Fractured Blooms Makes Me Feel Uncomfortable And I Don’t Even Know What It’s About
A chilling surprise from the Summer Game Fest showcase last week was the reveal of Serenity Forge’s new game, Fractured Blooms. Inspired by a true story, the trailer opens on a cosy cottage, before layered whispering and warping of the music begins to give away a more… horrific nature to this story.
At Summer Game Fest, I got to play a demo of Fractured Blooms at an event called The MIX, where indie developers from all over were able to showcase what they were working on.
Fractured Blooms markets itself as a psychological life sim where you “Play as Angie, a girl who finds herself stuck in a time loop and a world that is soft and still.”
A Farming Simulation?
Beginning the game, I walked up a path to a pretty house, with an even prettier garden. As you walk, Angie begins to narrate. She talks of the importance of raising the crops, and each step along the way, her narration lends itself to what you should do next.
Visit the garden, pluck a Tomato, place the Tomato in a basket, sow some beet seeds, water them, and then make your way inside to cook dinner.
All the while, you’re completing simple tasks, and your stamina in the lower left of the screen slowly ticks away. The narration is simple enough, but as you’d expect from the voice of any little girl whispering in your ear, it’s a little unsettling.
Cooking is when things began to go awry. Making sure to chop up the tomato, grab some herbs and meat, put it in a pot and let it cook for 30 seconds was slow and eerie enough, but when strange things began to happen like odd noises from the radio I was on edge.
Heading upstairs, a timer appeared on the screen for Angie to go to sleep, but first, I needed to gather the dirty laundry from the various rooms on the top floor. I would like to say that I was excellent at this, identifying all of the laundry and getting it in the machine well before the timer hit zero, but that just wasn’t the case.
Deeper Secrets Of The House And It’s Inhabitants
Each of the rooms lent to a larger story, coded as if a boy or girl might be living there, and in the main bedroom, there was what I can only describe as the breakdown of reality glowing red and pixelated in the corner. For a house that only Angie is currently living in… there’s far more to this story.
Going to bed, well after the timer had hit zero, Angie woke up the next morning, pulling apart reality and starting from the bottom of the hill as I had initially started the demo. This time, as I approached the house, it was far less cute…
A number of changes had taken place. Sinister red plants were growing all over, the sky was darker, and for failing to put away my laundry in time and getting to bed I was starting the day with one less stamina.
Repeating the tasks from the day everything got that much more sinister. While watering the plants they grew in disfiguring ways, while cooking the TV turned on to static and the remote had been thrown half-way across the room, when I walked upstairs I was prepared to load the laundry as soon as possible. Fractured Blooms had other intentions though as it forced me to hide from… something, or hallways became impassable as red roots grew out of the walls.
I didn’t load the laundry in time… I went to sleep tired again, fearing the effect on the next day, and almost thankfully, the demo ended.
I stepped away from Fractured Blooms, perplexed. I’m normally quite quick to pick up on a game, and have at least some idea of a direction it’s heading. Impressively, all I came away from Fractured Blooms with was doubts and questions.
I wanted to know what could have been different if I had been more successful on the first day? What happened if I planted flowers instead of beets like the narration requested? Where was everyone else from the house, and if what Angie was seeing was real (including the warping portal in her bedroom) then what was the cause of it?
It also didn’t help that I was greeted at the end of the demo by Z, the founder of Serenity Forge, who was interested to learn what I thought the game was about. I tried my best to piece together initial thoughts that it was a game about a warring childlike psyche and the negative impacts of the world around it, but that I didn’t even have initial guesses about what the story of the house and it’s inhabitants were.
The amount of time spent in the demo was just enough to pique my interest and now I want to go back in and explore every depth of the full game. Maybe it’s just me feeling bitter that I was so confidant about planning a laundry route on the second go around and the game humbled me so intensely?
Fractured Blooms Preview | Final Thoughts
Fractured Blooms has all of the makings to be an incredible hit. A relatively smaller scoped world, jam packed with iteration changes, and a deeper story to learn about Angie and her view of the world.
Mechanics are simple enough for anyone to approach, but in order to best manage your resources and the punches that the world is going to throw at you it will demand quick thinking.
I look forward to learning not just how much deeper the story goes, but also the mechanics of growing crops in your garden, gathering them, and preparing meals for yourself, and I truly feel for whoever’s story this is inspired by…
Fractured Blooms was previewed at Summer Game Fest 2025.
