Blending two very different genres of RPG, Bloomtown: A Different Story is a narrative RPG that blends old school nostalgia with a tense missing child mystery and a supernatural adventure into the underworld. You play as a little girl called Emily. Along with your brother, Chester, you move to your grandfather’s house in Bloomtown for the summer holidays.
The game starts off feeling like a community-based, slice-of-life simulator in a sleepy rural town where it’s easy to make friends. You get a job in the local shop, you plant seeds to grow into vegetables, learn to fish and cook, and ingratiate yourself into the community by running errands for your neighbours. The town is inspired by 1960s Americana, with a cute 8-bit art style that lends to the overall nostalgia of the game.
Through scraps of information you hear on the TV news, read on the community noticeboard, and that slip from the lips of people you chat to, you learn that a number of children have gone mysteriously missing. As you go about your business, you get drawn into the search for a girl who has disappeared, and end up getting drawn into the underside, plagued by demons who threaten the peace of your new home. You make a deal with one demon who offers you supernatural powers you can use to battle your enemies and save the town, in exchange for defeating three demons lurking around the map.
The gameplay hops between a peaceful existence in town and battling the forces of evil in the underworld, and the two overlap cleverly. The food you grow, catch and cook has healing properties in the underworld. There is a workbench in your bedroom you can use to craft useful items ranging from fishing bait to lockpicks to demon catching traps. The friendships you develop in town translate to skill boosts for your entire team. The choices you make in both Bloomtown and the underworld impact your character’s skill stats, which affect how successful you will be in select actions.
Some missions are technically optional. While the benefits you would gain from them would reflect on your ability in the rest of the game, you can complete the story without having finished some of your tasks. Most, though, tie directly into the overarching plot. There is a whole section requiring you to go between the two worlds in order to provide closure to both the ghost of a young boy trapped on the underside and his grieving mother in town.
A handy journal helps keep track of all your active tasks, offering hints at what you have to do next. There are many where the next steps aren’t always obvious, but you can make progress by talking to every person in town to check for new dialogue options.
On the underside, you explore a labyrinth of horror-inspired settings, spanning forests, abandoned stations and haunted asylums. The underside is plagued by demons you have to battle as you puzzle your way through the environment in search of the missing children. The turn-based combat is fairly simple, but still engaging, with your party of four each bringing different skills to the table. A variety of enemies with interesting and appropriately creepy designs will each come with their own strengths and weaknesses you can factor into your battle strategy. If you strike with the right move, you can also subdue and capture demons, which can then offer your team additional skills as summonable allies.
Bloomtown: A Different Story offers plenty of freedom to play at your own pace, despite the urgency at the core of the mystery. It balances the gentleness of the town and the terror of the underside impressively effectively. It manages to offer the satisfaction of both challenging boss battles and peacefully catching legendary fish. The story is absorbing, with a rare intensity that grips you until the end.
