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Two Games That Stole All Their Ideas (Patreon)

Published:
2025-09-01 04:03:31
Edited:
2025-09-01 04:06:23
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:

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Content

A review of indie horror game Heartworm and indie JRPG Bloomtown: A Different Story.

I recently played these two games almost back to back and both of them are sub-par copies of different games I have also played. I've been thinking about them a lot, especially Bloomtown: A Different Story, which is such a funny title since the "different story" it's talking about is just Persona 5.

In fact, try taking a drink every time I say "In Persona 5" in this review. You will be dead by the end of it if your drink is alcoholic. And if it's not, you will really need to pee.

How much can you steal before your game goes from "inspired by" to downright plagiarism? When a developer copies the surface level aesthetics of a game they enjoy without understanding the underlying mechanics, will they ever be able to make a truly great video game? Let's find out.

TIMESTAMPS:

0:00 - Intro3:00 - Trangender Law Center Shout-Outs6:52 - Heartworm27:50 - Bloomtown43:32 - "I copied Persona but forgot to make its battle system good"1:03:43 - "I removed the stakes and timeline of Persona and it messed up everything"1:18:33 - A Non-Exhaustive List of the Things Bloomtown Stole from Persona 51:38:44 - "This game isn't finished"1:51:00 - "Hey, why is the tone like that?" or "Please Don't Punch That Baby"

Me when I'm stealing character designs.

Me when my game isn't finished and the equipment item ID is in the description by mistake.

If you're into Persona stuff, you might like my needlessly in-depth Persona 5 Royal mechanics breakdown.

Files

Comments

Aggressively Nill

I always learn a lot from.these reviews, thank you for making them!

PurpleIsDebeste

haHAH oh this is amazing! i just finished reading your Bloomtown steam review and its so funny to me how quickly you found two games that accomplish nothing and are just trying to copy other games the creators like. I remember hearing the song “ignite” from bloomtown and immediately clocking it as Life Will Change from p5 like the opening melody is doing the exact same thing

Dompap

Woo, Patreon heroes, thanks for donating!

BeastAlchemistVA

Bought Bloomtown but never finished it. It felt... off

Incorporeal

If you're interested in other indie PS1-style horror games, I'd recommend Fear the Spotlight. While it leans into some of the tropes of the genre, it actually has a decent amount of interesting ideas and its own things to say.

Your Moist Toast

About party members having sub persona's being an actual change, that's actually just a feature from the Persona Q spinoffs where every party member gets their main persona slot and a sub slot they can change between battles.

Bonnford

Wow that stolen design just sums it all up. Persona series: "Hey let's combine the Cait Sith myth with Puss In Boots, that'll be a quirky design!" This damn game: "No he's just ACTUALLY Puss In Boots now". Scrubbed out all the creativity...

Bonnford

Oh my god they stole upgrade text?? For upgrades they don't have?? That's absolutely wild, seriously. How does that even happen? Who the heck thinks "interface phrasing? THAT'S the secret sauce to Resident Evil's success!"

Benedict Ide

That thing with the overanimated gun transitions, where the game puts being-pretty in the way of having its primary game loop feel good- it happens a ton in the AAA space. I was playing Horizon Forbidden West last year (finally got a PS5 at a reasonable price) and boy oh boy did that game want you to know it was a launch title for the new most powerful Graphics Machine. They did all these super-elaborate motion capture animations for her in a bid for photorealism, and forgot that these animations were for actions you were going to do hundreds of times over in a videogame. Aloy has animations for scavenging parts from defeated enemies, for picking healing berries off bushes, for every little thing- and they look great, sure, but you do so much picking-up-random-crap in this game that watching these animations becomes half the game. But don't you see? They worked really hard on this ten-second animation of Aloy grunting and straining to pull this crumbling wall apart with a grappling hook- so of course they had to put fifty such crumbling walls in the game to get their money's worth, never mind the player sitting there waiting for the animation they've already seen to finish. It doesn't matter it it makes the game better! It makes there be More of the game, which means it wasn't a waste of money. Visual fidelity be damned- I just want to press A on the random healing berry I'm walking past and just have it go into my inventory without an animation! "And then wait while the game finishes being pretty" should never be part of your primary game loop. (Also, that laundromat that's open for like two hours: sometimes it's just like that in sufficiently sleepy towns. There's a barber down the block from me who is open from 1 to 4 PM on only Wednesdays, and the thrift shop across the street keeps inscrutable jigsaw-puzzle hours that could understandably be confused for some sort of coded message. Sometimes a store is run by one old person who doesn't need the money and is just open whenever they feel like it and you kids can take it or leave it.) oh and i see you going and digging up the persona 5 menuing sound effects so your bit explaining what a confidant hangout is like can sound like an actual persona 5 confidant hangout. i do not understand the nature of the spirit that has possessed you but i cannot but respect its hustle.

Benedict Ide

Oh my god I just saw the Puss in Boots screencap. I thought you *had* to be exaggerating about it being the same design, but holy shit. "Surely there's only so many ways to put a cat on its hind legs in a three musketeers outfit. It's probably just coincidence and Jello is succumbing to the horns effect. Let's give them the benefit of the doubt and-- what the FUCK that's just exactly Cait Sith. What the fuck."

Bonnford

Yo that communal mosque building sounds AWESOME! That's such a great way to strengthen community within a religion, making a big celebration of everyone contributing to keeping the place standing for the next year. Amazing example of how collaborative inspiration can be great but just copying stuff with no thought could never achieve this. It'd be like some dude seeing the festival, going "I get it!" then building an exact copy of the mosque down the street. Nobody even worships there. But hey, it sure does look like a thing people like!!

Mebe_Chloe

I'm so glad you tapped into the character writing issues in Bloomtown. I was watching your playthrough and was incredibly peeved about how ~nothing~ the party members felt. Most of the plot points at the start was like the writers saying "well this character needs to do X to proceed to Y. Lets just write them doing this without diving into their own wants or agency." Like, Ramona's decision on helping Emily with the demon stuff was basically "oh hi new girl, you told me demons exist. Now that I helped you read a book in the library, I'll help you fight demons." It's like if Joker met Ryuji and was like, "hey transfer student, this castle stuff is pretty strange huh? Now that you want to keep exploring the dungeon, I guess I'll tag along." And that sort of aimlessness happened the entire stream. Like why have a story where kids go on adventures in the underworld, if they act so nonchalant about everything? It all felt so lame. Then again I haven't played it, maybe their motivations are clearer later on, but still

LuperisLua

I was fine with that since I thought the songs - even if they were quite blatantly persona - were good and I was just listening to it when studying it, but looking at how much of Bloomtown is *just* Persona (without understanding why it was good) makes it feel a bit more outrageous.

SonicPsycho

51:21 “all characters can equip the secondary demons” thats a mechanic in soul hackers, another atlus RPG :(

Folkloric

The stuff you said here reminded me a lot of my playthrough of Sea of Stars. The gameplay was actually pretty fun, the art was good, music pretty decent, but the whole experience felt sauce-less. It didn’t help that the game also takes huuuge inspiration from a pre-existing title to the point of detriment, in this case Chrono Trigger

BigMoffers

I’m pretty that’s also a thing for the first two Persona Games correct me if I’m wrong. But willing to bet it all that they weren’t aware about either and just only copied Persona 5’s homework

dollqueen

I think the throughline of disappointment between Heartworm & Bloomtown and the "sauceless-ness" is that by taking "heavy inspiration" they should have an audiance shorthand. Devs can focus more time on their own mechanics & characters & world & story because they should already have a list of what their audiance doesnt need explaining & what works & needs some QOL improvements. The lack of all those things and the negative space filled with packing-peanut references instead makes the sauceless-ness more pronounced than if they had tried 100% their own thing & failed anyway. Like Bug Fables isnt perfect but Moonsprout had a good grasp of what made Paper Mario fun & charming AND an original story to tell that matched the tone I was kinda hype when Heartworm got announced bc I love Fatal Frame's take on action horror where you have to get close to the danger to survive (cameras are not good distance weapons) and every game has a interwoven story of a small community where you get at least a little bit of everyone's part in the tragedy. Only for Heartworm to not really be a horror story or much of a story at all. The antithesis of good horror is thoughtlessness bc the FUN is thinking about how it was put together Remember in Haunting of Hill House also had the same "the ghost haunting the narrative is future you" twist but it was so GOOD and fun to think about? Also Heartworm as a name has nothing to do with the game or story and I hate it

dollqueen

I wish i could like this twice but i guess a comment will do.

DarkElysium

i hate to be the video game defender in the comments, but i actually really like sea of stars! i think it has a lot of original ideas that aren't in the game it's very obviously inspired by! i can definitely see how someone might not get much out of it, but i do think there's a few really cool things it does, at least

Bonnford

Sucks that they called dibs on that name so now we can't get a horror game about actual heart worms

Bonnford

And I send one back to you~!

Folkloric

It does have a lot of good things going for it, but the writing is not one of them.

dollqueen

A metaphorical heartworm would've been fine like a grief parasite but Heartworm didnt DO that so I'm not giving them credit

JelloApocalypse

@DarkElysium Can you talk a bit more about stuff you like in Sea of Stars because I very rarely see anything positive about it beyond "I think it's neat!" and my impression of it from afar is that people were enamored with it at first because it was a high-effort game by a small team but after a few weeks the sparkle kind of faded and nobody really liked it anymore, which is usually a symptom of games like the ones I'm reviewing in this post. I'd be curious to hear some good stuff about it.

spider8reath

I wouldn't say this wasn't an intentional copy, because it's also the system from persona q2, which also features the phantom thieves

spider8reath

It's also where the row mechanic comes from

BigMoffers

No… my cool 100 bucks…

Kiran Nguyen

This is one of my favroite audio things since the Makoto Shinkai review

Vee

curious if you had any other games would go into this box of "we saw original thing and wanted to do that but don't understand why"

DarkElysium

@JelloApocalypse Sure! Sea of Stars has a modular difficulty system that I really adore because it lets you tailor the game to your preferences! The main "hard mode" setting, among other things, makes healing at rest points only restore up to half of your party's HP, which turns every battle into a really fun challenge where you're trying to gain more HP and resources than you lose. It also turns off healing items in battle to actually make every fight a challenge, which I really enjoy because it means you can't just cheese bosses by spam-healing. Sea of Stars utilizes a break system, which is not particularly uncommon in and of itself, but I find it to be really well implemented. You have three types of attacks with three different resources (standard, combo, ultimate) you can use to break enemies' locks before they use their most powerful abilities. It feels like a really cool puzzle each battle figuring out which locks can be broken, and how efficiently you can do so. Being able to break a really powerful enemy before they can hit you with a really strong ability feels super satisfying, and not being able to break a lock because you mistimed an action command or one of your party members is down feels super tense. Every playable character (except perhaps one) feels really tightly designed and very well balanced, such that I always felt like I was calling on them about equally during my playthrough. It's pretty standard in a JRPG to have standout party members and ones that are really not worth using, but that didn't feel like the case. For the overwhelming majority of the game I found each individual ability had its niche, particularly during longer boss fights where I found myself regularly needing to use every character. The amount of tools you have builds at a really solid pace, so you always feel like you have a good selection of tactics at your disposal without feeling overwhelmed. While the main two characters are admittedly pretty boring, I actually found myself compelled by the game's writing. It’s definitely far from perfect, but I think this game has mostly charming party members and a handful of really compelling villains. The main villain has a very interesting relationship with one of the playable characters, and the villain’s eventual right hand (my favorite character) has a really cool motivation that challenges the heroes in a unique way. Sea of Stars has tons of dungeons, and while it’s been a bit since I played, I don’t remember a single bad one. The dungeons at the end of the game’s first and second acts in particular are really well designed and lead into utterly fantastic boss fights and climax sequences that feel suitably high stakes. The tension builds smoothly over the course of the game (particularly the first 2/3rds) and left me feeling very satisfied as villains were taken down. It feels, at times, like reading a fantasy epic, and even if the writing is generally kinda mediocre on average, the best moments are super compelling. Your mileage may vary, but I really like Sea of Stars. It’s far from a perfect game, especially writing wise, but I think some really cool story moments combined with excellent combat and dungeon design makes it a game that has a lot more merit than something like Heartworm or Bloomtown. I feel similarly towards it as I do towards something like Bug Fables. Even with its flaws, it’s a really fun time and, while obviously drawing heavy inspiration from a classic game, it brings new ideas to the table. I'm not positive you would like Sea of Stars, but it definitely sticks its landing better than these other two games.

Moshuma

I've 100% Horizon Zero Dawn gameplay-wise (not collectibles) by doing every quest to upgrade all my gear and stuff with the dlc. Trying to pick up items off the ground from a mount feels awful, like you're slamming the brakes. You also get locked into the animation for doing door puzzles, where granted, they aren't very long, but it's like 3 seconds each to flip one of switch 4-5 switches once or twice, and there may be another puzzle in the same room. If I have the solution in 20 seconds, I'd like to enter it in faster. Also, I don't know if it was intended to be this long, but the animation for placing traps takes forever where a hostile will likely blow you up as youre setting it. Ive never had a good time to use them in my first run or when doing Ultra Hard. I've only used the tripwires for that purpose because they do the same thing over a wider area and you can still move to not die. The trap placement still feels long in the 2nd game even with that upgrade. I see that the animation taking a long time is a thing that happens, but it's always annoying regardless of what game it is.

Moshuma

I mentioned it in the stream for Heartworm, but I will also say it again here; one of the notes you pick up at the start of that game is written by a guy using a camera for light and he is scared that a distant creature silhouette may approach him if he flashes the light and reveals his location. The game doesn't use that as a mechanic, and I was really sad because I was waiting until they brought the idea back since they had the tools and the ingredients, but it never did. The staircase room was crazy to see as someone who knows that staircase. I may not remember the entire layout of the spaces, but some of that foyer and that staircase were just complete shocks.

daFroakie

While Heartworm sounds the most like a directionless copy of RE and SH, Bloomtown feels like it's actually trying at times to "improve" the Persona 5 formula. Unfortunately, their process of improvement is taking out things that they find "limiting" or "annoying," failing to realize that measured limitation is what breeds motivation. Joker is the only one who can switch Personas because that gives every other party member a defined role and lets Joker be customized to not just what the player wants, but what they need. Time is a commodity in Persona because it forces you to engage with the game carefully. But the devs of Bloomtown thought, "Lets let every party member use any Persona, so the player can use whichever guys they want! In fact, lets let any Persona learn whatever spells the player wants!" This is why I'm annoyed at the open world and online multiplayer craze. Structure in your game is not inherently a flaw.

kiahl

For Heartworm I feel like my brain did too much work early on cause I thought the spider was the start of a new thematic string for enemies, cause you go into a TV for the first area and the enemies are static, the themes of loss and the alzheimers notes made me feel like it was doing this 'precious memories' thing, so the enemy of digital memory is the static, your weapon is a camera, something that captures moments in time, but then I thought you went into the model trainset and that's when the spider showed up, so the enemies in the construction piece of a loved one is the things that invade and infest it, but then you went into the earth-dog Forrest with the richterkinesis statues and all the work my brain did kinda fell apart because it started thinking before something was over and had the time to show itself as not being that deep or not having the ideas to follow through

JelloApocalypse

I'm so mad about the hiking area because the idea that it was somehow her grandfather's model trainset fucking RULES and they did nothing with it

kiahl

RIGHT! It could be SO cool to have it be in some way about memory or nostalgia, either the importance of recording a life for others and the preservation of the things someone worked on, or the more cynical view of 'the people in the intro who go somewhere and disappear are actually trapped in the past by the poison of nostalgia and you have to keep living for the present', but there would need to be a thesis statement at the start of creation to work with for that

Sam Asher

I would love to hear your thoughts on Expedition 33! There was a lot I liked about the game but I kept noticing Persona 5 mechanics that felt like they didn't belong.

emchovy

really enjoyed the slightly higher production value of this review; the sound-effects consistently made me smile & I liked getting the direct comparisons of the snippets of music

Sam Asher

In markdown, asterisks turn your code into italics. That's probably what they were going for.

Carl Nelson

I would recommend Crow Country, but I'm fairly sure Jello has already played it. I'll recommend it to everyone else though

Incorporeal

Yes, they already played it.

Carl Nelson

Oh wow, I looked up the song just now and that is SO blatant. Wearing your inspirations on your sleeve is one thing, this is more like making a skinsuit out of your inspiration and trying to mimic their mannerisms. Like even the vocals are similar

Bonnford

Oh my god that would be genuinely so funny if they just forgot to program that functionality. Or if they'd just seen asterixes in someone else's code and didn't get that it was supposed to turn into italics.

Kay Avalon

Per translation, was it translated to English? You said earlier that they straight up called the demons "Shadows", like in Persona 5. I doubt they would have translated each build version instead of just starting off either in English, or starting off in Lithuanian to then translating when the project is near complete.

Gabriel Davis

god I'm having a similar situation. I've been playing Nikoderiko and it's pretty much just a 6/10 Donkey Kong Country, its crazy.

AssuredlyReal

Listening to this at my data entry job, lost my goddamn mind when I heard the bloomtown music, Jesus, they thought that was fine??

AssuredlyReal

I think the bit that goes, "You can be my pretty friend" - "I thought girls brought ugly friends to concerts?" Was supposed to be a joke about "duffs" ("Designated Ugly Fat Friends" who you bring to events because you'll look better by comparison). So it's like, a coherent joke I guess but I can't really think of a way to structure it that wouldn't sound awkward or need explanation?

JelloApocalypse

I'm not 100% sure but from some Reddit screenshots it seems there's definitely a Lithuanian version of this game and I'd be *shocked* if the English was the original. I'm not proposing that they translated every build. I think what happened is that they probably used some Lithuanian term that got translated to "Demons" in 90% of the game and then another Lithuanian term that got translated to "Shadows" in the third dungeon, and that term was from an earlier build before they had edited the names around. The terminology is 1-to-1 with Persona 5 (All Out Attacks, One Mores, etc. These are common RPG concepts but only P5 calls them that) so I suspect they either had someone explicitly translate the terms they chose based on the English terms in P5 or they just straight up used whatever Lithuanian terms the local version of P5 had and then the translator translated them back to English.

Legend Account

What's very strange is that the developers' previous game The Messenger, while not perfect, managed to take obvious inspiration from another game series (Ninja Gaiden) while very much doing its own thing and throwing in plenty of really fun twists that take it in a new direction.

JelloApocalypse

That really didn't feel like the context since I got the feeling Emily and Ramona are supposed to be puppy crush flirting every other scene.

Bean & Bug

I've been playing games with more structure (and protagonists with character and dialogue) recently, and god, it's just such a breath of fresh air.

Bean & Bug

@JelloApocalypse DarkElysium already said all of the things I would want to (and more eloquently than I would've), but I wanted to add two highlights: I really like how the backstory "best friend" NPC is not only a playable character, but the secret protagonist of the game. By the end of the game, basically the whole game world is like "wow Garl, you really changed my life for the better! And also your two solstice warrior friends were there I guess." I'm a big fan of being able to swap out party members without burning a turn, which makes every battle a question of "do you know the right guy for the job" instead of "did you happen to bring the right guys for this fight?" It also helps keep every party member see pretty much equal use instead of trying to hedge your bets and only bring your "best" guys to every fight.

ruby_leaf

I love Barbarous c:

Cephalo the Pod

Wait, there’s an achievement called “Silence in the Library”? It could be a coincidence, but that’s also a Doctor Who episode title.

fuzzofwar

Jello's comments on Bloomtown remind me of my time playing Digimon Time Stranger, so much of the human world's design looks to be setting up for a long form RPG like Persona 5, and then they just don't use any of it. Makes me wonder if it was all left over from an older draft of the game that was more Persona-like.

ConstantlyBen

I fully believed that her monologues were supposed to be her flaws. The story would have her learn that there is a middle ground between her counterculture attitude and needing community and people to help make living easier. But then the "Are you a bad person?" Segment happened and it flipped into near-satire. She got worse. And her monologues went from being quite counterculture or two thousands emo, to what you called them in this review, "they mean nothing." Rambles I'd call pretentious. I hate calling things that, but the game earned it. It lacked a lot of firm footholds for the story to stabilize itself with.

PurpleIsDebeste

i lost it at "one of the main battle themes is called TRICKSTER!" *banging musical intro* "WHAT?!-"

Stagelights

this is like the evil version of the video "good artists steal" by andrew cunningham, a video essay where he talks about the inspirations behind the game he made (game is called random access mayhem, its pretty good) nd how and why he took what those games did and iterated on them while introducing original ideas at the same time.

Xenustik

I remember watching you play Heartworm and I won't defend the mechanics of the game, but I thought it strange that you didn't come up with any theme at all for it, or understood what the title of the game meant during the playthrough. I thought it was pretty obvious that the title was a play on the term "Earworm", like instead of a song stuck in a person's ear, it was a lost loved one stuck in a person's heart, like they can't let go of them and that's what draws these people here to this dimension; to search for a way to see their deceased person they are obsessed with.

DrawkuStuff

Just listened to this for i am new. Would you recommend p5 for the gameplay? I like the style hate the chars and writing is it still worth? Or is there one better? Sorry typing from work

ConstantlyBen

Love this review, it has that good energy too it I come back to listen every so often. Then return to the heartworm stream. Yam and Will start going mad in a quiet and fun way. With ideas Jello calls bad I like to try and come up with a concept for how it could work. (Though this ends up with a very different idea altogether.) The dumb camera equipping nonsense with heartworm is an interesting one. And it could genuinely be used for a really fun 'ah' moment. Remove the lying text and tooltips that pretend there are more weapons. Replace the item description with some innocuous text along the lines of "It's my trusty camera. I've made many memories with this little fellow. It remembers most of them too." Typical sweet dialogue. You can equip it as a weapon which leads you to think, unprompted, that there will be more equipables. After each boss or major section. The texture of the camera in the inventory changes, it becomes more scratched and dinged up. You can still unequip it for some reason. If you check the item descripion after a boss it has changed, they also get shorter. Ie, "If it weren't for this. I don't want to think about it." "My only defense in this wretched residence." "A weapon." Then, after you defeat the penultimate boss, entering the final area, you check the camera again. You drift over to unequip it. A unique tooltip pops up. "Why would I ever let this go" I think the only use, for an equipable item you're never without and never have a reason to unequip, is to tell a bit more story. It is just in heartworm because of resident evil. Which blows. They could have done so much more with five flags and some ten minute photoshops and 3d modeling.

Missiletainn

for the whispers thing with the * around the text, that is how you write italics in discord and some other social media apps, you put an * on each side of the text, and it auto changes it to italics, so... i wonder if they just didnt finish formatting their text?