Bloomtown: A Different Story Steam Charts & Stats

I really liked it. The mix of the Persona series with that pixel art style is fantastic. The story is just an excuse to see that all the characters are very charismatic. Excellent music. Could it be longer or have more locations? Yes, but everything fits together so well that it makes it enjoyable to play." Also, I'm a speedrunner and I'm learning (currently well under 4 hours), and it's been fun doing runs. Just opened his page on speedrun.com, feel free to run and submit!

Wow. This game exceeded my expectations and then managed to set new ones. I have truly never played anything as well written as Bloomtown, it’s short and sweet, but kept me completely entranced in every step. I’m not typically a story driven player - but the way that this world unfolds for you is absolutely incredible. The art style is so detailed and unique, the slight political aspect is grounding and humanizing, the nostalgic atmosphere is homey and uncomfortable in ways. I want to befriend everyone who made this, this is art.

This was a wonderful game. Total nostalgia bomb. The gameplay loop is really fun. It felt like the perfect length. I think the only think I really wanted was for you not to get so locked out of achievements if you missed something. Kind of wish you could go back to the crosswords etc. But this is definitely worth a play.

Overall I'd recommend this game, but there were a lot of things I took issue with. Pros: - This game is Gravity Falls meets Persona and it works very well. I love kids making deals with demons, its my favorite trope. - The music was ok, it wasn't as memorable as Persona's music, but it's also a lot less annoying than Persona's music. - Beautiful pixel art - Cool art direction for the majority of the game - All the characters were likable and I found their stories more enjoyable than social links in Persona. - Your dialogue choices seem to actually matter. - The conclusions to the arcs felt more satisfying than Persona. Cons: - The chance for things to hit or miss are not made readily apparent to the player. If a weapon has 100 accuracy, you'd expect it to never miss but there is some interplay with agility and luck or something. - Missing feels extremely frustrating. There were times where I missed upwards of 10 times in a row. I feel like displaying the actual percentage to hit an enemy when you highlight them for an attack would alleviate a lot of frustration. - The game doesn't have a ton of content. The way the systems are polished and the game is polished makes it feel like the game would take 80 hours, but this is a 15 hour game. I beat it when my characters were lvl 13. Because the game is so short, all these polished systems feel sort of empty. I caught maybe 15 demons total, and fused demons twice. The spell system is very basic. It feels like the spells you'd get at lvl 13 in a jrpg. - There was a section where the characters kept mentioning how they want to do things in only lawful ways and it just felt very Saturday morning cartoon. Subjugate literal demons, but make sure you do everything totally lawfully when trying to save a kids life, sure. There are just strange tonal shifts. - There is so much cool art direction that feels like it's hinting towards bigger more ominous things later on (like the big shadowy head statues) but in the end they're just sort of pretty set dressing. - Emily takes the precocious kid trope a bit too far, but at the same time some of the dialogue choices are ultra-cringe. There is a part with a dance + diss battle and Emily's disses had options that were pure cringe. It was on the level of "You have self esteem issues because your father's absence caused you to seek role models where you shouldn't have!" (this is not a quote from the game, just an example of how it came off) Disses are supposed to be true and hurtful but presented in a funny way. This is not a one time thing. There are other situations where the dialogue choices are truly terrible like that and you're forced to just choose the simple "you smell" option. Neutral: -The dog can talk, I do not want dogs to talk. The game was good, but it left me wanting a lot more.

The game has an 'indie pixel' appeal aesthetic towards it, but lacked in proper game design optimization. First, it is a beautiful pixel-driven game, that's all. Because, at times, some animations in certain cutscenes were lack-luster and mediocre, especially in the pacing of the story-line that makes an attempt, an unfortunate one as well, to give its main characters 'depth' and unique charm. One might argue that it should it is a 'cozy' game, but cozy does not equate to lazy. Second, the game is inconsistent with its in-game mechanics. (Yes. that CHASE SCENE.) Nothing in the game paced me nor prepared me for such a horrendous 'mini-game cutscene'. This could have been done way earlier as an introduction. I should not be DYING constantly and my ruining immersion and intensity of the scene, just to GRASP a mechanic that has never been done in early hours of the game. What is the point to make a scene so obnoxious? A chase scene is enough, but figure out where to do this, or where to do that and dying 10 times just to see where the "Interact" button shows up is insanity. This game needs a huge overall with its mechanics. It is out of its own loop. And that one chase scene alone ruined it a bit. NO side quests even had such a ''mini-game' mechanic, and all of a sudden? ANDDDD in an important cutscene? Stop screwing me over unnecessarily.

Lovely little game. Has some darkness and a lot of humor, Not perfect but I truly enjoyed it!

Gorgeous pixel art and animations; especially all the demons. The music and aesthetics are great; and some of the dialogue is legit funny. Characters can talk a little oddly sometimes but I chalk it up to localization quirks and it doesn't really detract. Doesn't really feel like it's set in the 1960s, though... I understand not wanting to say 70s or 80s to avoid being called a Stranger Things copycat (even though it's really not). Just don't expect an accurate time period vibe. They shoulda just gone with '19xx' like Secret of Evermore did back in the day. ;) Monster catching feels fiddly, especially early on. I feel it could be tweaked to be more forgiving / easier to Down a monster without also accidentally killing it. But once you get a feel for it and can craft items to help do it, it's not that bad; just time consuming. I like a lot of the monsters but trying to farm a couple of each to level them is kind of a chore. Catching and leveling (Fusing) demons gets to be feeling kind of grindy, because of the above reasons. Overall I liked the day/time mechanic, ot helps spread out your activities and gives things a sense of time, though sometimes it can be frustrating to have to wait to get some things done, and it isn't really clear ingame that there isn't actually a time limit to get things done (though you can fail quests, it's not by taking too many days to finish them or anything). Overall this is a pretty good game. It borrows a bit from Persona and a bit from classic SNES games in terms of vibe and while it's not perfect it's a pretty solid experience.