Summer Pockets

Summer Pockets is a romance visual novel in which the player assumes the role of Hairi Takahara. Much of its gameplay is spent on reading the story's narrative and dialogue. The text in the game is accompanied by character sprites, which represent who Hairi is talking to, over background art. Throughout the game, the player encounters CG artwork at certain points in the story, which take the place of the background art and character sprites.

When the game is completed at least once, a gallery of the viewed CGs and played background music becomes available on the game's title screen. Summer Pockets follows a branching plot line with multiple endings, and depending on the decisions that the player makes during the game, the plot will progress in a specific direction.

Summer Pockets is set on an isolated, rural and peaceful fictional island on the Seto Inland Sea called Torishirojima (based on Naoshima). Among its residents is Umi Takahara, the daughter of Hairi Takahara and Shiroha Takahara (née Naruse). Shiroha possesses a cursed power that foretells her death and dies when giving birth to Umi. Fearing of Umi inheriting Shiroha's cursed power, Hairi takes Umi away from her hometown and forbids any connection with Torishirojima and her mother. This sabotages their bond, yet Umi still manages to sneak on the island and awakens her power, inadvertently travelling through time back to July 2000, when her parents first met.

The game starts in July 2000. Hairi Takahara uses the recent death of his grandmother as an excuse to come to Torishirojima to take care of her estate sale. Once there, he gets to know Shiroha Naruse, who can foretell the future and believes she is cursed and intentionally alienates herself. Besides Shiroha, there are three other girls who are the focus of the story.

Before the production of Summer Pockets began, Key was in the process of developing Angel Beats! 1st Beat (2015) and Harmonia (2016). At that time in early 2015, scenario writer Yūto Tonokawa was leading a new project for another visual novel, but this project was postponed to focus on Angel Beats! and Harmonia.

Tonokawa later resigned from Key prior to the release of Angel Beats! 1st Beat in June 2015, and the project he was leading was subsequently abandoned. Following this, Kai was brought in to direct a new project, which would later become Summer Pockets. An in-house competition among Visual Arts employees was conducted to submit ideas for the new project as long as it was based around a concept involving an enjoyable, everyday life and a tearful story, but otherwise not being constrained by previous works by Key.

Summer Pockets premiered as the No. com, a major redistributor of visual novel and domestic anime products, during the month of its release, and at No. 4 in July. It was later ranked as the No.

com for the entirety of 2018. It was also the No. 1 most sold computer game on the Japanese Amazon for 12 consecutive weeks (excluding when it was sold out). com during the month of its release for the limited and special edition versions, and was ranked at No.