I ended up downloading Bloomtown when I opened Steam and they were advertising the game or the demo had released. Something had released and they were hyping it up. I thought it looked interesting and downloaded the demo. I think I played a little bit before all the pax workload started to roll in and I’ve only just been able to go back to it.

A Different Story for Sure

Emily and her younger brother Chester have been sent to the small town of Bloomtown in the 1960’s to stay with their grandfather, who they’ve never met before. Annoyed at having their summer vacation ruined by having to go to a strange town and stay with a stranger, things soon start to get weird. It turns out children have been going missing in Bloomtown, especially at night. This has happened in the town before, leading the town to close down the baseball pitch, as it’s where all the kids were disappearing. It seems silly, but it did stop it, until now.
While staying at Bloomtown, Emily starts having strange dreams where the devil keeps asking her to make a contract with him. Luckily, Emily is generally a smart kid and refuses, because the deal seemed too good to be true. During the day though, while searching for one of the missing children, it’s revealed that these dreams may actually be reality when Emily finds herself in the Otherworld. So, it turns out that Bloomstown might actually be a den filled with Demons and the Devil wants her to defeat the three main ones. So much for a quiet summer vacation, eh?
At first glance, Bloomstown looks like a Stardew valley clone, but it’s closer to a Role-Playing Game. It’s actually a little like fallout, which is weird to write. When given dialogue options, often there will be extra options that require Charm, Guts or Smarts to use. When selected, the game will give a percentage as to how successful Emily is to be when choosing that option, but it’s ultimately decided on a dice roll. When the player confirms the selection, two dice will roll and depending on the results, Emily will either successfully use the quip or fail and have no real results.
Sections of Bloomstown become a dungeon when in the Otherworld, requiring the player to explore the area and engage in turn-based combat when attacked by a demon. The characters can use melee attacks, but these will only ever hit the demon directly in front of them. They can also use magic attacks thanks to Emily’s contract with the Devil. Instead of being called magic though, it’s called Demon as it’s the contracted demons that use the magic instead. It reminded me of Persona, but without the terrible stress of managing the day and social links.
I didn’t even get to the end of the first dungeon in Bloomstown, but I can’t wait to go back and explore this sinister town some more.