Our review for Summer in Mara is up on LadiesGamers.com. As expected, we love the game, and as we tend to do: for games we love we try to make guides. Here’s the first one, helping you along in the introduction chapter of Summer in Mara.
And if you like our work on LadiesGamers, consider supporting us! [kofi]
Are you wondering what to do next, or how to let Koa run? Or are you getting used to the way watering works or fishing? We have you covered! And stay tuned, as more guides will follow!
Get oranges and sow carrots
This first part of Summer in Mara is a sort of a training part, teaching you the ropes of how the game works. After the opening scene of Yaya Haku finding baby Koa the game opens up with Koa sitting on the roof of her home. Click A to get going, jump down and go to Yaya Haku.
She gives you your first quest: get oranges. See the trees that look like big lollypops? Approach them and hit Y. The oranges will fall down for you to pick up with Y.
Give Yaya her requested three oranges and get a recipe for orange juice, plus carrot seeds and a hoe for your next chore: prepare a crop field to grow Carrots.
At first, learning how to work with thè hoe and such took me forever! See the little hand that appears in the down left down corner? If you push the buttons on the D pad to left and right you get new options, in this case to use the hoe. Hold the hoe in hand, walk to the plot and you’ll get circles on the ground and a Y-Prepare.
Pressing Y three times and the field is prepared. Press Y again and a screen appears of your Inventory and you can then plant the Carrot seeds. Walk to the well, and a bucket appears above the well. Press Y and you’ve got a bucket full of water above your head. Walk to the plot of land you put the carrots in, and the water will automatically be pored. On the left side of the screen you see the bucket and a circle around it, indicating how much water is left. A number appears above the carrots specifying the number of days it takes to grow them.
The art of forestry
Yaya gives you the materials needed to make an axe, plus a recipe. Go into the house pressing Y and you automatically go to the crafting menu. Choose Tools, it shows what you need for an Axe. Press A and it’s yours.
Walk down the path to meet Yaya under a pine tree. Yaya teaches you to thank the tree you’re going to cut, and to replace it you have to plant a Pine Nut to eventually get a new one. Select the Axe by scrolling left or right on your DPad and cut the tree. Then select the hoe, press X for plant and plant the Pine Nut. The circle appearing above the Pine nut shows if it’s a good spot to plant, press A to do so. Above the circle it gives you two numbers, in this case 25/36. This number indicates how many trees there are, and how many there can be at the maximum.
Talk to Yaya again and get some sugar and a new recipe for Orange jam. Go to the house, enter by pressing Y and select Kitchen. Make the jam and bring it to Yaya. She is now farther down the slope at a fish pond.
Making a fish dish
Talk to Yaya at the fish pond and she gives you an old tank and a new recipe for Resin Float. You have to go an collect fuel from the Guardian’s Door Fountain. To do so, go back up the slope and keep to the right until you see a sort of tunnel. Go through it and you will see the Guardian’s Door Fountain. At the back you see a sort of big shell, press Y to “get” and the tank will fill up.
Go down to the beach where the boat is, with Yaya on it. Talk to her, after which she leaves to get some things at another island. Koa decides to make dinner for them both, but first she has to catch some fish. Luckily she thinks up the recipe to make a fishing rod. To do so at the workshop you need 3 wood and 1 resin float. The float is made by using resin ( you picked that up earlier when you felled the pine tree) and some more wood.
In this intro you don’t need to go far to get wood. You can destroy the fences around your fields, as they are magically back after the intro is over.
When you’ve made the fishing rod go down to the pond. There’s a sign there with a fish on it and the number 3. Which means you can catch three fish. Using the worms in the bucket next to it, also three. The bait ( worms) determines what you can catch with it.
Fishing means pressing the required button when the circle colors. A screen appears with the stamina of the fish on top, the strength of the line at the bottom and a lever in between. Try to keep the lever in sync using your left stick and catch the fish. In the intro you can keep repeating this, giving you ample time to practice, you’re not hampered by the number 3 above the sign. After that, go back to the house to cook Yummy fish (or is it, lol) with carrots.
At the Guardians Door
Next task: light a fire atop the mountain so Yaya can find her way back. For this you need to make a torch, just wood is enough to do so.
Go down from the house, but before the pond you turn left. Past the entrance to the Tunnel there’s a path going up. Follow that. At the bottom there’s already a brazier to light your torch at pressing Y. See if you can run up the path quickly enough. Use ZR to run, and I can tell you she is really a firecracker while running!
Don’t worry if your torch didn’t last long enough, you can also use the brazier closer to the top. So go to the brazier close to the top. Light the big fire, and note the two statues on the other side of the top, called Nao and Nio. You’ll get to them later.
Go down to the beach and the pier, where Yaya is moored. She asks you to go to the Guardians door. But first, you get a key to open the chest next to the house. In it, you need to pick up the Chrystalis sphere. Once you have it go to the Tunnel to the Guardians door ( where you filled up the tank for the boat earlier).
Yaya gives you a lesson in Mara history, reminding Koa that the door will only open when the island is truly threatened. All four Chrystalis need to be placed then, as if they were four keys. Everything is connected in the world, as are the four dots on the door. The spiral connects them: the wind of Mara.
Yaya uses this lesson to remind us that every action can be beneficial for others. We have to help people, even if they are mean: they are merely lost and need help. But, she ads, there are people who are truly evil! After this, Koa goes home and to sleep ( by pressing Y at the house and choose Sleep).
You then see a sort of dream sequence with the spheres. Want to see it again: find the sequence below!
The real game starts!
The intro is over now, you wake up to a new situation. Everything is back to how it was before the intro. And worse, as somehow the island looks more derelict. Crops are gone, the Pine seed you planted is gone too. The oranges and fish you gathered have vanished. All you have to start with are 5 carrots, 5 carrot seeds, 1 thread, and the clothes Koa is wearing.
What’s even worse is that Yaya is gone, the pier is submerged in water and the boat is on its side in the water.
Notice that now Koa has an energy meter, showing the stamina, and underneath are depictions of apples. At the start, you have four apples to fill up. To the right top is the time of day, as Mara has a day and night cycle.
The game sets you task after task at the start. Do keep an eye on your stamina and your apples. Stamina replenishes when you sleep, yet the apples don’t. You can only replenish them by eating.
In the first days after the game starts, you get a recipe for a hammer. You also find out that the well is ruined, you can now only destroy it and rebuild a new one. First though, you need to make a bucket and gather wood and stone. Unlike the other things you make in the workshop, the well is made directly in place. As you’ll find, it’s a bit of a pain too: the thing goes dry in now time, waiting for rain water…you can solve this by making a new well, that’ll give you water again for a bit.
On the second night of sleep you are awakened at night to go in search for the light in the sea. Swim over there, and you’ll get a bit of a strange sequence. The game automatically puts you back at your house after that, and it’s morning!
Time to give an offering to Nio and Nao and light the fire on top of the mountain. That perhaps will shed some light! Spend the day as usual, and at night, the same sequence repeats.
The next day, you can find your new friend Napopo at the fishing pond. Bring an orange juice to her ( is it a her?) and after that, the crayons that are kept in the trunk in front of your house along with a wooden board.
Napopo helps you to get the boat in order after that by prompting you to go get the old tank on the boat, and join Napopo at the guardians door. Notice that there is a small sort of shrine with flowers around there now, that wasn’t there before!
Fill up the tank, go back to the boat and using the materials needed make oars. Take back the oars, wood and metal that you’ve ‘mined’ from the rocks in the tunnel and fix the boat.
After this, you can stay on the island and do what you want to, but you can also swim to the boat, board it and see a navigation screen start up!
Navigate to the north of the map to go to a new island called Qälis. Remember the map you’ve seen pop up from the first in the game? I wondered where I could find those characters, but it seems a map for this island!
You’re now sail off towards your adventure in Mara
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