On-Together: Summer Studies DLC Review

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“On-Together: Summer Studies DLC is the perfect way to bring summer into your workspace! This DLC introduces a new way to focus: You can now connect with friends, make art, focus on work/ studies or exercise all while drinking from a coconut on your floatie in the ocean!” – Steam Description

The Base Game

On-Together: Virtual Co-Working is a digital third space designed to help you focus and stay connected. Work or study with your friends and strangers from all over the world! You can play in fullscreen, on the side of your screen, or you can turn yourself into a transparent sticker on your screen to move around as you wish. There is a fully functioning and customizable Pomodoro timer with a to-do list to help you stay on track. You can meet up with your friends in a variety of locations ranging from the library, a treehouse, or all the way to floating lily pads! You can select from a suite of focus animations for your character that can match what you’re doing in real life. Speaking of matching, you can customize your avatar to your hearts content from a variety of head options to an entire wardrobe of unlockable clothes. You earn tickets for productivity tasks and assorted breaks which you can spend on new clothing, power ups, pet companions, and more. There are also minigames like basketball, fishing, and music jams with over 100 steam achievements if you want to feel EXTRA productive.

New Customization

The Summer DLC is ready to help you prepare for the water with over 40 floaties to choose from. Are you going to pick a balloon animal floatie? An ice cream sunbed? Maybe you’d prefer to float in a donut. I’m not here to judge.

A new season means a whole new vibe. The DLC has added bikinis, swimsuits, sandals, beach hats, bags, and more to decorate your body with, there’s even some “beach-wavy” hairstyles. Finally, I can live out my beach bum dream without the horrors of the real life sun.

What’s the point of dressing up yourself if you can’t dress up your desk too? The DLC added a few new desks and a litany of desk plants and desktop items to really vibe it out this summer.

The DLC adds three new pets to collect. Meet Mantana the Manta Ray, Octako the Dumbo Octopus and Gullito the Seagull! I won’t tell you how to unlock them, but if you’re familiar with the way you unlock pets in On-Together, you’ll figure it out and that’s half the fun!

New Activities

What’s the point of being water ready without being able to go into water! You can now connect with your friends, make art, focus on work, study, and even exercise all while drinking from a coconut on your floaty in the ocean!

The DLC adds some new toothy friends as well! Meet 10 unique sharks spending the season by the shore as you fish in your cool new outfits.

The DLC also added an exclusive summer playlist including 10 bossa nova, calypso and super beachy tracks!

Summer Update to Base Game

Finally along side the DLC there was an update to the base game as well, I’ll let our friends at Gigapuff tell you about it in their words:

Mini map! Find your friends easily on the map of OT island. (This is one of the most requested features so we’re really happy to bring this to you today!)
PomoSync: You can now synchronize your pomodoro timer with your friends! Set your pomodoro live using the little icon in the bottom left corner and turn the timer on or off whenever you like to choose whether to share your schedule with everyone! If you want to join someone else’s timer, just hit tab to see which ones are available to join. Check out the last slide of the tutorial for the instructions!
A new way to focus: Focus on water with your floatie, using the existing focus activities, but this time, in the ocean! Choose from a donut float or a bed float.
A new pet friend! Caretto the Caretta Sea Turtle has arrived to keep you company!
New customization items! Including some highly requested ones. From cozy self-care to fantasy fashion, this update brings items from a comfy bathrobe set to classic witchy looks, alongside brand new hats, bags and cute hairstyles to complete your looks!
Level cap increased to 60! You can now push a little further and take your productivity to the next level!

Graphics– Super cute and unique art style. I particularly love the face options as you’re about to see.
Gameplay– Gameplay is a productivity app at its core, but it’s packaged in a cute way to spend time online with your friends.
Sound– Ambient sound is good and the soundtrack is very hit or miss. I preferred my own music or whatever I was focusing on as I used On-Together to body double with my friends.
Controls– Controls are well put together. There’s bubblegum for flying up and an umbrella for gliding down. There’s even instruments with inputs to play music if you look around.
Story– n/a

Final Thoughts

Pros:

Cute way to body double

Dopamine in the form of tickets that reward you for staying on task

Lots of customization options!

Cons:

A lot of the achievements are just time based, which I understand because it’s not the point of that.. but I WANT achievements, dangit.

I do recommend On-Together’s Summer Studies DLC.

Body doubling is so important, especially to me. I get MOST of my productive work body doubling in some way, shape, or form. Gone are the days of sitting in a discord call, I can now sit in a discord call but virtually body double and see my friend on my screen with me. We can find the D&D table and our characters can play D&D while we play virtually on something like Roll20 or Foundry. We can have music jams, we can even have impromptu fishing competitions. I think a game like this that allows itself to be a hangout spot as well as giving you productivity tools is so important. I think a lot of the time we can get disconnected and feel isolated just being in call but seeing that visual representation of hanging out with your long distance friends really adds an extra oomph! to it. Even if you don’t pick up the DLC, you should pick but the base game. However, I NEED all my cosmetic options, so I really think you should pick up both for maximum customization.