To avoid sidelining the interview thread in the other forums, and since there isn’t a dedicated topic for this already, this is a new thread for doujin eroges, free or otherwise.
The art in Ane Summer! 1 + 2 is rather interesting. (incidentally, the artist (Sumeragi Kohaku) also worked on Bazooka Cafe, which doesn’t seem to be one of his better efforts). From my perspective, there are quite a few eroges with better lineart, but very few with this level of colouring - in that sense it can be compared to minori’s eden*. Oddly enough though after having played Iceno!, my main reason for wanting to try the Ane Summer! games isn’t the art, story or ero - it’s actually the quality of the text, something which I wouldn’t say about most scenario writers.
Mini-review of Iceno! (engdlsite version - their translated plot summary is somewhat misleading as amongst other things, ‘fleeting, painful winter love story’ seems to have become ‘tender’ in their translation): Unlike the Ane Summer! games, the main writer wasn’t in charge of the planning as well, which I think comes through in the story (essentially the game’s only weakness). After the introduction, the game’s split into two halves. The first is a map selection (the scenes with CGs are marked with pink hearts on the map when they appear, although not all of them are ero-scenes), which despite containing some plot foreshadowing, is essentially a collection of slice of life scenes, a lot of which are extremely funny. The second half (after day 14) is completely linear, and contains almost all of the story development. Depending on the choices made in the first half of the game, the game will either finish with a bad ending, or move past that section onto a good ending (kind of like Mizuki’s good/bad ending structure in Yume Miru Kusuri). Because of the ending structure, I’d strongly recommend using a walkthrough, and aiming for the good ending first (as the bad ending kind of terminates along the way, and the final parts of the game probably won’t have the same impact otherwise). Aside from the scenario itself not being quite as good as it might have been in absolute terms (can’t really describe why without venturing into spoiler territory), the pacing is also very problematic, as there’s not really a gradual progression between the game’s two halves.
If you take the price into account though, nothing else can really be faulted - the art’s rather good (DEVILS DEVEL CONCEPT artist, but the lineart’s much improved), music’s certainly passable and the writing is excellent, probably some of the best from 2009. Ero, well, it’s high quality but the scenes themselves are a little bit peculiar, although there’s nothing particularly offputting in them either. It’s maybe a bit over 4 hours or so all up, and I guess because of the length and scenario weaknesses, as much as I enjoyed it, I can’t say it’s any more than an 80% eroge.
[Edit: Fixed the incomplete sentence - thanks Baldo.]
, except here 
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), there are doujins making a better work in ero, art OR story, but Minami kara no Tegami is a real all-around product, and cheap too 
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