Game: Distant Bloom
Genre: Casual, Adventure, Crafting, Exploration
System: Steam (Windows)
Developer|Publisher: Ember Trail | Kinda Brave
Controller Support: Full
Price: US $22.86 | UK £19.14 | EU € 22,38
Release Date: March 27th, 2024
A review code was provided, with many thanks to Plan of Attack.
After a long journey through space, you and your team from Atra 2 arrive on an alien planet in Distant Bloom, ready to establish a new home for your species. But this planet looks very different from what you saw from afar, and the landing doesn’t go at all as planned. The pods with your teammates in deep sleep have ejected and are scattered over the planet. So even though you are only the Assistant, it seems up to you to find them and get things moving! With the help of KEi.Ki, a little robot following you around everywhere.
Meanwhile, you wonder, what happened to all the green and life you saw from space? Was there some kind of catastrophe that turned the verdant landscape into an empty wasteland with rubble strewn all around? Some meagre plant life tries to hang on, but it’s in a pitiful state. And where are the inhabitants that left ruined structures behind? Best get a move on, explore and unravel the mystery of Distant Bloom.
Explore, Clear Areas and Plant
Distant Bloom is a cosy game, with no battles or other hardships to survive. Instead, the focus is on exploration and managing planting, so the ecosystem of this world has a chance to recover. The first task is to find the crashed pods of your other teammates and reach probes that are sent out to gather information.
When you find your way around, you are blocked by rubble-like glass, a strange goo mass that you can’t get past and more hurdles. You don’t have the tools yet to clear them, but freeing your fellow travellers also means they can make the tools necessary for you. Slowly but surely, you get access to more areas or paths that were blocked at the start.
At first, you just have a scanner, but soon you acquire a shovel used to put the first seeds in the ground. Everywhere in Distant Bloom you see a grid of hexagonal squares on the ground, you know this means you can plant seeds there. The plant patches need a variety of at least three different species or more to make them all healthy. Aside from the exploration part, the fun is in fiddling around with combinations. You know you’ve got it right when you see green tickboxes for each square, signalling that you’re successful.
Every terrain has conditions that need to be met for the seeds to reach their full growth. Nice that the seed bag automatically sorts them to the best seeds for the best place. After you have ticked the boxes, you will see that the plants and trees are growing at an alarming rate.
The Crew Rejoins You
The alien fauna is very varied and after a little while, the plant’s seeds can be harvested, as well as other plant parts. Not only the grid of squares is then “greenified” but soon it spreads in the surrounding area, bringing back the first signs of animal life as well. Little strange-looking critters you can pet. Or you find that some animals need to be saved by you, or some love to eat the plants you’ve sown.
The Home Base, with the Mother Ship at its core, grows at the same rate that you find your fellow travellers and unlock the information from the probes scattered over the planet. Once Mederi rejoins the Base, they can implement new inventions as long as you deliver the needed materials.
Meanwhile, Reisa does the cooking when you bring them plant parts like flowers and leaves. Using the extra seeds you have, you can make fertilizer to make the plants grow even quicker. Materials found, like junk and glass, can be remade on your crafting table into new items. Some useful, some merely for decoration.
Your Home Base, erected around the mother ship, looks very sci-fi. I loved the detailed look of the living quarters, the kitchen and the other structures you put up. And even though you are just the Assistant, everything comes down to you, as Elder Umarell gives you orders non-stop!
The more probes and crew you find, the better the upgrade to your equipment will be and the more areas can be reached. Allowing you to greenify even more bits of the map. The areas and little pathways in an area unlock in stages. You will have to revisit areas often once your Exomulti upgrades.
Steam Deck and the Buddy Mode
More than once I have just stopped moving around to look at the landscape, changing from night into day. Or the greenery, once an area has been reclaimed. Distant Bloom looks lovely and detailed. I would have loved to be able to pan the camera, but that is a choice the developers made.
There is a Back to Base button, sparing you from having to retrace your steps or when you accidentally get stuck. There is a Little Buddy Mode, too. Inspired by Louisa’s tweet two years ago, the development team wanted to celebrate her as well as anyone else who has a little kid, like a sibling or grandchild. So clicking on the Little Buddy Mode button will make KEi.Ki’s movement is controllable by a second controller, so they can follow the Assistant in their journey! How utterly grand is that?
Even though Distant Bloom isn’t Steam Deck verified yet, I managed to play it fine on a handheld device. All the controls worked fine. It does drain the battery of my Steam Deck LED version pretty fast though.
The soundtrack is great, changing in areas and during the day/ night cycle. And above that, you hear the sounds of the planet and its animal life.
Conclusion for Distant Bloom
Distant Bloom has a lot of elements that attract me to a video game. Exploration, crafting, managing seeds and turning a barren landscape into a lush environment. Giving your crewmates little gifts ups their friendship levels.
All of this is set against an unusual scene of an alien planet and an alien crew. The Assistant and KEi.Ki are busy bees and it’s very satisfying to make the sick planet, plants and animals healthy again, just by sowing seeds. Collecting strange-looking seeds that produce interesting plants adds an extra incentive to Distant Bloom, as well as unravelling the mystery.
I really love my time in the game, and I love the little humorous touches in the conversations between the crew mates and quirky things like adding a trademark sign to the Exomulti. Oh and…. did I tell you you can pet the animals?
Final Verdict: Two Thumbs Up
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