Distant Bloom

种花家来种花啦，愿世界和平，大家平安喜乐。 The Flower-Planting Family has come to plant flowers, wishing for world peace and for everyone to be safe and happy.

This is a bit of a hard one because I greatly enjoyed my time with this game but it does feel unfinished and has several bugs. I didn't run into any game breaking bugs but I did get stuck a few times and had to use the return to base button and then run all the way back to where I had gotten stuck to complete what I had been doing while trying not to get stuck in the same spot again. Despite this, I had fun exploring the beautiful environment and petting the various animals. The story and characters had more depth to them than I had expected. Though I do wish the story was a little longer. I recommend this game for anyone who likes relaxing, simple puzzle games with a feel good message and has a bit of patient for something not quite what it should be.

Infelizmente, o jogo possui bugs visuais bem frequentes. a gameplay parece ser bem divertida, mas o jogo se torna impossível de jogar por problemas de lag e "chiados" na tela.

es ist ein super süßes cozy entdeckerspiel und ich liebe es^^

The game has game-breaking bugs and no support for resolving them. It looked promising otherwise, but I can't recommend a game that seemingly breaks randomly.

Has nice music. Expect some moments where you can get stuck, because you can't find the path forward, but as long as you just leave the thing you are stuck on for later, there is a high chance you will find it by accident when doing something else. I do however HIGHLY recommend to at least finish full revitalization of Bohl, as it presents you with a much more satisfying ending than the actual story ending even though there is no fanfare for it apart from a silent scene change and an achievement.

Overall, I love the cozy gameplay. The characters, art style and environments are gorgeous and fun. Sadly I am currently discouraged from continuing to play due to the map system (I can’t see my location on the map nor the maze-like roads I have already unlocked). I don’t have the best memory so unfortunately the current map for people like me can be confusing. Adding a little glowing trail that our character can follow if the map system is too confusing (that we could turn on in the settings if needed) would be cool to see. I keep getting “dead ends” between areas that I cannot clear up yet, while trying to find one of the probes, which keeps me from advancing in the story. Hopefully I’ll find that current probe I’m stuck on some day. 😭

Warning: spoilers. While the building aspect is neat and straightforward, the crafting aspect is severely lacking. It should not be among the first 5 tags. Characters were sufficiently developed with unique personalities. Genuinely enjoyed the gifting mechanic, it added a reason for me to care about my peers. I just wish they would stand out more, visually. I would confuse for instance the cook with the guard, due to their big gear, which also used same color scheme. And similarly to a review I recently did for a different game, I have to say, the story is better towards the end, too bad only 28% of players will get to see that! I also absolutely loved the plot/kicker, it could easily be used for a sci-fi movie, regardless of the protagonist race/species. The planting aspect is the 2nd biggest element in this game, first one being walking (I will get to that in the end). It's interesting, it's solid, it servers multiple purposes, but it's not enough to outweigh all the bad parts of the game. Oof UI bugs. Sometimes the whole hud is gone, no compass, nothing. Tab fixes this. When the UI is suddenly missing the held tool/item, I just want to reset the game, at least to the main menu. But upon rejoining I am in base. I should be put back where I left off. If I wanted to go base, I would have instead clicked Back to Base. So now I have to spend 35 minutes trying to walk from base back to where I was when the bug happened. Why am I being punished for the game's shortcomings? The most frequent UI bug is while in the seedbag, trying to navigate with a/s/d will randomly take me back to the first type, first item. I only wish it would take me to the first item every time I re-opened the seedbag, but alas, qol is a lot to ask when there are still bugs crawling around. And for some weird reason, specific binds like inventory/seedbag would only open them. A separate key is needed to close them. Weird choice to redesign the standard nifty toggle mechanic. There's also a bug I already reported where the last crafting ingredient is cut off for one of the items. Another UI related bug was the controls not being responsive for a while after closing random UI pages. Oof mission/quest bugs. First it took me a while to figure out that the compass had a progress bar. Since it was turning red, I tried guessing whether I am against time, hunger, tiredness, something. But no, it's progress towards being able to talk to the Alters. I don't understand how this confusing hidden mission, or rather set of hidden repetitive missions, made it in production in this state. So much so that many reported several bloom missions as bugged out and unable to progress. Even after I knew about the progress bar, the bloom missions still felt bugged. You do everything you are supposed to do, but they do not resolve. GG. The solution is, you have to do other regions, not mentioned in the main mission, so the hidden mission gets resolved which helps resolve the main mission as well. Just why? I wonder how many players paused/quit due to this. For the most part the music was cheesy, but there was at least 1 song that made me feel like oh I am onto something now, things are getting interested, I should keep going. That atmosphere was probably due to other elements, as well, perhaps the environment or other sound cues. But the gameplay, the minute to minute, was definitely not a factor, I wanted to quit more than once. The majority of the game is, sadly, walking. Wonky butt walking. Some is needed cus oh new area discovered but it's blocked, go base, upgrade tool, walk back to obstacle, finally new area reached. Sure, nothing new about this mechanic for reuse of space. But most walking is due to getting lost. In huge 3d mazes. With nightmareish, countless spirals, up and down, and branching and spiraling again. That can look awful samey awful lot. Many dead ends. Many one ways/jumps with more convoluted pathing to get back on the initial track. Jumping down should be a WARNING. And sometimes the terrain looks passable but it's not, and viceversa, which just made this major part oh so very frustrating, trying every inch of every edge. Whatever is traversable needs to be made CLEAR, whether I am walking somewhere for the first time, or for the 20th time. And little to no clipping... why must I get stuck so often, especially when the view is obstructed? And not all jump towers change player view to show what they connect to, it's just forced trial and error. This awful trend of extra, unnecessary, unenjoyable walking in the games in the last few years just... needs to die. If it's gonna be the main thing the players spend time on, look at how other games do it, make it fun, make it meaningful, don't just add bloat in places where precious gameplay hours should be. I was not motivated to finish the world after the main story concluded. I got this for $8 and rn it's even less than that but I only recommend getting this on sale. There's many reasons only a quarter of players 'finished' this 10 hour game. And sadly the latest update was over a year ago. It needs bug fixes, but no hope for that. It could use more content, as it looks promising, but no hope for that, either. Looks dead.

I'm torn on how i should rate this game, i enjoy the concept, the art and the gameplay but the game has one massive flaw, the game world is a maze with many paths, shortcuts and loops but the in-game map is less than utterly useless. after just 3 hours i'm completely stuck, i'm supposed to go to a new area however both of the paths i've found that lead to said area are blocked by something i have no way of removing and since the game hasn't had many players i can't even find an answer online so what exactly am i supposed to do now? i can't even know if there's a bug, for all i know the game skipped a quest or something that would give me the ability to remove that obstacle.

Super cute game about cleaning up environments from different types of pollution and planting cohesive plants to help the place flourish. It's also about healing old wounds and making a home for yourself/your family. Quick game, good mechanics, fair achievements, great music and art.