Flower
Year: 2009
Rating: E
Time Played: 2 hours
Video games are truly a unique form of interactive art. While many of the medium’s detractors will point to the excessive violence present in many triple-A titles, many counter-examples show how peaceful the medium can be. Take indie developer, Thatgamecompany, for instance. The beautiful narrative format they used in Journey had me in tears by the end, and the only things I could do in that game were move, jump, and make a sound with my character. One of their previous works, Flower, goes so far as to remove jumping and interacting from the equation.
In Flower, you play as a single flower petal that activates other flowers that add additional flower petals to the player’s entourage. A level system breaks up the narrative a little and allows me to see if there were secret areas I had not yet found in each portion of the game. These standard video game conventions—along with defeating the “big bad evil”—are needed to give Flower some structure. However, the unique aspect of Flower is its control scheme. I had to use gyroscope controls in conjunction with the controller’s joysticks to control the flower petal.
While the controls in Flower took a little getting used to, I eventually was able to get the hang of it. Unfortunately, while these controls felt like they accurately conveyed trying to control a flower petal, this was the main issue I had with the game. Flower petals are flighty and are not prone to be easily controlled. There were plenty of instances where I’d get stuck or couldn’t control the flower petal fast enough to get it to go where I wanted. In the end, the game wasn’t that long, and I didn’t feel motivated to go back and replay previous levels to find all the secrets. Still, it was a unique experience that stuck with me.
A unique gameplay gimmick that’s a little difficult to control, I give Flower 3.5 stars out of 5.
1/2
