If I had a nickel for every horror farming sim game at PAX East, I’d have two nickels… which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird it happened twice. Fractured Blooms from developer Serenity Forge is one such title and was one of my favorite hands-on experiences throughout the weekend. I was able to get about half an hour with Fractured Blooms, and came away quite impressed. I’m not typically the biggest farming sim gamer, but I am SmashPad’s resident horror guy, and the spooky vibes here were immaculate. From what I’ve played, the farming sim mechanics are as crucial to the game’s overall loop as the esoteric, psychological horror themes, and the blend of genres works well in a way I wasn’t expecting.
My demo began in the garden outskirts of an imposing, solitary house, where I had to gather and plant beet seeds, find a watering can, and shower the produce to give it life, all while protagonist Angie’s internal commentary narrated my tasks. Voice actor Nichole Goodnight’s (Slay the Princess) performance as Angie is extremely chilling thanks to her deadpan cadence and uncanny delivery, but also helped give exposition into just what’s happening in and around the house.
From a mechanics standpoint, Fractured Blooms isn’t the most technically complex, focusing instead on a simple “fit round pegs into round holes” style of puzzle solving. After gardening, my next task was to cook dinner. This involved me listening to a radio recording of the recipe, gathering ingredients and supplies, and essentially just checking off a list to get the dish ready. But it’s Angie’s narration and the music that present an uncomfortable and creepy tension during my kitchen work that made my hairs stand on end. This process repeated over the course of a couple of days in a sort of Groundhog Day conundrum, with each return to the garden becoming increasingly more macabre, with more voices haunting my thoughts and the sky growing darker.
After another bout of gardening and cooking my dinner (with the house becoming more and more unstable and terrifying), my next chore was to hunt down dirty laundry and deposit the loads into the washing machine. Seems simple, right? Wrong. Not only can you only carry one item at a time, which required me to run back to the washing machine after I found each dirty article of clothing, but now a timer appeared in the lower left corner of the screen, adding even more pressure to this mundane task as it counted down to my demise. This section is designed for you to fail as a narrative device, and reawakening after the final loop of laundry gathering brought me to a much more sinister version of the grounds and house, with massive flora surrounding me.
Fractured Blooms brings immaculate vibes to the table, offering a chilling atmosphere and a genuinely compelling story, with plenty of mystery and intrigue to delve into. Its gameplay mechanics aren’t the most complex, but its limitations, like only being able to hold one item at a time and losing a bar of stamina after each action, help make me feel like everything I did mattered. I’m excited for the final product, which unfortunately has no date quite yet, but there’s a demo on Steam available now if you’re curious about this unique horror title.
I was able to get about half an hour with Fractured Blooms, and came away quite impressed. I’m not typically the biggest farming sim gamer, but I am SmashPad’s resident horror guy, and the spooky vibes here were immaculate. From what I’ve played, the farming sim mechanics are as crucial to the game’s overall loop as the esoteric, psychological horror themes, and the blend of genres works well in a way I wasn’t expecting.
If I had a nickel for every horror farming sim game at PAX East, I’d have two nickels… which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird it happened twice. Fractured Blooms from developer Serenity Forge is one such title and was one of my favorite hands-on experiences throughout the weekend. I was able to get about half an hour with Fractured Blooms, and came away quite impressed. I’m not typically the biggest farming sim gamer, but I am SmashPad’s resident horror guy, and the spooky vibes here were immaculate. From what I’ve played, the farming sim mechanics are as crucial to the game’s overall loop as the esoteric, psychological horror themes, and the blend of genres works well in a way I wasn’t expecting.
My demo began in the garden outskirts of an imposing, solitary house, where I had to gather and plant beet seeds, find a watering can, and shower the produce to give it life, all while protagonist Angie’s internal commentary narrated my tasks. Voice actor Nichole Goodnight’s (Slay the Princess) performance as Angie is extremely chilling thanks to her deadpan cadence and uncanny delivery, but also helped give exposition into just what’s happening in and around the house.
From a mechanics standpoint, Fractured Blooms isn’t the most technically complex, focusing instead on a simple “fit round pegs into round holes” style of puzzle solving. After gardening, my next task was to cook dinner. This involved me listening to a radio recording of the recipe, gathering ingredients and supplies, and essentially just checking off a list to get the dish ready. But it’s Angie’s narration and the music that present an uncomfortable and creepy tension during my kitchen work that made my hairs stand on end. This process repeated over the course of a couple of days in a sort of Groundhog Day conundrum, with each return to the garden becoming increasingly more macabre, with more voices haunting my thoughts and the sky growing darker.
After another bout of gardening and cooking my dinner (with the house becoming more and more unstable and terrifying), my next chore was to hunt down dirty laundry and deposit the loads into the washing machine. Seems simple, right? Wrong. Not only can you only carry one item at a time, which required me to run back to the washing machine after I found each dirty article of clothing, but now a timer appeared in the lower left corner of the screen, adding even more pressure to this mundane task as it counted down to my demise. This section is designed for you to fail as a narrative device, and reawakening after the final loop of laundry gathering brought me to a much more sinister version of the grounds and house, with massive flora surrounding me.
Fractured Blooms brings immaculate vibes to the table, offering a chilling atmosphere and a genuinely compelling story, with plenty of mystery and intrigue to delve into. Its gameplay mechanics aren’t the most complex, but its limitations, like only being able to hold one item at a time and losing a bar of stamina after each action, help make me feel like everything I did mattered. I’m excited for the final product, which unfortunately has no date quite yet, but there’s a demo on Steam available now if you’re curious about this unique horror title.
by Myles Obenza
