Recent reviews by Unusacies

Fun little platformer, controls are good over all, though the ledge grab takes a bit to get used to.
Overall would recommend.

I enjoyed Bloom Thrice, it shows its inspirations and has fun unique touches to it. there are some fun bits that I am unsure were lost in translation but keep being endearing. the game has its difficulty but did not feel frustrating personally (at least up the normal and good endings, but it makes sense on the bad ending stuff).

The game has simple movement, as you mostly just get more dashes, and I appreciate that one of the skill cards counts as an extra dash with special properties (or more if you use the skill card system to its limit) allowing some early out of the way exploration.

I also greatly appreciated the quality of life features like the ability to mark the map with symbols so you know where resources can be found or where things you are unsure about are, while a thing a few games do, its still not widely adopted by Metroidvanias at large.

Also while it may seem super small I further appreciate the tells about when to start duplicating saves and the like, it ends up reinforcing the generally caring attitude of the narrator through out the game, and in general the game feels kind and caring towards the player, which is reflected in the story and dialog (including at one point letting you skip grinding) its nice.

It has bits of many of my own favorite games, and I would recommend it to those looking for a simple fun Cavestory-esque Undertale-influenced Metroidvania game : )

I came across this game through "A Happy Place Deep Dive (...)" by the youtuber "Doctor Dirck's Lore and Let's Plays" of which not even 20 minutes in I knew I was interested and went to buy the game proceeding to do as much as I could within the next few days.

I have been a fan of 3D platformers for a long while and have played a good few from across the spectrum of quality and I will say right now despite a few set backs I do recommend "A Happy Place" and feel it was worth getting!

The game is fun to jump around and perform its movement abilities, of which interestingly 1 uses a relatively easy to find resource (the same is used for a sadly kind of useless attack range extension on your slap move), after 100+% completion of one of its collectibles the resource becomes infinite but before that its an interesting game design decision as you end up trying to economize a pretty useful move (again its not that hard to get more of it, but its still a decision I do enjoy over all).

The levels for the most part are good fun though some do end up feeling... a bit too long, not in time taken but in literal distance. For some of the atmospheric set pieces it makes sense, but in some levels I felt it may have been a tad too far for some of the missions (not annoyingly so, just a pet peeve).

The scares (btw there are scares) do end up also being pretty well executed, though some as they are controlled in part by the player can become goofy as you move back and forth and the entities do the same... adds a bit of levity I enjoy.

The bosses of which there are... a handful are for the most part very similar and while on hindsight they do tell you how to beat them, the actual ability to grab the thing you need to grab at times feel finicky making so by the penultimate one I was jumping around like a hyena trying to grab the thing, a bit frustrating but not game ending.

The music in the game is strange in that there are moments usually in the darker sections where the music is actually very good, and in some levels its fun and memorable, but in the first quarter of the game it'll feel a bit rought, and later there are events where the music stops for atmospheric reasons and events where it... just fails to trigger (you can tell because you still have the fun sound effects that usually disappear in the atmospheric segments) this is obviously a bug but at times I was unsure if it was a bug as, well, some times its taken for scares...

The game has a interesting system where if you die twice and game over, your main collectible gets taken from you and you have to pick it up from "the pit", this was never an issue for me, not because I didn't game over, I did a few times, but more due to divine grace the collectibles all spawned in a vertical line from the center of the pit which I appreciate so much, though I know that's not how it was designed to be and can imagine might irk some people. luckily game overing by itself is difficult enough (with some exceptions) that you dont have to worry... this is because:

if lose all health (after a certain early cutscene) a second character will take your place and you can return to the first characters death spot to recollect them, allowing for a sort of dark soulsian soul retrieve of the previous character allowing you to if you die yet again, have the first character back... this is good over all but there are very very specific circumstances where you may enter a death loop where you simply off better just letting yourself die the second death and go brave the pit, for example if your character dies very very far away from spawn as you explored, or if you die in a dangerous enough place (like a pit thats hard to return to), or finally if unluckily you fell through the world through faulty swimming collision (which happened twice in total).

Finally on the respawn mechanic... there is a check point system in the game inside SOME levels, and if you die your other character spawns there... however if saved once you cannot use that specific checkpoint a second time, rather having to go save of the other one to then return again to the first checkpoint. If you are a compulsive saver you'll notice this as for example you get 2 collectible, save, then get to more and try to save again but cant, so you go find another checkpoint, but end up having to close the game for whatever reason, then on reload of the game you lost those later 2 collectibles you got after that save you managed (it is important to note, the levels are small enough that over all this is rarely if ever a problem unless you are busy in real life, the main collectibles autosave, the secondary ones do not)

To end this review:

---A Movement related section---

Regarding moves besides what I have mentioned above, there is currently (unsure it is fixable) issue where the main... lets call it "speedrun" method of moving fast which is running, crouching and then jumping quickly, leaving the crouch button pressed and pressing (or mashing) the jump button. at times if your joystick is slightly lesser than it was before you may instead use the dreaded backwards flip jump.

That dreaded backwards flip is a move which in theory could be useful but sadly due to how it works it was only useful in 3 situations, all of which where only because the jump was slightly higher than the regular jump could do upwards and I was out of the lunge move resource. It also cannot bonk into walls allowing for the games wall jump "tech kick(?)" I feel as though it probably should, but since it doesn't make you face the wall I understand why it doesn't...
Maybe making it a direction flick side jump like in Super Mario 64 could have been a bit less intrusive but that's something I feel for having played Super Mario 64 and not everyone will feel similarly.

The tech kick itself tends to work well, however there are circumstances where slight inclines on the walls will make you fail to do them, still it is dependable near flawlessly in everywhere but "the pit" in which some rooms make it a bit hard to tech kick despite it being the main way you ascend them...

finally there are currently 2... not really exploits but interesting properties to the moves I will comment mostly due to them being fun. the crouch jump if almost perfectly parallel to a wall (touching the wall) will make you slide along the wall, this is not really super useful but its amusing to see, and tech kicks have an interesting property where they propel you to the opposite direction YOU are facing from the wall, as a result you can perform chains of tech kicks on any L shaped corner between the 2 lines of the L. just face like 90º from the corner into any of the walls and have fun.

---

Again over all none of the issues were a big enough deal to anger me, some were a time loss, some were a bit silly, but over all it was a great 10+ hours : ) (and apologies for any typos)

So like, I played this game a lot, I have fond memories of coping depression with it, and it influenced me a lot in my artistic pursuits.
It's not a perfect game but I guess I can write a few pros and cons from memory. They wont alter my final result of saying the game was overall a positive recommendable experience:

PROS:
-Its a rewarding experience if you stick with it, despite the challenging appearence and the marketing heavily implying its crushing difficulty, the game is designed to reward above all else patience and persistance.
-It "would" allow for the crafting of your own theories on how the story is thanks to the (at the time relatively unused) way which it delivers story bits, the so called "Lore" that exists seasoned throught various item descriptions and enviormental storytelling in the game.
(I say "would" because after extensive theory by the fans over the years its hard to come up with something someone hasnt come up with and the sharing of more fantastical or out there theories tends to be looked upon not so great by the community)
-The visuals and imagery are enjoyable, its not the most powerful graphics testing device but it has visually stunning moments.

Cons:
-To someone never having experienced the heaps of fan created media, this game would require actively going against how they teach you to play it to find it a more rewarding and less slow experience.
-It also may actively encourage you to exploit what are essentially flaws in the game design to your advantage, while this can be seen as a con, I am the kind of person that enjoying breaking games like that.
-While the idea of everything being hard but fair sounds cool in theory, in practice games will always have bugs, theres is always the possibility of something happening that is just kind of a ♥♥♥♥ move but its not even the developers fault, its just something no one could have predicted.

Extra info:
--It's story is suprisingly enough, if you peel the "lore" and enviormental story telling out of it, pretty meh:

1-Everything is gray dull and filled with dragons and zombies(?).
2-Flames pops up from nowhere and grants powers for reasons unknown.
3-Giants(?) from nowhere grab shards of the fire and gain magic powers.
4-A Dragon mad at the other Dragons helps the Giants(?) kill off the Dragons race.
5-The Giants(?) then have a golden age with some color to it (like literally things stop being grey).
6-Twist! turns out some of the zombies(?) grabbed the titular "Dark soul" from the fire too.
7-The Giants(?) and Zombies(?) arent friends cause the big boys want to be all powerful.
8-Giants(?) curse Zombies(?) into immortality so they can suffer, this hubris eventually comes back to them.
9-the Flames powers now fading (for reasons unexplained) the Giants(?) try everything to keep it running, they kinda fail and cause the closest thing to an apocalypse possible by mistake.
10-the Zombies(?) now go around killing the weak Giants(?) to end their good times and possibly start good times for themselves or just cause it go back to boring ol' grey.
Note: I say "Giants(?)" because later on there turns out there are even larger giants so like I dunno, and I also say "Zombies(?)" because while technically they are more like revenants they also were never really alive or dead to begin with they kinda just... were...

-Begining nothing is happening, then magic happens and some people profit from it, then the weaker people get a chance to strike back and do so... theres no real like moral dilemma, even though the game gives you the choice to just end everything and make everything go back to being boring and mindless, there is no real reason to do that, as the player character you are one of the Zombies(?), so like why would you not strive to better the world you live in?
-Now it is a bit nitpicky of me to say its a not so great story, but everything really cool or interesting that you could experience has kind of already happened, and that does make sense with the theme sure, but as a game it leaves you to read into cooler stuff that could be happening but that you cant really play through...
--This is not really a game you can play in short bursts so you kind of would have to make time to play it, and that to someone that has little time free is not the easiest.
--Finally, something to note, this game has 2 sequels, named accordingly, and while they are in base simillar games, they can become very different experiences, I played DS1 first and wasnt that into it, then played DS2 and enjoyed it enough to try and replay the first one, then ending up enjoying the first one too, later I got to try DS3 but never really finished it completely but I still enjoyed it. the 3 have gameplay diferences that change quite a bit and suprisingly enough the second game ends up kind of having the biggest impact in the story with its DLC... but anyways.

Overall I cant give this game like too hard a critisim in my mind because I do love this game, it was a pretty important part of my life and like I said helped me cope with something I still fight with to this day, it was overall a fun time.

PS:I am bound to have written a huge ammount of typos, it happens but I hope that even if this was a bit all over the place it was a fun read for those that read it, have a good day/night.

I have to say, for something I originally bought for barely any money at all this game was great fun, its not a storytelling masterpiece or anything but its great silly fun to be had alone or with friends. Its solid enough to play though some bugs do show once in a while, normally nothing game breaking, but thats how pc games can be at times.
7/10 good fun, glitches enhanced it