For now I am not going to recommend it, if you cant control the game properly why bother playing it at all. If the controls are fixed and the keybinds saving fixed then I will change it to recommending a YES!

THE BAD...!!

1. Absolutely confused if this is a demo of Bloom: Memories and this is just a chapter part of the full game, so basically a demo, OR it is a full game.. giving the game two different titles does nothing but confuse people.
2. Absolutely terrible controls on controller, and nearly as confusing and bad on mouse & keyboard.
3. Gameplay reminds me of the Phillips CDi - Zleda's Adventure, but with better graphics and just as bad controls.
4. The keybinds don't save or work most of the time so you are stuck with really bad keybinds to play.
5. The aiming of the bow sucks, you miss way to often, even if you are locked onto a monster.
6. Probably more but I just gave up.

THE GOOD...!!

7. The music.
8. The graphics, much better than the mentioned CDi Zelda game mentioned.
9. Amazing art of characters and npcs.
10. Interesting story.
11. At least it's free.

I was playing this, but the controls (for the keyboard) are too awkward, especially when trying to navigate your inventory menu screen. Buttons just don't do what you'd expect them to do, and if you try using the pointer to click things it closes your inventory altogether. I had to keep flipping back and forth between the controls screen to figure out how to assign abilities, and then again to figure out what button correlates with which key, as there are no reminders on the main screen, and you can't click the ability itself to use it, aside from the left ability, for some reason. I tried to bind a key to use the left ability, but that did not work. Then, I had to close the game down, so I pressed the Wake (save) option, only to find when I'd come back that all my key assigning had been undone anyway. I wasn't about to go through another 15 mins of frustration.

On top of that, colours are important to the game, but you're shown what the colours mean, once. By the time I came back to the game, I'd forgotten what they meant, and there's no where to find that information again. I was hoping it would be recorded in some kind of journal, but no luck.

It's too bad, because the graphics, character design, music, and overall message the game is trying to portray is beautiful. Maybe it works better with a controller, but with my setup I found it too frustrating to play at this stage. I'll keep following and hoping for updates and fixes—I can't complain too much when this was free. I still recommend people give it a try, as maybe they'll find the controls easier than I did.

I like where the game is going. I've been following this game for years and its nice to finally play it! I think the controls could use a lot of work though, the game feels kind of clunky to play in general. I'm hoping these issues will be resolved as I love the graphics and setting.

Bloom: The Forest Burns is not strictly a game. It's an advertisement/demo for a game called Bloom: Memories, a forest themed 3D rendered ARPG (with plenty of problems, but since this is just an advertisement, it's not worth going into it). It's a common mistake when unfamiliar with Steam to launch demos/advertisements as full games on Steam instead of tagging them correctly as demos. Here's the instructions for putting a demo up on Steam, to demonstrate that there is a correct process for this, which hasn't been followed here:

https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/store/application/demos

While it might seem like an inocuous mistake, publishing demos and advertisements as if they are full games is misleading and in some ways harmful. This advertisement is taking up marketing space and visibility that would be better made available to a developer that's done the right thing and created a full game. Instead, that visibility is given over to a demo/advert that's been published incorrectly and is polluting the marketplace.

It's unclear if this mistake was made through incompetence or a deliberate intent to mislead gamers. Often developers may choose to incorrectly publish demo/advertisements as separate games as a cheap way to bypass paying Valve for marketing presence on the Steam front page, which may seem clever to them, but it's harmful behaviour and it's not good for gamers.

So, should you download this advertisement? Nope. You can get free advertisements much easier just by browsing the web without an ad-blocker. I cannot recommend anyone entertains the unethical mislabeling of this advertisement as a game.

This is gorgeous. Been looking for a game like this for a long time: it's like Lands of Lore meets Zelda!

Huge congrats to the 3-person team, and looking forward to "Bloom: Memories"!

I love the fact that you seem to be able to play this game peacefully without hurting the animal roaming around. If they get to annoying you can lure them away or use ways to hide. Indeed the whole setting so far seems very calming, definitely a plus too and you can see that the creator is trying out new approaches to an old genre, what I find very refreshing.

I'm not so sure if I like the controls or not. They give the game somewhat of an extra challenge, but then again you need a good memory to remember which slots belong to what key and it is very easy to change the items applied to them when you are in the inventory. As a suggestion: Give the item slots a small lable with the key that triggers them. You could make a toggle in the settings for it to be turned off, for those who don't like the text there. As well have another key pressed before an item can be assigned to a key, like that you avoid accidential assigning it (e.g. very popular by accident to the left mouse button). It would as well be nice if items that are meant to be eaten by yourself could be triggered in the inventory.

What it as well needs it a manual in the options. Like somebody else said, if you don't pay attention to a hint ingame or forget it's content (like which color is which mood).

I hope that the developer keeps developing and his fantasy continues to grow this beautiful world with ever more interactive choices.

Tip for other players: You can lure the green flees to eat those pesky spike plants. :)

Sound: 4
Graphics: 5
Story: 8
Gameplay: 4
Commands: 2
Fun: 5
Time to load / lag: 8
Bugs / Problems: 6
Final score - 4

Really cool game, great art style and direction. If you enjoy nature, forests, or druids, this is a game for you. I have some interface and control complaints but I think they could be overcome if I'd paid more attention to the tutorial.

Don't know if the main game will ever be released (apparently it's been stuck in development hell for a long time) but I guess we'll see. I mean, you'd think the game will come out, since it was successfully funded on Kickstarter and already raised $60,000 (20k above their goal).

Edit: Well, looks like the project is cancelled, according to Kickstarter and Patreon. Alas, it really is pretty.

Original:

The game's clunky and is unfinished. However, some of the problems should have been sorted out before this demo (?), or chapter (?) was released.

Controls are convoluted. Navigating menus is awkward with a keyboard and mouse and I couldn't get the controller bindings to work at all. Hotkeys don't have ways to toggle between themselves, interacting with objects is slow, inspecting creatures is bizarre and uses two mouse buttons, and there's no indicator of which item or skill you're using.

There's an emotional state GUI with no legend or descriptions.

I... don't know what I'm reviewing. This is unfinished, but looks beautiful, and if it's ever completed and some of the basics are sorted out, then it may become a good game.