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I couldn't comprehend the woods. As a child in New York, I saw that sleepy horses trotted around the Alice in Wonderland sculpture in Central Park, and I waved to the lonely polar bear at the zoo without wondering why she lived in the Bronx. But the demo I'm playing at Summer Game Fest 2026 for Fractured Blooms, the upcoming farming horror sim from Doki Doki Literature Club publisher Serenity Forge, makes me feel like I've started life over again from a filthy forest in West Virginia, and the odd thing is, I don't mind. I'm also sure that the Fractured Blooms demo available now is more intoxicating than anything you'll touch during Steam Next Fest.
It gives me the sensation that I've walked into someone else's dream – there are some concrete reasons for that, as Fractured Blooms is based on a true story, Serenity Forge founder and Fractured Blooms creator Zhenghua "Z" Yang tells me, though he evades me when I ask him for more details. I suppose I don't need anything as finicky as that, as Fractured Blooms is soaked in the sugar of Appalachian mysticism, and perhaps the wrath of God.
Teen protagonist Angie begins my Summer Game Fest demo with confession: "Can I tell you a secret? I'm not scared." She talks about mud caking the white skirt of her dress on her way to the old church, where I think something covered in fleas is probably waiting for me.
That's the feeling of Fractured Blooms – Angie speaks with a childlike evasiveness I relate to, being a Christian who loves Jesus as much as she is aware His wound is always bleeding. It's obvious something is wrong with these woods, even though Serenity Forge has cleverly depicted them with lovely gauziness, and it makes me want to lie down for a nap among the poppies…
Angie remembers trudging through this particular forest path with a shining white bouquet of flowers, but it's red petals that fall from the sky as I make my way inside the church, where... there's a plate of raw meat staring at me from the altar as a congregation recommends I partake in His flesh.
Yang tells me later that this demo represents the start of Angie's time loop of chores, where she must farm, cook, and pick up after herself to the point of pain. This is the kind of idea that really frightens Yang, who realizes he isn't scared of much else over the course of our interview. Daily dramas – folding the laundry while your unmade bed is pleading for your return, picking all the fresh tomatoes before the bugs get them first – upset him more than the average horror game or film, which he rarely interacts with.
"The most difficult part about launching a horror game in general," Yang says, reflecting, "is to try to break through the noise of a now established and generic formula, which is typically some kind of combination of mascots, jumpscares, asset store flips, and some kind of PS1 graphics." Fractured Blooms is a soft bunny in comparison, eager to lead you to a more contemplative horror rather than shit your pants.
For example, "I think it's very important for players to see the version of God in their own way, because I believe that that is the truth of how it works," Yang says.
The Fractured Blooms demo currently available to play on Steam showcases some of the rituals players will carry out while weighing the idea: harvest a tomato from the golden garden, notice the treehouse is rotting, make venison stew with noodles and thyme. At one point, Angie sobs mid-sentence, because the work never stops. During my Summer Game Fest demo, she eagerly drowns herself at the behest of an anime redhead (Yang tells me there will be "a major payoff" to why Fractured Blooms' character and environmental art styles are so different).
"I split the self apart to bud anew, and shrank into the dirt as she advised," Angie says unremorsefully. I understand. It's complicated – her crying, her temporary suicide don't read as purely tragic to me. Angie seems to act out of commitment.
Again, I relate to her, being a woman who loves life as much as she is aware it requires suffering. Yang shares this grim understanding, as he tells me when I ask for his greatest fear, "I don't think I am scared of death, just like how I'm not scared of before I was born."
"I don't know if you know too much about my history," he says, "but when I was 18 years old, I was diagnosed with a near-fatal illness that caused me to be hospitalized for two years. I was told I was going to die in three hours when I was 18.
"At that point, I was writing my will, I was thinking about how to come to terms with death. For the next two years, I was going through chemo, and I kept on being told by doctors that maybe I have a couple days. Maybe I have a couple weeks. I spent years just expecting to not have a future and to only have a very limited amount of time to live.
"It kind of removed my fear of death, because I just had to be so OK with it from such a young age. It also removed my fear of needles. I find a lot of comfort when needles enter my veins."
Nestled in the burnt heart of the Virginia woods, Fractured Blooms seems like a comfortable place to consider these kinds of human peculiarities. I feel safe here, even with the leaves and sliced venison telling me I should question that, and Jesus' cut continues to drip.
It seems I've finished the journey from New York to Fractured Blooms' cracked porcelain, Appalachian kitchen from just my Summer Game Fest demo. 20 minutes of gameplay has never made me feel this way before.
