In Bloomsome, you’ll find yourself changing the appearance of flowers so that they look more like magazine cover models.
Social media plays a big role in beauty standards all over the world. With an increase in people changing their body through body modifications, it’s neat to see a game like this. Instead of changing people, though, you are changing flowers to look like other famous flowers.
Bloomsome starts with you getting a job at an agency that transforms flowers, seemingly on live TV, to look like specific models or figures that are popular in social media. Each flower has their own story or reason for wanting to change the way they look, and using your tools, you will pinch and cut them to shape. The flower itself is always fighting you (by moving and not staying still), so you need to use tape to stick them in place and work quickly before the tape stops working.
As you take on new clients, you find that sometimes these flowers do want to follow more alternative influencer’s looks. Some of the comments on your model flower inspiration source will be negative. It’s quite interesting seeing people disagree with this beauty standard, yet the individual flower absolutely needing it. Bloomsome sometimes has guests come on. You’ll come across bees that think the flower is beautiful just the way they are and butterflies that pick flowers based on what their friends think of their look.
This game is short and a bit puzzle-like in nature, but carries an interesting message about influence and body-dysmorphia as you play through it. The social media commentary is fantastic and I really do wish I could scroll through it while I am spending time making the flower into the shape they wish themselves to be. The voice acting is also good – very polished, especially for a browser-based game.
Bloomsome is available for free on itch.io.