Bloom is an FPS that seeks to recreate the feel of older games of the genre via fast movement, key card focused level design, and the lack of any hit-scan enemies. We play as Janush, a member of a scared order sent to stop the black flower brought back from the demon realm from blooming. Starting off will see us with nothing but a pistol and a bunch of very unfriendly cultists that won’t hesitate to shoot on sight. Our character moves really fast and with the lack of hit-scanning, can dodge gunfire while firing back. Bunny hopping will see him move at truly breakneck speeds and easily outmaneuver most of his foes.
Soon enough, we will find a second pistol to go akimbo and a shotgun. This title is not slow in giving you a slew of weapons to wreak havoc with. One thing that may throw off some modern gamers are the keybindings for them. Bloom does not use most of the number keys. It makes sure to have every gun on a key that doesn’t require you to take your hands of the movement buttons or the mouse. The Shotgun for instance is mapped to C, a long-range rifle to Z, and the minigun to Tab. There are a ton of weapons to use. Learning those mappings will go a long way in helping you survive encounters, while using the scroll wheel to switch is akin to fumbling with your car keys.
It is a title that heavily caters to more experienced old school FPS players. The starting levels are no big deal, yet you’ll find it won’t take long for the gloves to come off. If you are familiar with Serious Sam, that is the kind of occasionally evil enemy placements or traps you can expect to find. Bloom is not a horde shooter, however, it will task you with exploring the levels and finding your way through them. These maps are pretty massive and completely nonlinear usually. It is another aspect that people not familiar with older FPS titles will likely struggle with. More so due to the lack of a map. This is a completely different beast than those throwback games that try to teach you the ropes. It will revel in its sadism and is all the more interesting for it.
One of the first things you will no doubt notice are the graphics. They are not good, to put it plainly. Everything has this glossy finish to it that gives it a toy-like look to things. It reminds me of Little Big Planet somehow, but it is by no means anywhere near as pleasing to look at. The lack of graphical prowess will probably not phase one’s opinion on a throwback shooter much. What does is the absurd amount of motion blur. You can not see much of anything while moving. It is extremely bad and there is no way to turn it off. I got used to it after a few hours, yet it was quite a bad call to add it in and not offer players the ability to remove it. A surprising choice from a developer that seems pretty passionate about this genre.
What Bloom lacks in looks it makes up for in gameplay. This is some seriously solid gunplay here. Guns feel impactful, enemies gib apart in satisfying ways, and it is fast-paced. Each foe has there own ways of taking you down. Some will try to melee you, others will fire heat-seeking rockets, and others will continually spawn more foes until you deal with them. Trying to make sense of all the madness occurring at any one time and dealing with it accordingly is vital. You have the plasma rifle to blast enemy projectiles out of the air, a laser for long-range encounters, and a double-barreled shotgun for anyone daring enough to get close enough to you. Those are but a few of the tools available at your disposal.
Most of the weapons remain useful all throughout. The only one I found to be underwhelming was a magical crossbow. Its projectile moves far too slow and it lacks decent damage. It can pin enemy projectiles and drag it away from you if you shoot through one, but that’s not all too useful. There are far better medium-range weapons and for long range, it’s useless. If it functioned like in Dusk and was able to shoot through multiple foes at once it would be more worthwhile. On the topic of long-range combat, enemy AI moves around every second and a half if they are unaware of you. Such frequent and erratic movement makes even a sniper rifle sometimes tricky to use since it is not hitscan.
Bloom is no doubt an unpolished game. From the environments not properly connected at times and leaving holes that take you out of the bounds of the map, to the frankly sub-par starting levels. It can be easy to spend some time with it and immediately write it off, which is honestly fair. Stick with it however, and you will find that it keeps getting increasingly better as time goes on. It starts to rely less on repeatedly using the same locations as a battleground to the point of annoyance, making better use of its environments to not look like a first timer’s Unity project, and less backtracking time & time again. The first impression it makes is far from great, yet it does start to increasingly capture what the dev was going for and eventually will hook you in.
Probably the worst things about the early levels are some of the boss fights. They can be pretty cheap, and not in a good way. One of the most annoying is a Necromancer that will infinitely spawn in more skeletons, has an absurd amount of health, and teleports around frequently. As bad as that sounds, it gets worse. There is no limit to the maximum amount of skeletons he can summon and will obliterate your framerate as you try to catch him. You do not have the weaponry to handle crowds quickly and I’m still unsure if the fact that the grenade launcher being introduced a bit later in the level was a form of trolling. The second most annoying boss has a one-hit kill projectile with area of effect damage. You face it in a tiny room, but it is still a far more “enjoyable” fight than that Necromancer.
This is not early access, however, going back to fix and tweak around with those early levels would go a far way to motivate people to carry on until it begins to grip the player. Level design and combat encounters get a whole lot more enjoyable. I really like the tension of knowing just how evil this game can get. If there is ever a calm moment, you certainly won’t be as you get ready for anything. As soon as you let your guard down, Murphy’s Law will kick in and have you desperately trying to take control of the situation. The walls around you will drop to reveal rooms full of enemies, an unseen Revenant could be hanging out on high ground, or foes are simply teleported in after you pick up a keycard. You are never safe.
Your character is far from a pushover. If enemies don’t get the drop on you, and you know how & when to use your weapons, it can be a one-sided fight as you mow down anything that moves without so much as a scratch. We also possess a bit of nature magic. By pressing down the mouse’s scroll wheel, roots will shoot out of the ground and rip apart the foe you are aiming at. If you press the B key, it will instead hold it down in place for you to do the honors. That last one is quite handy against tougher foes. You’ll need to find more magical booze to be able to activate them again if you end up overusing them, however. A neat addition that will make you feel absolutely unstoppable when used correctly. It can be ignored completely if you so choose, the conventional firepower you wield is more than enough.
The first episode has seven levels in total. It has a decent variety of locales to see like the midwest looking opening areas, the shores of hell, and some really abstract environments. There are a ton of boss fights too, and none are nowhere near as terrible as the first few you encountered. You’ll find there is little in the way of a story. After every level, Janush goes back to the bar to flirt with the bartender. How he does so given the locations he’ll find himself in is a mystery and their conversations are just as bizarre. Its plot is something you should not expect much from. That will become all too evident from the events that lead up to the second episode. You will be kidnapped by a UFO and be taken across a great many places via teleportation technology as you paint their ship full of their green blood splatters.
If you thought the first episode was challenging, the second turns up the difficulty several degrees higher. You start off with nothing but a pistol and on the next room over are immediately confronted by a new type of enemy that rapidly spawns in more foes. It is all too easy to run out of ammo and be forced to use your melee sai blades. Those are about as helpful as duct-taping your soon to be ripped off arm back on. Having spent so long with your massive amount of weapons, being back to nothing but the basics was certainly an interesting change of pace. Even with them in hand, the new challenges awaiting you here are much deadlier than anything before it.
The levels in the second episode are usually a good bit shorter than the previous ones. It can be seen as a positive or a negative, though they do flow better and all are decent maps, unlike the first episode with its rocky start. In total, the campaign lasted me a good ten hours. The experience was jank at times and graphically never good, but it had heart and the combat was fun. After it, we can also play the Endless Mode. This is a survival type affair in where you fight until you drop. It is a good deal of fun. Things ramp up to 11 as soon as you start and you’ll desperately be scouring the two unique to this mode arena maps for better weapons. Like the campaign, it too has multiple difficulty levels to choose from.
Endless Mode features a constantly respawning supply of ammo and weapons. Finding your favorite weapon and hovering around its spawn point for a while will allow you to use it near indefinitely with how fast they reappear. It is also the perfect way to let every enemy gather to one position and swarm you, so it does carry some risks. This mode has a good deal of entertainment to it, though it does have a flaw in where some enemies spawn inside of walls. They can then fire through it and you have no way to kill them. It will still progress to the next wave of foes, yet the enemies stuck in walls do not disappear, they only increase over time. You’ll see dozens of them stuck inside and pelting you with projectiles. It does detract from an otherwise enjoyable time.
Bloom is as ambitious as it is flawed. It has a ton of issues for every one of its strong points. Chief among these is the completely poor implementation of motion blur that seeps into all aspects of this fast-paced title. You’ll have trouble making out what you are looking at whenever you are on the move. Despite that and many other issues, I did find myself enjoying it. It has a good amount of content, the gameplay is fun, and it does keep encounters varied all the way through. This title is the definition of a guilty pleasure. I wouldn’t flat out recommend people go out and purchase it, yet you could do much worse at 15 US Dollars. If you have already played most other throwback shooters out there, this may be worth your time, otherwise, there are plenty of other FPS titles of much better quality at the same price or less. This is through and through a journey best suited only for big fans of this genre.
Demo: https://cyberius-dei.itch.io/bloom-demo
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