Mystery Lover: Nonexistent Summer, otherwise known simply as Mystery Lover, is a Chinese developed visual novel for the Nintendo Switch that released digitally onto Nintendo eShop in October 2023. Today, we’ll be taking a quick look at what it has to offer and to see if it is worth investing your reading time in.
Published by Cyberisle, and developed by Never Knows Best, Mystery Lover: Nonexistent Summer is a romance mystery visual novel that focuses on Reed Garrison and his interactions within the Mysteria Club. This club, lead by Reed’s self-appointed younger sister Layla with help from classmate Charles, sees the group work together to investigate rumours and solve mysteries in town. One such mystery is that of the missing Vtuber, Hitomi, and the rumour of a murder inside the apartment she streams from.
This mystery is portrayed in the (rather sluggish) opening act of the game and sets a rather mysterious tone for the game. Interestingly this tone dramatically changes in the next chapter as it shifts to Reed, Layla and Charles discussing the rumour to see if there is any truth to it. Despite the sudden change of location and tone it serves as a nice introduction to both the potential story and the main cast of characters that will be involved.
From here the game focuses on Reed, and he introduces us to his girlfriend, Persephone. Throughout the next ten chapters we get a mixture of Reed and Persephone investigating the Vtuber mystery and flashbacks of Reed and Persephone developing their relationship. It’s an interesting mixture and I found myself continuing to read(play) in order to find out more. It also helps that each chapter is only 25 minutes in length, so easily digestible during commutes, with each chapter having a clear topic.
This mixture continues until the tenth chapter, at which point you’ll notice the story start to take a drastic change. What once seemed like a story revolving around a disappearing vTuber soon changes into the disappearance of Reed’s girlfriend. This change in direction once again kept me invested in the story, but sadly I wasn’t able to see how the story unfolds beyond the twelfth chapter.
It seems Mystery Lover: Nonexistent Summer has multiple endings and requires some investigating (correct decisions) in order to get past the first (bad) ending. An ending which sees Persephone disappear, and all existence of her erased, and Reed unable to find out why. The game does feature multiple choice options, but despite choosing different options I’ve not yet been able to reach a different ending or move the story in a different direction.
It is a shame that I haven’t been able to progress further, as I was really enjoying the story presented to me, but there are other issues in this game that also effect its enjoyment. Most notably is that Mystery Lover: Nonexistent Summer features a poor English translation and the games text often has typo’s, incorrect line-breaks and overages in the dialogue box. The English translation also includes the actual titles of services, shows and games when making references, which is a bold choice considering these are usually altered to avoid any repercussions from copyright holders.
That’s not all, as according to this AMA Reddit Thread the original Chinese names of the characters have been changed in the English text to make them easier to read for English readers. It’s been awhile since I’ve seen character names changed for a different audience (other than edited anime for Kids TV channels) and is certainly an interesting decision to make. Bizarrely there are also performance issues, with the game occassionally stuttering between scene changes or a delay in correctly displaying text on screen in the usual way.
Overall Mystery Lover: Nonexistent Summer is a simplistic visual novel that features an intriguing story with well drawn characters and fully voiced sequences, but due to the poor translation (localisation) and difficulty in progression the story it’s not an experience I would actively recommend. That being said, despite its flaws in performance and presentation I did enjoy what I experienced and I am curious to know how the story unfolds…
Mystery Lover: Nonexistent Summer is available digitally for the Nintendo Switch for £8.99 via the Nintendo eShop.
Disclosure: I received a free review copy of this product from keymailer. #MysteryLover
