PC Game Review Bloom Busters

Another gardening game blooms that expects players to do more than just plant and grow crops. Bloom Busters mashes SIM and business management together to create a little garden of horrors. Monsters sprout from underground and garden produces ginormous crops.

Sharing hobbies can bring two people closer together as gardeners Jimmy and Jessie are in love and live happily in Bloomland. Players get to choose one or the other as their character, but each one has strengths and weaknesses. You can always switch players without losing your progress for a little change of pace. Jessie takes after Speedy Gonzales while Jimmy resembles Paul Bunyan in size and strength.

Loner Mr. Zorg — like Greta Garbo — vants to be left alone — is behind all the weird things happening in Bloomtown. He conducts experiments in hopes of keeping people away from him. He concocts Compound-X and dumps it into Bloomland’s water source without testing to see what it would do.

In managing the garden, Jimmy and Jessie patrol find objects to pick up, looking for monsters to slap ‘n slime, and doing the usual gardening work. Using the slime machine takes practice to make its effects more powerful.

The goals for the levels change as do the elements. A level could call for feeding the animals, another for watering flowers and keeping monsters out, and another for herding the animals.

The different levels keep the game interesting, but moving around the large scene turns tedious especially when a level goes beyond the screen. Not all do, but it isn’t always clear. A small map sits in the corner of the screen to show the monsters’ locations. However, the map isn’t always available and it should be.

By level 17, I’ve had it with the game — and in easy mode! Players must move pigs from one pen to another and battle monsters. Level 17 barely reaches the halfway point of the game containing 40 levels. Easy mode is not kid-friendly as the game claims.

On one hand, Bloom Busters will challenge experienced players. On the other hand, an experienced casual gamer can’t get pass level 17. The game wears me out with all the work it takes to move around the screen and fight off monsters.

The text has some typos and you can’t easily tell which profile is active. Bloom Busters has good music and an interesting storyline. Only, it may be difficult to get far enough to find out what happens. Despite the higher learning curve, some players might find themselves absorbed in the challenge and mystery while others will feel busted by the end of the trial period.