Distant Bloom

by Aethyna Apr 3, 2024 | 1 Votes | 42 Played | 0 Reviews

9 rate

Genres:

Adventure

Graphics:

Labels:

Cozy , Exploration , Crafting

Platforms:

Publishers:

Kinda Brave In this game, you play as an assistant to the leader of a planet-exploring expedition, Elder Umarell. Help the Elder with his tasks while discovering a world that sorely needs healing. Gather various seeds, grow plants strategically, and help bring life back to the once beautiful world.
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Summary Plotline Gameplay Graphics/ Sound Conclusion

Summary

Distant Bloom is a sci-fi adventure game where you are part of a team of alien beings called Alters, who were sent to a new planet to inhabit. However, the planet is in terrible shape when you arrive, and is very different from what the team had seen via the telescope ages ago, prior to the launch of the expedition.

In this game, you play as an assistant to the leader of the expedition, Elder Umarell. Help the Elder recover all the team members, as well as data from the many research probes that were released while discovering a world that sorely needs healing. Gather various seeds, grow plants strategically, and help bring life back to the once beautiful world.

Plotline

The Alters is an alien race that holds a similar principle to life as “fast fashion”. They often find new pristine inhabitable planets to relocate to, exploit the planet for all the resources it has to offer without taking sustainability into consideration, and once everything’s ruined, find a new planet to relocate to and start the entire destructive cycle again.

In this game, you’re an assistant to the leader of such expedition, Elder Umarell. Your team of pioneers have been sent to a promising planet to pave the way for your people’s next relocation – a project that’s called Distant Bloom. However, things went awry, and when you arrived, the supposedly gorgeous planet is a cesspool of waste. It seems like someone has beaten you to the planet and left the planet in such bad shape.

There’s definitely more to the eye than this though! As you travel the planet, you’ll not only discover new plants and seeds to grow, which in turn restores life to the planet, but you’ll also learn more about the civilization that had turned the planet into the muck it is today.

Gameplay

Distant Bloom is an adventure title where you’ll be sent on various quests that will bring you to different parts of the planet. You won’t be able to access every part of the map at first – it’s not an open-world game – but as you progress, you’ll be able to craft and upgrade your multi-tool, which will allow you to remove some of the obstacles that prevent you from accessing certain area of the planet. Usually, you’ll also get to unlock a new resource type, ranging from glass to plastic, from each multi-tool upgrade, which, in turn, allows you to craft new items at the workbench.

The planet is conveniently split into several areas, with each offering a different kind of “biome” and, hence, a different set of seeds that you can collect. Aside from the mini-map, the map provided is also super helpful when it comes to keeping track of progression for each area – how much you’ve restored each area and how much more you’ll need to do – as well as the general direction you’ll need to travel to reach a certain biome.

There’s no fast travel here though, so you’ll need to do all the backtracking, which there’s a lot of here, manually. Eventually, you’ll even unlock new shortcuts that will allow you to quickly move from one specific point to another, usually within the same biome, but there’s a central hub of sorts that you can use to quickly travel to different biomes… that is if you’ve unlocked the door you’ll first need before doing so.

As a conservation-themed (or eco-themed) game, the main goal of Distant Bloom is to bring life back to the planet by removing wastes and growing plants that are suitable for each environment. The trash-removing part is simple enough – as long as you have the right tools, you’ll able to remove trash and make use of the resources it contains. Removing trash will also activate any nearby shortcuts, and make nearby plants that you’ve grown spread more effectively, covering a much wider area.

That being said, the main aspect of the gameplay is the plant-growing part. There are many different kinds of plants in this game, and they are split into one of five categories, namely herb, fern, tree, cacti, and fungi. Each biome has at least one plant of each type that’s unique to its zone, though most of these plants tend to have two criteria, allowing them to be planted even in biomes that they aren’t native in as long as the conditions of said biome fulfills at least one of the two criteria.

For instance, the fungi in this game all have the Hard criterion, which allows you to plant them on any hard soil, regardless of the biome. However, the Mekutixenk fungi, in particular, is partial to higher temperatures and would thrive better in biomes where it’s hotter.

There’s also a combo effect that you can get going if you plan where you plant your seeds. You see, the plants in this game don’t usually prefer to be within vicinity of the same plants. They will only thrive if they are surrounded with at least three different types of plants. So, this would mean surrounding a Tree with a Cacti, a Herb, and a Fern to have the Tree grow to its max potential.

You can then harvest seeds from any plant that has reached their max level. Note that you can only store around five seeds per type, though there are cases where you can exceed that number by removing plants you’ve planted – yes, you do get your seed back. You can also fertilize these plants with jelly crafted using the ExoNutri. Fertilized plants will produce additional ingredients that Bahhan, the team’s designated chef, can then use to whip up a bunch of delicious food.

Plants that reach their max potential can also propagate automatically within the plot you’re planting in, helping you to save on seeds – not that they are in limited supply if you play the game right, though! There are even areas infested with plant-eating creatures or temperatures that are too hot, which will make planting seeds a bit more challenging since there’s a bit of a time element here.

There’s also a bit of social elements here that may remind you of a life sim. As you are aware, you’re not alone in this mission – you’ve got your teammates with you. Each of them has their own likes and wants, and you can improve your relationship with them by gifting them things (mostly décor) that they like. The gifts can be crafted at the workbench as long as you have the necessary resources to do so. However, it isn’t as apparent what you get in return for the gifts aside from a sense of satisfaction.

Eventually, as you restore more parts of the planet, you’ll learn more about the civilization that had turned the once beautiful planet into the wasteland that it was when you first came here, as well as the mysterious being behind the ornate door.

As fun as the game is, the game does have quite a bit of graphical glitches that may make your character stuck in the textures. Granted that none of the times when I got stuck is thankfully permanent, the fact that it happened quite a few times meant that the game could have put in a bit more effort to smooth the textures out.

Graphics/ Sound

Aside from having an art style that matches its cozy theme, Distant Bloom features beautiful visuals that may start off looking rather dull and dreary, because well, the planet is sick and not doing so well, but some colors will creep back in once you’ve restored various part of the planet, giving players a look at what the planet had once been and what they could achieve if they persist in the game. In fact, some of the local fauna will begin to appear as well while you clean up the planet, and boy! Are they adorbs!

In terms of sound, the game features a selection of chill and relaxing tunes that serenade you as you venture into the waste-filled wilderness of the planet and attempt to clean it up.

Conclusion

Distant Bloom is a fun and cozy, eco-themed adventure game where you’ll get to clean a planet of its wastes and marvel, in satisfaction, as colors, plants and animals start to reappear on what initially seems to be a highly-polluted, dead world. Aside from the satisfaction of cleaning up a waste-filled planet, there’s a bit of strategy and puzzle to its plant-planting gameplay, giving the game interesting depth as well. Distant Bloom is a game that’s suitable for adults looking for a game to chill to and even for kids to learn about conservation, albeit in a fictional context, and it is a game that we can wholeheartedly recommend!

New Game Added: Distant Bloom

by Aethyna Apr 3, 2024

In this game, you play as an assistant to the leader of a planet-exploring expedition, Elder Umarell. Help the Elder with his tasks while discovering a world that sorely needs healing. Gather various seeds, grow plants strategically, and help bring life back to the once beautiful world.