Thank you Kinda Brave for sending us a review code!

In Distant Bloom you play as an alien named Kei.Ki who is the assistant to the elder.  Your crew has crash landed and is scattered across a planet that’s in bad shape environmentally.  There is trash, plastic, oil, and glass thrown about haphazardly.  Plants and wildlife are all dying due to the pollution.  While you’re looking to reunite with your crew, you may as well revitalize the planet to make it more healthy for everyone.  In order to do that, you have to collect all of the trash and repair the ecosystem by planting plants.  

With your scanner you can learn about the plant life and unknown objects on this planet.  Plants have zone compatibility preferences like hot, cold, dry, wet, soft, and hard.   There are also different classifications of plants like herbs, ferns, trees, cacti, and fungi.  The plants will grow the best when they are planted in a compatible zone with a variety of other types of plants.  If you’re on the right track, plants will spread their seeds in adjacent spaces automatically for you.  If your plants are struggling, you can replant and replace the under-performing plant life.  At your base you can convert seeds to jelly which can be used as a cooking ingredient or as fertilizer to unlock new materials to work with.  Some of these materials can be used to make medicine to cure sick wildlife.  

Besides planting seeds, you’ll be spending a good chunk of your time tracking down crew and data probes.  The game is a little bit “on rails” with obstacles blocking your path until your multitool is sufficiently upgraded to remove them.  One they’re gone you’ll be granted access to new territory to explore.  

As you bring misplaced crew members back to your base, you’ll have the honor of building their living quarters.  The garbage, glass, and plastic debris collected throughout your journey will be used for these construction projects.  Many of your comrades have abilities that will come in handy such as building, cooking, botany, and engineering.  

You can talk to your shipmates, romance seldom comes up but there’s some dialog about the elder and the military officer having a fling many years ago.  I’m not sure how gender and reproduction works for this alien race, but I thought most of them were masculine.    The planet has a deity-like presence that plays a prominent role in the ten-hour long story.  Overall, Distant Bloom is family friendly and teaches a valuable lesson about caring about the environment.  

I like how the planet is dreadful and dreary in the beginning and how it becomes vibrant and colorful as you plant seeds and restore the ecosystem.  The planet has a lot of biomes to explore and some of them are really pretty.  Sadly, I got stuck exploring on multiple occasions.  Thankfully I was able to return back to base without losing too much progress.  There are a few other fast travel warp points that unlock to progress the story.

The background music is pleasant to listen too and fits the mood appropriately.  It’s not memorable or making me want to buy the soundtrack, but it was nice.  The sound effects are decent too.  The aliens speak in gibberish so you’ll need to rely on the captions to understand what they’re saying.

Distant Bloom is a cute game with good lesson about caring for the environment.  I like how it has a Little Buddy mode where a another player (ideally much younger) can take control of Kei.Ki’s robotic companion.   This title is family friendly and the only moral concern is that the planet they're on is inhabited by a deity-like being.  After the credits roll, there are some "after story" missions available to complete.  The asking price of $19.99 is reasonable and worth adding to your Wishlist to pick it up on sale.