, where you blend the core gameplay of a BMX or skateboarding game with village-building mechanics that have been focused into a shrine. The BMX mechanics are pretty well thought out, although they could be a little bit more robust with more than just the four directional inputs and face buttons to choose what move you execute, like other well-known titles in the genre. As you go around the island making deliveries, you’ll also help out your customers with requests that’ll result in some small activities that change up the gameplay. One minute you could be fighting a sumo, the next you’re pouring drinks, trying to get the right mixture of foam and liquid ratio at the customers' request.

The shrine section of the game is where you can let your creativity fly. Not only do you get to decorate and place objects around the grounds of the shrine, but you’ll also get to paint and use stickers on important features, such as the new torii gate you build. Although I found the painting to be slightly awkward to use, and unfortunately you only get to paint one side of the gate, which is then replicated on the reverse side.

TL;DR

• Adorable art style
• Fun mix of genres 
• Lots of creativity

The Bad

One of the biggest gripes I have comes purely from the way the BMX handles when you try to jump to the side, usually to another rail. There was one challenge in particular where this was a frustrating issue to me. You had to collect the letters to spell tanuki, which were placed on a series of electricity wires. I tried multiple times using different controller positions to adjust the angle of my jump, but I always ended up jumping either straight or too far to the side to land on the next rail. 

The other issue where the controls were awkward came from the races, where the dash equivalent is bound to the same button as grinding on a rail. So if you want to jump over a rail, you have to let go of dashing to clear the rail and then dash again when you land. While a minor issue, it's not something you want to be thinking about when under pressure on a time-sensitive challenge. 

The odd jobs that customers ask of you during delivery are a fun break from the BMX adventures, but some of them are pretty tedious. The worst standout is making skewers, where you need to time when you poke the skewer into a random mess of moving ingredients. It's so easy to only get two or three ingredients on the skewer, which results in a lower score. Another time waster was picking parcels up out of water with a crane. There was no real challenge; it just felt like it was there to waste time, albeit only a small amount. 

Probably one of the bigger frustrations is how long it takes to respawn if you fall into water; it's a solid 5-6 seconds of watching the drowning animation, which is most egregious when it spawns you in a spot where you fall straight back into the water. Luckily if that happens, it will respawn at the next closest piece of land that you were on. My main issue comes from when it happens in the timed challenges and you need to reset afterwards and the button to reset is enabled until after the animation plays.

TL;DR

• Controls a bit awkwardly at times
• Activities can be tedious
• Respawning takes ages

Final Score: 8/10

A genuinely adorable and incredible fun experience was had in TANUKI: Pon’s Summer that has a few minor issues that are mostly small annoyances over anything game-breaking. I wish postal delivery was as much fun in real life, despite the huge hazards to health and safety. Ultimately the mix of the arcade sports genre with the life sim aspects has resulted in an experience I can't help but recommend to anyone who enjoys either genre.

Thank you for checking out our TANUKI: Pon's Summer Switch 2 review, thank you to Critical Reflex for providing the review code and thank you to our Patreon Backers for their ongoing support:

• Andrew Caluzzi (Inca Studios / Camped Out)
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