Summary

• Bloomburrow challenges the typical 'wholesome' gaming stereotype with its balance of warmth and edge.
• Wholesome games industry can lack depth and creativity, but Bloomburrow stands out for its originality.
• Magic: The Gathering's latest set captures spirit and creativity often missing in the 'wholesome' gaming genre.

I hate ‘wholesome’ gaming, and so you’d think I’d also hate 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Magic: The Gathering’s upcoming set, Bloomburrow. It’s got cosy woodland critters gently making delicious looking meals in a pictur🀅esque cottagecore landscape, which would usually be enough to make my cold, bitter blood boil.

Except it doesn’t. I absolutely adore Bloomburrow. I love its characters, the world, the aesthetic, and even the cute ickle-wickle mice and froggies. Bloomburrow proves that games can be wholesome without being cloying, and video games need to take a page out 𓆉of its warm, fuzzy book.

The Problem With Wholesome Gaming

Video games have always played with cute and heartwarming themes, but it’s only been in the last few years that we’ve seen the rise of capital-W ‘Wholesome’ gaming. Stardew Valley burst the dam, and now the idea of what a ‘cosy’ and ‘wholesome’ game is has become very rigid. If it isn’t a pastel-tinted farming sim where you’re a witch running a café/bookshop/library, it’s a pastel-tinted throwback to hazy ‘90s teen summers that is, somehow, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:also a farming sim.

Some of my favourite wholesome games 🍌include ꧃Night of the Rabbit, Lil’ Gator Game, and Spiritfarer, which avoid pandering to tropes.

Non-violent games are fantastic, but ‘Wholesome’ games often have an almost impressive lack of creativity to them. Give something a pastel colour-palette, and either romance options, farming sim mechanics, or a cooking mini-game, and you can guarantee a spot in the next Nintendo Direct. The demand for this endless parade of saccharine, and wholly unoriginal games has turned comfort and cosiness into a cynical marketing strategy, an♋d I hate it.

Enter 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Bloomburrow. Magic: The Gathering’s latest set imagines how a fantasy world✅ built by animals would 𝔉look. Inspired by the likes of Redwall and Mouse Guard, it’s got magic, swordplay, and political intrigue, but through the eyes of tiny mammals, birds, reptiles, and amphibians.

True to its inspirations, Bloomburrow is incredibly wholesome. Take a look at cards like Harvestrite Host, Wandertale Mentor, and Run Away Toget💛her; they all whisk me back to being a young kid reading The Wind In The Willows. The art direction is gentle, tranquil, and idyllic, while all in service of its wider world. Nothing here is just pointless cosiness for the sake of it.

Wholesome Games Need Contrast

There’s also an edge to Bloomburrow. It’s a world where necromancy is real, gigantic beasts turn creatures into salt, and a whole city is ruled from the shadows by a tyrannical frog king. But none of this is intended to diminish the comforting vibes of the rest of the set – this isn’t Happy Tree Friends splattering a Squirrel’s brains across the floor for kicks – it’s to give comforting parts of the set contrast and cꦑontext that heighten them. The warmth feels earned; Bloomburrow is a society I want to live in, for good and bad.

All too often, ‘Wholesome’ games are terrified of breaking their own fantasies. We saw how this can go wrong only a few months ago, with the 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:no🔴w-infamous Farm Folk jiggle physics ♋controversy, which highlighted the problems with the whole Wholesome games indusꦚtry in the stupidest way possible. Protecting the veneer of comfort and safety is tantamount, and attempts to give it depth can feel like a betrayal to🐷 the audience’s expectations.

Farm Folks’ views might be out of step with its core demographic, but what views do Cute Cat Farm Bake Sim 3 have at all, other t🤡han taking advantage of how easy and profitable this genre can be? Artistic value and individually don&rsq🦹uo;t matter as long as it fits the aesthetic of a Wholesome game, because that is what sells.

Bloomburrow doesn’t care, because it isn’t trying to be ‘Wholesome’. It nestles up to cosiness with its themes, but neither the cards nor Wizards try to frame it as the “wholesome cottagecore set⛎” in the same way it sold Murders At Karlov Manor as “the murder mystery set” or Outlaws of Thunder Junction “the cowboy set”. It’s playing within the same space, but it’s never tried to pigeonhole itself the way any video game with a toothless meditation on generational trauma and a cute kitty you can pet would.

The Wholesome games industry only makes superficial gestures towards the warmth of the g♋enre, because it doesn’t need to do much more to sell. What is considered ‘Wholesome’ has been so heavily codified. Despite the label that’s thru𝕴st upon it, Bloomburrow is comfortable doing its own thing, in doing so has captured more spirit than 95 percent of the whole Steam tag.