Bloomtown: A Different Story review – Cozy RPG

In a world that seems to be at war with itself, cozy games offer a good way to escape for a few hours. Often presented in a nostalgic 16-bit style, harking back to the good old early 90s, they are a lot about friendship, farming, and cafe ownership, offering a little respite from all the guns and stabbing of more conventional video game genres.

Bloomtown: A Different Story’s setting and style are made from a comfortable brand, recalling the top-down view of the early Zelda games, in the story of children playing detective. It stars Emily and her sister Chester, whose single mother needs the summer to concentrate on work and is sent to live with her slightly eccentric grandfather in the countryside. It’s a set-up fans of Gravity Falls will immediately recognize.

Emily takes a job at a shop, to earn a little pocket money, and meets a group of local kids who say their friend is missing, in what at first appears to be a long-lost game of hide and seek. In fact, they are victims of dark forces that are more reminiscent of the main influence of Bloomtown: Stranger Things.

Where it gives us The Upside Down, Bloomtown has the Underside, which is less exciting but still home to many colorful demons and monsters that you have to fight. That happens in a lot of turn-based combat that borrows wholesale from Persona, although it lacks some of the more complex intricacies of the series.

The resulting mix is ​​a mock 90s role-playing game with a modern sensibility, a sense of humor, and a child character who is forced to take responsibility when the adults around him fail to recognize the dangers that are not in their town, just like they are. . So, in the conventional world you will stack the shelves in the mini-mart, and slowly try to con the museum into accepting Chester’s artwork, while also battling the magical forces of magic.

Of course, your young protagonist needs to go to bed by 10pm, so that means organizing your days to earn money, visit the gym to increase Emily’s points, or go to the library to follow leads. Then in the evening you have time to infiltrate the Underside, to fight the demons and rescue the unfortunate ordinary people who can be kidnapped.

There is certainly more to do than time allows, the game encourages you to try a bit of horticulture in his grandad’s back garden, many crops you can then use in the kitchen to cook up meals to restore hit and magic points after the battle. Or you can make gadgets and lockpicks, read, solve crossword puzzles found in the city, play the lottery, or trade in equipment at a pawn shop. Is there a fishing mini-game? As if you had to ask.

The many activities you complete increase your stats for smarts, charm, guts, and expertise, which govern your abilities in problem solving, charisma, ability to stand up to adults, and how often you succeed in mechanical tasks. You have the same number for combat skills. Each character also has a personal demon that they use to cast spells in battle, just like a Persona.

Upgrade this when you level up, but you can also entrap demons that have been downed, add rarer, more powerful to your team’s roster, and offer punier varieties to strengthen your stay. It gives a flexible addition to the party, which consists of Emily, Chester, Ramona’s neighbor, and a suddenly garrulous talking dog called Hugo.

As part of your daily activities, you can spend time with each of them, which along with unlocking chunks of their backstories, as well as giving them new abilities, increasing their powers to help fight the forces of darkness. It’s a great system, and add to the wide range of attractions that compete for time every day, giving the constant impression that the day is just too short to fit everything.

We regularly neglect our gardening duties by accident, returning to a plant full of dry dead things, a fun process for the true life of houseplants. It’s also relatively easy to misunderstand the game’s hints which are sometimes subtle, resulting in a few days in the game spent aimlessly grinding gym, grocery store, and standing lottery until you stumble upon anything you missed.

In terms of flaws, there are some typos in the dialogue which is really good and the game can be a bit remote about where you can water plants or open doors. There are also times when your party members interrupt objects, a single context-sensitive interaction button that causes unnecessary conversations with them instead of activating the MacGuffin you’re trying to focus on.

In general, the game is fun, the fast travel automatically adjusts itself wherever you need to go, while the conversation options are funny and there are immediate consequences if you decide to cheat or steal – something you are given the opportunity to do, with the result depending on the roll of death and your stats has been nurturing.

Bloomtown: A Different Story offers a wry, modern take on faux 90s role-playing, weaving a coherent story and a set of battle mechanics from multiple, different influences. A rating of 16 for ‘intense violence’ is one of PEGI’s hard-to-negotiate decisions, even though it includes kidnappings and violent emotional relationships, albeit delivered in stunning pixel art style.

Despite this background theme, Bloomtown remains warm and engaging, the leveling process is generous and the story proves to be pleasantly addictive and very… cozy.

Formats: PlayStation 5 (reviewed), Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X/S, and PC
price: £19.99
Publisher: Twin Sails Interactive
Developer: Lazy Bear Games
Release Date: September 24, 2024
Age Rating: 16