Blooming Ridge Strategy Part 1:
Starting Off
The Red Room
Access the game by clicking here.
As you try to enter Blooming Ridge, you'll meet a strange, little man dancing. Click on him and he will talk to you, giving you a brief and strange introduction to the town. If you want to skip his introduction, hover your mouse on the lower right corner of the screen and click "SKIP>." Otherwise, wait until he has finished speaking, and you will be automatically transported to the town of Blooming Ridge.
How to Explore Blooming Ridge
Upon entering the main Blooming Ridge map, you will realize that there is a time display in the bottom righthand corner. This shows the real time, as gathered from your computer's clock. The time of day affects gameplay in many ways; most importantly during the four times of the day; morning, day, evening and night. Certain locations are only available during certain parts of the day. More specifially: the cliff is available only during the morning, the town statue is available only during the day, the Slawter Hawse only during the evening, and the lighthouse and the Elders' Lodge are only available at night. Other places, such as Tom's Woods, are enterable at all times. Try going there now.
Tom's Woods
The two faux-policemen here establish a pseudo-story that explains the whole point of this dumb game: to figure out who stole and ate the pie. Here, you can also see that you can return to the main map screen at any time by hovering your mouse in the lower lefthand corner of the screen and clicking "Back to Map." This technique exists in most of the places in Blooming Ridge. Advancing through the dialogue until it's finished will also put you back at the map. Next, you might want to visit Steve's 24-Hour Diner, which is where the pie came from.
NOTE: In this and most locations, if you hover your mouse around the lower left-hand corner of the game screen, a button will appear that says "<Back to Map." Clicking this will return you to the main Blooming Ridge map screen. Be sure to remember this, as some locations will not automatically return you to the map.
Steve's 24-Hour Diner
You can enter the diner at any time during the day and talk to Steve,
who isn't very loquacious. Depending on the time of day you enter, he
will tell you things about different parts of Blooming Ridge. In the
end, he isn't too informative though. Click the usual "Back to Map"
button when you're through questioning him.
