Whatever effect the author was aiming for in Last Day of Summer, it wasn't realism. That's okay- from the set up I was expecting slightly sentimental magic-realism like in Dandelion Wine. This didn't exactly materialise.
(Spoiler - click to show)I first went east and found a boat that couldn't be untied. Aha! I thought, I will need a cutting tool. Went west and found a knife lying helpfully on the ground. A bit easier than I'd anticipated. Later I find myself in the town. My first playthrough of the game ended prematurely because I'd timed it out using the xyzzy command, so I restarted and did everything as before. An NPC is upset, but its all very vague. I do the rest of the puzzles, which are easy to work out but aren't very realistic (maybe that's the point?). The game ends happily enough and I wonder what the point in all that was. The writing was pleasant enough and everything obvious worked with no bugs (though I didn't really stretch it), but other than that there's not really much to say.
(I should note that to my knowledge this was the game the author used for learning Inform- and there was at least enough promise that I'd certainly play any future game he developed).