Gameplay
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.
There are six main plot lines to experience, which is increased to ten in Summer Pockets Reflection Blue. Four of the six plot lines are initially available in Summer Pockets, and seven of the ten plot lines are initially available in Reflection Blue. Throughout gameplay, the player is given multiple options to choose from, and text progression pauses at these points until a choice is made. Some decisions can lead the game to end prematurely, which offer an alternative ending to the plot. To view all plot lines in their entirety, the player will have to replay the game multiple times and choose different choices to further the plot to an alternate direction. All heroine routes are available when first playing both Summer Pockets and Reflection Blue. In both versions, each heroine will disappear from the game's title screen once her route has been completed. When all of the heroine routes in either version have been played at least once, an additional scenario called Alka is made available. Upon the completion of the Alka route, another scenario called Pocket is made available, which serves as the true conclusion to the story. In Reflection Blue, Umi's route becomes available after the completion of Pocket. In both versions, once Pocket is completed, all heroines reappear on the game's title screen.
There are two minigames featured in Summer Pockets and Reflection Blue. The first is a table tennis minigame that takes the form of a quick time event where the object is to click one of the circular indicators on the player's side at the moment when the ball hits it. Successive hits on any of the indicators will result in the filling of an intensity gauge and will increase the number of indicators from three to five which frequently change position. Successive hits on any one indicator will change its color from blue, to yellow, red, purple, and finally a multicolored "Super Shot!!" indicator. The accuracy of the clicks is scored from good, to great, and finally excellent. Play continues until either the intensity gauge is depleted, resulting in the player's loss, or until the player has accumulated enough points to knock out the opponent. In Reflection Blue, the table tennis minigame now also features doubles matches with the same basic mechanics.
The second minigame is an intricate catching and battling game called Islamon. There are 100 different Islamon to catch in 10 separate locations around the island with 20 kinds of bait. Any bait can be used in any location, but only one to four kinds of Islamon are available per bait, per location. The encounter rate for each Islamon also depends on the bait used in a certain location. For example, using Sugared Water in the Mountains results in a 25% encounter rate for a Cabbage Butterfly, but using the same bait at the Beach results in a 30% encounter rate for the same Islamon. The encounter rates for Islamon range from 5–100% (30 of the 200 permutations have a single Islamon that can be encountered). The player starts with three kinds of bait and three locations to set them. At first, the player can set two traps with bait per day, but this can increase to five per day depending on the player's rank.
A player can battle with their Islamon against an opponent twice per day, with each player allowed to use up to three Islamon per battle. Each Islamon has both a star rating from 1–5 and one of three types—Water, Wind or Earth—where Water beats Wind, Wind beats Earth, and Earth beats Water. Players customize their stock of available Islamon and choose which ones to battle with and in what order, but the rest of the battle occurs automatically. The goal of the battles is to increase in rank among 35 other individuals, and defeating an opponent will result in switching ranks with them. This continues until the player achieves rank 8, and from then on, the player can only gain one rank with each victory. Once the player defeats the players ranked 7 up to 2, the player can then battle the rank 1 opponent as the final boss. Unexpected events can occur during battle based on the relationships certain Islamon have with a given opponent.
