Stories of Blossom

I feel bad, in a way, at giving this game a negative review. There are absolutely circumstances in which I think some might find it delightful. If you are playing it with a 6-year old in your lap, and talking through your (and their) choices, I think you and they would find it delightful. And yet: the sell text doesn't tell you that. No player older than 10, unless experiencing it with their child, will find it enjoyable. Grandfather tells you stories, and you solve some very simple graphic-adventure-style problems. But: Bads: Very little animation, and most of it clunky. Oddly problematic UI/UX, which seems designed for a controller, even though this is a PC game. Repetitive spoken sequences, which cannot be skipped (select a character or thing, and get the same audio again, and you have to endure through it). No voice acting other than for the main character and her Grandpa. Goods: Nice picture-book imagery, even if the animation is minimal (and often awkward). Cheerfully calm narrative. So: I can recommend, if you have a little one, and want to play a game together. I cannot recommend in any other circumstances. My children are adults now, so I'm obviously not the right audience; the developer's marketing would be better if they made it clear who the target audience should be.

Stories of Blossom is a wholesome and family-friendly point-and-click adventure game. A possible drawback is that the game might be too childish for some potential players, but the writing is good (and at times quite amusing), the gameplay is solid, and the voice acting is pretty good as well. The game is quite short: it consists of three short stories, and each story takes less than an hour to complete. The graphics are very good. The backgrounds are beautiful, and the character designs are charming. The simple animations for the NPCs are also nicely done, but the walking animation for the main character is rather awkward. The puzzles are simple; there is some moon logic involved, but generally the puzzles fit in well with the fantasy setting. All the usual quality-of-life features are there: manual saving as well as autosaving, a double-click to quickly move between locations, hotspot highlighting, built-in hints, and an ability to skip voice lines.

A beautiful point-and-click story with fantastic animations, art style and music. Great for all ages and an abundance of accessibility features. I look forward to replaying to get all achievements! Soft Leaf Studios have created something they should be very proud of.

I'll share this game with my kids, when I have them.

A fantastic wholesome experience that brought me back to the feeling of monkey Island.

Overall, I quite like this game. it has a cute and chill vibe, and the music and voicing are both quite well done. Accessibility is always a plus as well, especially since there aren't many accessible games for children to play, or really any non-violent accessible games for [b]anyone[/b] to play. I'm really happy that mainstream games are starting to be developed with accessibility in mind now. It gives me hope that in the future, I and my fellow disabled folks will have as much variety when it comes to gaming as our able-bodied peers. However, there are a couple drawbacks that I'd like to mention. First, even though there's an undeniable charm to the game as a whole, I feel like the stories, despite having a good amount of problem solving skills to work out (although a detailed hints system is available) is just a bit boring at. times. This may be because I'm not in the target age demographic, but even if I were playing this as my younger self, I'm not sure if it would've held my interest. It makes me wonder just who they had in mind when developing this game. I feel like the ones who'd get the most entertainment out of a story like this would be very young children. But usually kids that age aren't going to have a good enough attention span to sit down and play something this slow paced. And by the time they do, they'll likely be uninterested. But I'm no child psychologist, so don't quote me on that. Another thing I'd like to mention story-wise is the morals. Oh, boy. i understand the importance of teaching kids life lessons, but I feel like it can be very heavy-handed, and even a little preachy at times. Which makes it all the worse when some of the lessons don't seem to be that well thought out. [spoiler]Yes, you shouldn't spend time worrying about things you cant control, but that doesn't mean your anxiety isn't valid. It's better to find someone and talk about your feelings, and not just magically stop feeling them like the crumbles did.[/spoiler] Plus, the game itself can be a little hypocritical and contradictory with itself when it comes to achievements. SOB spends, as I said before, a slightly irritating amount of time repeating its morals, and yet there are achievements where you have to actively attempt to do malicious things in order to unlock. [spoiler]Destroying a pinata, filling it with dirt, soaking a crumble with ice cold water, and attacking an islander with a pirate sword.[/spoiler] These actions aren't actually allowed to be taken, but that doesn't change the fact that you're rewarded for bad behavior, and get nothing special other than being able to progress for not going for these achievements. I don't know, I just feel like it sends a mixed message. Still, despite how negative my review seems where the stories are concerned, I don't actually dislike them all that much. Most of them are very wholesome and cute, and Clara's relationship with her grandpa is very cute. It reminds me of the relationship I have with my own grandfather. He would also tell me stories with me as a character. [spoiler]My favorite story is the final secret fourth one that acts as an epilogue of sorts, where Clara gathers the things she needs to surprise her grandpa for his birthday. It's a very heartwarming moment to see all the characters we've met so far coming together. Although the author in me wonders how exactly they gave Clara things i they're imaginary, how they all met each other, and how they recognize Clara as they all know her as either Annie, Millie or Captain Tutu. But I digress...[/spoiler] Now, onto my thoughts about the gameplay. Maybe it's because I had the text to speech on two slow of a setting, but there seemed to be a lag which made selecting objects a bit slow. And two solutions in the third story are kind of nonsensical. [spoiler]You have to use your sword with the vine to swing back across the quicksand, and fire the canon with the lantern? For some reason?[/spoiler] For the most part, i liked the puzzles and problem solving skills needed to figure things out, and plenty of hints being available should you get stuck. The length and difficulty from story to story was also well balanced. Lastly, there are two bugs that I noticed while playing. The first, which I've already seen talked about, is Steam achievements aren't working. They unlock in the game, but not on Steam. So even though I've completed every story plus some other achievements too, they aren't shown to be unlocked in my account. The second bug is sometimes, you can't select an item to use from the backpack and then scroll through objects in the scene to use. You have to have the object you want to use the item on highlighted and then directly select it after finding what you need from the backpack. To wrap this review up, overall I think this game is quite good, and I really appreciate the developers' goal to create something that those of all ages, and all abilities levels, could enjoy. It's a cause i wanted to support, so I bought the game and played it through because these sorts of projects [b]need[/b] engagement and support if we want more accessible games to be made. It does need some improvement, all things do, but I thank the devs for taking the time to make this game, and I wish them all the best in their careers.

A very accessible and heartwarming but also limited experience. Check my full review here: https://youtu.be/-kxkKVjV4jo

As a lifelong gamer who became fully blind at the end of 2020, I am glad to see more and more developers adding accessibility features into their games. [i]Stories of Blossom[/i] is indisputably accessible to totally blind players. And because the narrative is essentially G-rated, it's a great game for children who suffer from visual impairments. The game proceeds through three different self-contained stories, taking place within fantasy worlds crafted by the main character's grandfather as a way to teach the child some important life lessons. The game gets its points across without becoming overly preachy, which I appreciate. It's a charming little game and even allows blind players to unlock all achievements, so players with disabilities won't be left out of a completionist run. I appreciate the kinds of accessibility settings that are available, including menu and input prompt narrations and audio descriptions of everything happening on-screen. These kinds of things, as well as speaking voice, voice speed, and voice pitch, can all be adjusted. I couldn't find some of these settings during first-launch setup, but you can find everything once you get to the main Settings menu. The one major problem that I had with this game was that after completing each story for the first time, including the short epilogue at the end, the game seemingly stopped responding to all input. Not only did all text-to-speech stop, it seemed I could get no response whatsoever. This seemed to coincide with the achievement unlock for completing each story. Correlation does not necessarily equal causation, but I unfortunately didn't have sighted assistance available to try disabling the Steam Overlay to fix this. And since Valve has so far failed to address Steam's own accessibility problems, I couldn't just test this for myself without a lot of extra fiddling. The end result of the bug, however, was that in all cases, I had to Alt-F4 out of the game and then redo the section from the final auto-save of the story, after which the game progressed correctly. Aside from this technical glitch, my only real gripe is its short duration and lack of any true replayability. A 100% completion run can be accomplished in only a couple of tries once you understand the proper sequencing of items and puzzles, and since there are only three stories, there's just not much longevity. In fairness, I suspect that this is in keeping with the core audience of younger gamers; it just bears mentioning for more hard-core gamers who may enjoy this as a more casual diversion. It's an overall enjoyable experience, just kind of brief. Despite the technical issues and short playtime, I can recommend [i]Stories of Blossom[/i] to anyone looking for a charming diversion into a land of fantasy for a few hours. 7 out of 10

A short wholesome story where Clara learns about what's really important in life through stories of her grandfather. I'm looking forward to more work from Soft Leaf Studios.