Fractured Blooms Hands-On: You'll Want to Make Thyme for This Freaky Farming Sim

Fractured Blooms’ unsettling twist on the farming sim got to me. Not because it scared me—though it certainly did—but because it made me feel like I was losing my mind. Contending with forces beyond my comprehension, I tried my best to go through the motions of a normal day on the farm. But it took me too long to do my laundry, so I’m pretty sure I opened up a portal to Hell in my bedroom and planted a demon in my garden. Yes, there’s something sinister beneath Fractured Blooms’ surface. I tried to adjust to farm life during a hands-on demo at PAX East, but the voices in my head kept arguing. The thing that stuck out to me about Fractured Blooms right away was its voice direction. As I wandered around the farm in first-person, plucking tomatoes from the vine and planting beets, the voice of the main character, Angie, walked me through what to do. But their voice wasn’t your usual video game performance. Instead, voice actress Nichole Goodnight brought this unsettling, abnormally whispery, deadpan tone to her delivery, accentuating every chill that shot down my spine. And then, by the time I got used to that timid cadence, a new voice popped up outta nowhere. Bubbly and lively, this