Fear is fun everywhere
Image credit: obleak games
The purpose of a Tamagotchi is to have a tiny, portable digital pet with you at all times that you can feed and feed and feed until it grows into something slightly bigger, different, a new creature almost. It’s generally a sweet, albeit potentially irritating (the beeps…) little micro-game that may cause a touch of stress, but certainly no feelings of fear. In Full Bloom, however, asks "what if your Tamagotchi was actually a blob of an organism with nothing but a mouth that you must continuously feed… or else…"
The Tamagotchi connection to In Full Bloom is an explicit one, the ’90s classic toys are directly mentioned on the game’s Steam page. Yet instead of finding the likes…
Fear is fun everywhere
Image credit: obleak games
The purpose of a Tamagotchi is to have a tiny, portable digital pet with you at all times that you can feed and feed and feed until it grows into something slightly bigger, different, a new creature almost. It’s generally a sweet, albeit potentially irritating (the beeps…) little micro-game that may cause a touch of stress, but certainly no feelings of fear. In Full Bloom, however, asks "what if your Tamagotchi was actually a blob of an organism with nothing but a mouth that you must continuously feed… or else…"
The Tamagotchi connection to In Full Bloom is an explicit one, the ’90s classic toys are directly mentioned on the game’s Steam page. Yet instead of finding the likes of Mametchi, or Kuchipatchi, or Ichigotchi, you just have… "the mouth." This mouth is, maybe, I’m not sure, something akin to an amoeba? Or really a lump of flesh adorned with nothing but a single orifice it uses to consume whatever you place inside of it. This, in its totality, is the game.
You take your mouse, you click and hold on an object with the left button, bring it to the mouth’s mouth, and release. And bit by bit it grows. And you start to notice changes. Those dents, is it forming eyes? Right there… it has teeth now. More teeth. More teeth. Even more teeth, a dentist’s nightmare amount of teeth. It continues to get bigger too, so you must feed it larger and larger objects until… well, I’m not sure. There’s a demo available to try, but it only goes so far, though judging from the game’s page it can get as big as a planet.
There is admittedly not much game here on a technical level. Yet it still makes for a deeply uncomfortable experience. Some excellent sound design fuels the sensations from dread as you contribute to this thing’s growth. I was left with a few questions from the demo too, particularly around who I am meant to be if there is a person feeding it. Neat stuff! I won’t sleep tonight! If you’d like to join me in the night terrors, you can try out the demo, or just wishlist it, on Steam right here.