With a mix of eerie horror, social sim and monster catching, Bloomtown: A Different Story brings big potential to the cosy gaming space.

Many, many social and farming simulations have entered the market in the eight years since Stardew Valley brought back the classic Harvest Moon a.k.a Story of Seasons formula to smashing success. The wave of successors that emerged especially since 2020, a devcycle after Stardew, and really gained tracking during the early years of the Covid pandemic, even gave birth to a new label for games: So called cosy or wholesome games. With a saturated market naturally come symptoms of fatigue after a while. To combat that, and of course because that is the natural way of genres, more and more creative blends of genres, game concepts and settings emerged in the overall area of farming and social sims. One of these unique hybrids is Bloomtown: A Different Story. The marketing positions the game as a JRPG in contrast to a farming or social simulation. However, the graphical style, social interactions and several of the marketing materials also make clear the connections with forerunners like Stardew Valley, for example by showing the main character watering plants. Another forerunner of fame is much more prominent however: the monster collecting aspect of games like Pokémon. In Bloomtown, the unique story and setting angle comes into play here: Inspired by 1960s Americana with a dark twist of gothic horror, the atmosphere in the game is always a lot more threatening than in similar titles. And the collectable monsters are instead demons, more like in Shin Megami Tensei than in Game Freak’s flagship series.

Bloomtown: A Different Story has been developed by Lazy Bear Games and Different Sense Games and is published by Twin Sails Interactive. The Russian-turned-Lithuanian studio Lazy Bear are the developers of Bandle Tale: A League of Legends Story, Punch Club 1 and 2 and Graveyard Keeper, so they are bringing a wealth of expertise in the social sim genre as well as certain RPG elements. The Lithuanian Different Sense Games are freshly entering the game space with Bloomtown. Twin Sails is an established indie publisher, with several hit games in the catalogue such as OddSparks. Most notably, the publisher has a big catalogue of digital board games, among them several horror-adjacent ones like Arkham Horror and Gloomhaven.

Bloomtown: A Different Story releases digitally for PC, PS5, Xbox and Switch on 24 September 2024.

Conclusion

Bloomtown makes for an eclectic and interesting genre mix that peps up the cosy game stylings.

Features
  • Monster Catching
  • Social Simulation
  • 1960s small town Americana

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Written by

Pascal Wagner
Pascal Wagner
Pascal Wagner is Chief of Relations of GamesMarket and Senior Editor specialised in indie studios, politics, funding and academic coverage.