‘Sumire’ Review – A Short and Emotional Adventure With a Brilliant Narrative
Sumire, a $5.99 game by GameTomo, caught my eye from the first few seconds of the trailer announcing it, before it came out for Nintendo Switch and PC. The music and art were great each time, but the story is what makes the experience stand out. Since then, I've played Sumire on both Switch and Steam. Even though the game play itself wasn't anything special, the story, writing, art, and music in Sumire made it an unforgettable experience. I was very happy to hear that it was coming to iOS, and I didn't want to miss the chance to experience Sumire's sad story again.
In Sumire, a girl with the same name keeps having dreams about her dead grandmother. She feels like her grandmother is trying to tell her something after waking up from yet another dream. Sumire lives with her mother, who seems sad because she and Sumire's father broke up. Sumire feels alone in this house, and she wants to make things better. At this point, a magical seed comes into play. Sumire meets this seed when someone or something from outside breaks a window and throws it into the house. Sumire plants the seed, and it grows into a magical flower.
This magical flower can only stay in the human world for one day. It wants to see as much as possible and have a great day. If Sumire can help, her grandmother might let her meet her. Here is where the sad story starts. When I first played Sumire, I wasn't ready for how hard the story hit me right away. I won't give away the best parts of the story, but the best parts are the characters, some of the darker parts of the story, optional quests with funny results, and the different interactions you have as you try to show the magical flower a great day.
Sumire is mostly about the story, so don't expect much from the gameplay other than the usual point-and-click interactions, free movement, fetch quests, and the occasional mini-game or puzzle. During the day, time passes when you do certain things and watch certain events, but you can also spend time exploring and interacting to find coins that you can use to buy random things or specific things that you need to do some quests. Sumire can help or ignore situations, and a karma meter keeps track of everything she does. Don't try to do everything in one day, because Sumire has challenges that are more fun when you play it again and try new things.
Sumire is beautiful to look at because it looks like a painting. Every new place in the story is great, even the ones in the sadder parts. I still hope that GameTomo will print an artbook for Sumire. Aside from how it looks, the animation work is also good, even if some of the movements feel a bit awkward. Some of the game's visuals are inspired by Studio Ghibli, while others just feel like a love letter to different parts of Japanese culture.
Sumire doesn't have voice acting, but it has one of the best soundtracks in recent years to make up for it. The music goes well with the story and is worth listening to even when you're not playing the game. The songs are mostly played on an acoustic guitar, with a few other instruments thrown in here and there. Even now, the story of this song makes it hard to listen to the title track without getting emotional. If you don't want to watch Sumire for whatever reason, you should check out the soundtrack because it has some great songs.
For this review, I wanted to compare the iOS version on my iPhone 11 and iPad Pro (2020) to the Nintendo Switch and PC versions to help people who are new to the game decide where to get it. Sumire was a slow-paced and slow-moving game, and it had some technical problems on Nintendo Switch, such as long load times in some areas and some performance problems. On the other hand, the PC version is great and even works well on my laptop. Sumire seems to aim for 30fps on iOS. Even though it keeps its target frame rate pretty well on my iPhone and iPad Pro, I was disappointed to see that it wasn't as smooth as the PC version. I hoped that newer iOS and iPadOS devices would aim for 60 frames per second or more. GameTomo told me that the performance of the Android version will be worked on as the team makes it. At least on some devices, I hope the maximum frame rate can be raised.
Except for how fast it runs, Sumire looks great on both my iPhone and iPad. With the new changes to the mobile interface, the touch targets are nice and big. In the iOS version, you can move Sumire with a floating joystick on the left side of the screen, and you can tap on a point of interest on the right to interact with it. This seems a little strange, since you can't touch the right side of the screen to move a conversation or interaction forward. This part needs some work because the only way to move the conversation forward is to tap a speech bubble or the interaction button when one is available. I asked the developers if this could be made better or if there would be an option to tap to move. They said that the second one is not planned at the moment, but they will look into the first one.
Sumire does work with controllers, but it doesn't look like it's fully implemented yet. My PS5 DualSense controller had a few problems, but the Xbox Series X controller worked great. I didn't play the whole game with the controller because I wanted to try out the new touch controls, but there is some kind of controller support that works right now. GameTomo told me that they can add controller support if people ask for it, but using a controller isn't supported right now. I hope they will think about adding this in a future update.
Sumire is a must-play for anyone who likes story-driven adventures and heartwarming stories, even though the iOS version's interface is a bit annoying at times. Playing through the game once should take you just under 3 hours, but the challenges will make you want to play it again to try to see different outcomes or finish tasks you couldn't do the first time. I hope that GameTomo will think about fixing some of the interface and control problems, because Sumire on iOS could be my favorite version of the game.
I've gotten a lot of people to play the game Sumire on Nintendo Switch, and I hope to do the same on iOS. Even though the port has a few problems right now, it is still worth seeing if you like sad stories. The graphics and music may seem like the best parts at first, but Sumire is a GameTomo game I want to see more of in the future. I'm excited to see how updates change this version, but I'm glad I was able to play Sumire on another platform and still hope it gets a physical release on Nintendo Switch someday.
