With the advent of digital distribution services on consoles, audiences have been exposed to an abundance of more artsy and provocative video games. Thatgamecompany is one development house which has been formed on the basis of producing such titles, and has just released Flower, the second of three planned PlayStation Network games from the company. Breathtakingly beautiful and amazing to play, Flower may be the best title on the service.

Flower’s presentation is the first thing that really strikes you when starting out. You begin the game in this drab single room apartment, with a single flower on a table looking somewhat drab. When you start the first level, you are presented with a relatively mundane depiction of life in the city. Each level, or dream as the game calls it, begins with the just a single petal on a dark or even monochrome landscape, but that quickly changes as the land becomes covered in vivid colour, with thousands of flowers scattered atop green, grassy landscapes which stretch as far as the eye can see. There is some level of story at play, as each level is essentially the memory of a different flower, with a few allusions to the clash between nature and modern society, but it’s neither preachy nor pretentious in projecting this message.


Players take control of a gust of wind which they must use to collect flower petals while navigating these luscious grassy plains. You begin as a single petal, but each flower you pass over adds another to your chain, until you’re a long kaleidoscope of coloured petals. Flower’s gameplay is simple and laid back; there is no HUD or death, and players progress through each dream at their own pace. Movement is handled through a combination of your face buttons for acceleration and SIXAXIS motion control for steering.

There’s a little bit more to flower than just collecting random petals; specific groups and colours of flowers trigger events which change the environment around you. One trigger may bring about an explosion of colour into the landscape, while another will activate a nearby trio of windmills to push you on your way. There’s no need to collect every flower in any given level, as the key flowers needed to get the job done stand out, but trophies are awarded for finding hidden flowers, or completing specific tasks.

Flower is warm, natural and inviting in the first two thirds of the game, but the tail end of the experience is something else entirely. The action takes a slightly darker turn, with the vivid colours and natural feeling of the flowers clashing with dank, cold steel and darkness, with a few minor gameplay changes. This change, while slightly jarring, really brings Flower up another level.


From a technical perspective, Flower is every bit a showcase of the real power of the PlayStation 3. At any one time, the game is rendering thousands of individual blades of grass and airborne petals as well as handling the physical collisions between these objects and the wind. It looks beautiful on any display, but it’s really something else at 1080P. Also amazing is the game’s audio design, which combines wonderfully ambient and low key string music with individual audio cues which are triggered with the collection of each flower. When you’ve figured out the best way through a level, or have mastered the controls, you can produce some beautiful music.

Flower demonstrates the inherent advantage of digital distribution services; that developers can let their imaginations run wild and experiment with all kinds of weird and wonderful ideas without the need for massive budgets or the perception of mass market appeal to please potential publishers. Flower is a marvel of modern video game design and a technical masterpiece, and although it’s a little short, it’s well worth the asking price.