Bloomtown: A Different Story

This game is... a little tough to review. There's plenty of good to say about the game, but there's also a fair amount of criticism I'd like to add as well. Brief overview is that you're a Sister and brother duo (playing as the former) that are going to your grandpa's for the summer. Set in seemingly the 1960's, you start noticing odd things about the town and the problems the townsfolk are dealing with and try to solve them, starting with a missing girl. Time works on a scale of a few real life seconds = 1 minute in game. You are free to roam from 9 A.M. (wake-up time) to 10 P.M. (the time you need to get home by), which then immediately turns into "Late" once it reaches 10 P.M. Positives: The Pixel Art (which is pretty much the entire game) is gorgeous. The Music is fantastic, especially the fights and boss fights. Balance for fights feels about right on normal difficulty at least. The game is feature-complete (no post game, but a story driven narrative). The town is nicely designed and feels great to move about. Hugo (best boi). The game doesn't need competitively high specs. Hanging out with your friends actually feels impactful and it's nice seeing the relationships between Emily and the others evolve. Everyone else's skills (aside from Emily) allot them to a role, but you don't necessarily have to follow that, especially with secondary roles that provide you with allowing stat points and skills to be allocated in a unique way. The game keeps a decent rating for violence, gore, and the like (though does somewhat censor really heavy topics to an "if you know" basis). Actual bugs in the game are kept to a minimum (maybe the name of 1 accessory was bad, two or more accessory effects amalgamate their text, and 1 main quest, Sam's plate, bugged in visuals only, while others were inconsequential, such as having extra items from previous game sections in the inventory). A lot of things feel in-place for what you would do back in the time period this is meant to take place in. Negatives: The "time limit" of summer doesn't really exist. There's no dates to go by nor are there any dates to check. This makes any sense of urgency fall flat. For a game that is skirting the line between whether or not it wants to actually implement harshness if you fail to do everything in the main quest line by the time actual summer is up. My first playthrough finished within 1 month's time so it's not difficult to have that stretch to 2 to 2.5 months for a "strict" deadline. You have more than enough time for any "urgent" matter without consequence. The rest of the critique involving any sort of time are, however, with in mind the timescale of each day and the annoyance of having to do everything and then sleep and do again. I find it to not feel interesting to watch it play out in a journey sense. Skill levels of Emily are a little weird. They help with dice rolls for speech checks, but they also work for certain battle mechanics and not really much else. It feels half-baked for the systems it's introduced with. Cooking/baking is one of them. I feel it is not worth the time investment for plenty of items. I feel like if some of the proficiency skill allowed for less time to be used per level or some way to make a batch of something for equal or less time, that would greatly help me actually want to use what I harvested whenever time mattered in the game. Reading books also feels like it should be affected by this as well, allowing for smarter characters to read in a little less time or something. This leans heavily into farming as well. It's a good way to earn proficiency, but it's often not useful unless you really stretch out your time to make licorice every day. You can earn $6 for a 5 hour shift though, which outweighs making licorice when you can buy it with the money with plenty leftover to save. Lockpicks also appear more toward the end, but even though I made a few extra, I was still left with locked chests because it feels like they were just placed around more than in previous sections. Fishing also takes up more time than I expected per cast, even on a failure, which was a bummer. Nadine isn't really utilized much. You see her introduced at the start and then talk to her a couple times. Beyond that, she feels very much underutilized, especially since the ending has your relationship to her feel stronger than it should be for someone you can literally talk to 3-4 times maximum during the summer and then just never see her again. I feel like she was initially given a bigger role and then dropped for some reason. Trying to save can sometimes be annoying early/mid game when there's a cutscene or a "must travel on foot" section every other time and you cannot save during such times (this is especially egregious during the introduction of the farm section). Equipment shops don't feel impactful beyond the initial shop introduced. This is relevant until very late end game, especially if you work every day for the additional $6 and maximize lottery earnings. Save scumming somewhat reveals that the % chances feels somewhat off, especially lower %'s feel a lot lower than they should, even at 40%, whereas higher % feel about right. There's some parts of the game feel more fleshed out than others, such as Norman's questline feels really involved compared to other side quests, even after resolution the next day, as an example. Overall: The game has gorgeous pixel art and music, but does suffer from a few problems in semi-major areas. I would say for the amount of time of 1 playthrough, it's about right on the cusp of what I would consider to be a decent deal, time-to-cash wise. In the current economic landscape, I also wouldn't fault anyone for waiting on a decent sale for the game. Otherwise, the game is really gorgeous and worth a play if you think you like what you see in the trailer.

<3

Amazing story

I got this game totally by random during the summer sale. I have been looking for a game to sink time in and I think I found it! I started this game early in the morning, and I got hooked! Next thing I know, I'm looking at the time and it's already almost 4 hours later! The pixel art is one of the best I have ever seen in my life, the animations are so pretty and detailed, that's insane. And the soundtrack is just Wow! Don't sleep on this, I'm telling you! Can't wait to see what next from this studio:)

Really enjoyed this game. Very stardew valley meets stranger things. Not a farming sim but a slower paced, darker story line. I tried to 100% the game without going too much out of the way and put about 19 hours in. Not super replayable once you finish the storyline but there are a few things with different outcomes based on choices you make or checks that you fail.

like the story and gameplay

This game feels like the American summer holiday movies from the early 2000s. The graphics are beautiful, you can feel the love and passion that was put into creating this game. It's funny and a little silly (you're playing as a kid here after all) and the lore gets surprisingly dark. I enjoy it a lot and can absolutely recommend it. ♥