While I’m admittedly perhaps a bit too old to really be using the term, I’ve found that with some games there’s just a quality to them that helps them stand out but that I can’t quite identify. Sure, they can be well-made, have compelling characters, or be a lot of fun, but sometimes there’s just an intangible quality to a game that works and, borrowing terminology from a much younger generation than mine, I’ll just say that it comes down to “vibes” sometimes.

Whatever you want to call it, Bloomtown stands out for me as a title that simply has that extra oomph to it that just feels right. It has gorgeous pixel art graphics, its young protagonists have a certain sense of humor and attitude to them that feels genuine, and the journey itself just doesn’t quite fit into any traditional model I can think of. While the general format feels familiar like an RPG Adventure of some sort, the fun and magic are in the details. The dialogue is often far more clever, and more reminiscent of classic point-and-click adventures. The attributes you’ll need to develop to help you out at times are ones you can develop, first through your character-building up front, but then through the completion of various tasks, some of which can be incredibly simple, allowing you to build your character in a few different sensible ways.

Now take all of that and throw in a worthy quest for them all to undertake, with the stakes feeling high, but more in the vein of adventures you’d take as kids, setting out on your bikes to save the day. Granted, the systems at some point will feel very “classic RPG” in nature, with you engaging in some turn-based combat and grinding to collect resources (in this case with some of them being demons) that you can then upgrade and use to your advantage in a variety of ways, providing some opportunities to set things up your own way in search of success. While often games like this get distracted by a few too many systems and subsystems, Bloomtown seems to settle into its range of “just right” pretty successfully, and the result is an experience that feels distinctive and memorable.