Flower
3 Feb
Every once in a while a video game comes along that promises to be innovating, interesting, and imaginative. I’m not sure if Flower boasted that much of itself, but it certainly delivered.
The game is pretty simple… You start off by controlling what appears to be a gust of wind.
This gust of wind is far from ordinary, however. Your main objective is to brush various flowers that litter the scenic landscape. When you touch a flower, you receive a petal from it and get to watch it burst into full bloom. The more flowers you come into contact with, the longer your petal train becomes.
Pastoral Beauty
Simple, no?
Despite the lack of dialogue, it’s not difficult to figure out what is happening in the storyline. For one, you’re no mere gust of wind. Touching the blooms coaxes spring itself to enter the little valleys you call your stomping grounds. What was once brown is now green with life… and tinkle noises. Did I mention that every flower you bloom makes a noise?
They even give you an antagonist halfway through the game. Evil electricity monster…
Each level has three secrets that you reveal by exploring the level, touching certain flowers, or playing with your environment. The flowers in the pots in the level selection area get healthier as you collect these secrets. Apparently they’re like fertilizer for your levels.
I’d seriously suggest getting this game for those of you who are thinking about it. It’s a wonderful little adventure that offers more replay time than I would have originally thought.
Yeah, that game company (the makers of Flower) are an interesting company indeed. They came out of the USC Interactive Media program (one which I entertained going to on more than one occasion). flOw was their first game and was quite the media darling, and they got a 5 game deal from Sony for the PS3 platform. I’m glad they’re still making unique games for them it’s awesome to see this kind of stuff. I hope that when their deal is done they make some games for the Wii.
As long as they keep the platform in mind, that would be awesome. I don’t know if you can have the serene sort musical game on the Wii. I’d be willing to try it.
How did you like flOw? I haven’t tried it.
It was pretty fun, I only played the flash version – so I don’t know how the PS 3 version is.
I very much enjoyed flower, yet a lot of people I showed it to came back asking “what’s the point?”. Which made me think a bit on what I’d add to the game to give it more long-term playability. In the end I envisioned a sort-of sim-farm/viva Pinata idea where you play the wind and in addition to the flower puzzles you would spread seeds and pollinate flowers to create a custom garden. I think that addition would keep the soothing aspect that made the game so great, while adding more appeal to casual gamers. (My general impression was that the game appealed to jaded hardcore gamers the most because it just felt so novel.)
Maybe. I could see adding more levels in the future or something similar. Or come up with an algorithm to create random landscapes with the flowers everywhere in their musically-tastic way.