This was a piece that spawned from the end of last year’s debate on Limbo. I figured I might try to be more positive and provide an example that actual does the atmospheric storytelling well instead of ragging on Limbo all the time. I really did want to like that game. If only it wasn’t avant-garde just to catch attention and could follow through.  After a little time thinking of a few titles, I figured Flower was the best one to make my point. That and I’ve been wanting to write about it like a proper critic ever since I played it almost three years ago now.

In a way I can see that as my growth as a critic. I may be a little off, but at least I think I’m ready to tackle it. Of course it still took more than two weeks to actually get it from first draft to published. I was ready to publish it when I realized I should expand upon the individual levels and the base thematic meaning they are trying to convey. I only did the first two originally as examples. Of course I couldn’t quite remember details of the later levels as well so I had to go back to the text. Still a great game.

Of course most of it worked and I inserted the thematic details in, but oh wow does that last level tear my argument apart. My main argument that Flower is a good example of a game whose story is told via atmosphere and ambiance still holds strong, but major parts of my reading start to crumble in the face of the sixth flower. In fact I started to go on too long about it and had to cut it for the original piece. But now, after the image I will get to it, because the last two levels deserves a close reading all on its own.

In looking over the last level I was astonished to find how much surrealistic imagery manifests throughout the dream city. While all the other levels had a magical quality to them and each had their own rules they played by, the small white flower seems to go the extra mile.

It begins by not looking out at the city and we are thrust into the level directly. A petal floats to a space surrounded by the menacing rusted electrical towers. The petal grows a flower and upon the player pressing a button, the flower purifies the constructions out of existence. The field is brought back to life and the sky lightens. Following the level we destroy barriers of web shaped iron bars and purify more bent constructions returning life and color to the city. It’s not just nature either. Once within the city walls in the first field upon clearing certain areas it is a three story building and some streetlights that grow out of the ground instead. They don’t rise out either, but twist out like an enormous vine. Later we travel along a highway road flinging roadblocks and collecting flower petals and the road has color return to it as the same speed was travel on it. The player restores an industrial fan and uses to fly high from building top to building top, collecting flower petals and returning color to the skyscrapers.

Each of these purifications have the constructions burst apart, slow in mid air and turn pure white before vanishing. There is no violence to the moment. It happens when the petal train merely touches one of the constructions or brushes past and it is accompanies by the sound of a call of a heavenly choir singing a single note. We are removing an abberation, but not because it is man made. Some of these things are hindering the growth and life of the city itself. They dull the city, constrain the buildings and create a dark atmosphere. The constructions themselves look like parasites in the environment. They attach themselves to buildings and grow from the nooks and crannies to strangle the life out of them. In the entering the final corridor of buildings, additional ones grow from the slates in the buildings to try and halt your way. Once they are all purified, color and light return to the areas they once occupied.

The flower petal comes and clears it away. It purifies it and brings life to both nature and the world of man. In the final part of the level a ominous tower seemingly built from the these things looms overhead and on your approach spires grow in batches to try and halt your progress. You blast your way through them and begin you assent through in the inner workings of the tower. Three times the flower petal blasts its way through a spiderweb barrier. More and more spires try to block your way and you sail through their efforts, purifying them out of existence until you soar out of the top. The camera pulls out and you see a single point of light hanging in the sky; the trails of flower petals heading up and up towards it. Then the camera zooms in and we see that point of light is a window with a empty flower pot hovering over the sill and the chair from the menu at and askew angle. The window is hanging in the night sky showing a bright sunny day in the city it looks out on to. The flower petals, like they did in all the previous levels, streaming into a single point, in this case the flower pot, and grow a single flower as if all the collected life energy from all the other flowers collected into a single point gives life to a new flower.

It doesn’t end there as the tower is bathed in light. All the spires and constructions turn white and the screen whites out. In the tower’s place we see a large sakura tree in full bloom, an eastern symbol of spring and new life and beginnings. The tree is so massive that it towers over the rest of the city, taller than any of the skyscrapers. It does’t blooms so much as collect the massive amounts of petal that float towards it and collects them on its branches. It is a cloud of pink to hang over the city.

Here we see the full thematic argument of the entire game made plain. All the other dreams were mere pieces building up to the whole. Wish fulfillment of the flowers whose lives are missing something. In the youngest flower we see an idealism and hope for co-existence between the two worlds. It manifests the conflict between them as the iron constructs and the spires that stand in the way of growth and life for both nature and the city. In a way there is a Jesus motif for the light pink flower. Through it all things may be redeemed and it is the bringer of light. Peace reigns once he reaches towards the heavens and bathes the world in light, ending on an eastern symbol of peace and tranquility. In fact we get both an Eastern and Western mythology of peace and spirituality in the final level. The harmony between nature and man and then focus of the light through all things are brought to peace.

Both the level’s beginning and ending sort of throw my initial reading of the game out the window in my Nightmare Mode post. It is the climax of the game, but it isn’t independent of the other levels. It picks up right were the previous dreams leaves off and ends in a far more grandiose and surreal fashion that any of the previous levels. It isn’t about the internal peace of the individual, but about the peace that can be achieved for all through societal harmony. It also emphasizes the dream of the flower being beyond what it can personally attain by wanting it to bring this dream into the real world. It dreams of its place on the windowsill and from there seeing the sakura tree, based in the dream world stretching high to the window in the sky.

The final level of the game is another anomaly, but for a very different reason. It isn’t the dream of a flower, but a world within a painting of a flower. Here we have a playable denouement. Each flower releases a name of the credits hovering over the flower before the letters float up into the sky. We traverse new terrain that uses elements of the previous levels: the moving canyon walls, the lighting up of haystacks, the industrial power cable tower, the windmills etc. They are mixed and matched into a world where nature and man made constructions are existing in harmony. But more than that, the level is an artistic signature in the painting. Instead of having the credits roll at the end like movie, it integrates them into the form of the medium. It makes them apart of the game. To see the credits you must pursue the flowers and have them bloom. Then at the end, the flower train flies into the night sky as the names are collected in more traditional scrolling fashion and fly into the night sky. We have sent them to the heavens above and so concludes the game.

I don’t know what this ending level means, but I feel it appropriate with the rest of the game. Few games integrate their credits into the game dynamics and make them playable. Instead most use them as a reward for completing the game. This method is much more satisfying. I’m glad they did it in a way that feels thematically relevant. I don’t know how, but at least it is aesthetically consistent with the tone and design of the rest of the work.

I quickly explained the controls, all two of them, started him on the opening level and then watched him play. It took a little while, but he was enjoying flying all over the place.

He seemed very interesting in gaining height. He didn’t go for the flowers right away and instead explored the environment. Like a child taking his first steps he turned this way and that learning how to move in the world. It’s a very apt analogy for what he was doing. He needed to learn to tilt and to factor in speed. Actually he learned how to control his speed better than I did.

He took it very slow and managed and stopped a lot as he just let the petals float in the air. After he got a lot more they began swirling around each other and he was enjoying himself immensely. Then he asked what the meteors were. I had to double check and figure out what he was talking about. It was the white lines of the wind. Then he hit his first patch of yellow flowers and the whole experience changed. The yellow grass bloomed into a flush green. He nicked named it the boom boom, I can only think after the subtle sound effect that came with it.

Soon it became a hunt and peck experience with him flying high to get an aerial view and then dive bomb the flowers he found. Even at the stop and start pace he was playing at he was getting excited. It was so visceral to him and it connected saying, “I could really get into this.” I mention that each flower plays a note when passed through and that I was never good enough to see if there was a tune.  The next few batches he tries to do just that and eventually hits an entire row. Yes, there is a tune.

Finishing up the first level I had my dad go through the next two in order. I learned that he found the game frustrating, but that good type of frustrating where you end up with a smile on your face and laughing at yourself. He didn’t much care for the the experience or any meaning that could be derived from each flower’s dream, it really was a game to find where another flower was and anything that didn’t work to that end was pushed to the side. My dad was frustrated by the fact the game took away control for a few seconds to display the effect you were having on the world. Though when the second field burst into color he did comment on its beauty.

The third level was very much about speed. For a game that is supposed to focus on peaceful nature, there is such an adrenaline rush from some of the speeds you can pick up. First around the windmills and later through he canyon. The strength of this speed element even made him go “woah” at one point as he careened around trying to hit as many of the “blue ones” as he could. The variety in the colors were enough to keep him interested.

After the third level it was late and we stopped there. But from a fresh and untainted perspective it seems that flower succeeded what it was aiming to do. It created a nice simple game that caused several different emotional reactions. It seemed to me that it offered more than was necessary from his perspective. All it needed was the flying and the colors. In fact at the beginning of the second level is where it stumbled for him because it was almost all grey until you bring life back to it. It wasn’t until that color came back that it seemed to grab him once again. There is enough style and basic substance to be appealing for both the gamer and the non-gamer as an experience.

That was a look at the aesthetic effect, now you can follow the link to the game’s design effect on the experience.

http://www.creativefluff.com/game-design/flower-a-dads-expirience-design/

Disclaimer: QWERTY’s opinions are not mine nor the site’s. The psudonym QWERTY is used to protect the innocent.

Flower is pretty. There, that’s my obligatory nice thing to say about it.

People tried to explain it to me. I told them to stop. No killing, fine, instead I’m a flower petal; BUT WAIT, no not really. In reality I’m the wind. Wind that apparently has gone off its Ritalin medication and has a bad case of Parkinson’s disease. Right and left apparently don’t apply in this world. The premise of all of this is that you are playing the dream of a flower.

-blink blink-Excuse me Descartes, do plant’s think?

At least it kept giving me pretty things.

Next Noby Noby Boy. So I’m a Life Savors inspired caterpillar, doing stuff for my millions of miles long girlfriend in space that… I… Ah…. Wel…

-Time Passes-

Ok, I have the trophies. I can walk away now. I beat Noby NoBi boY. I’m told I should think of it as a sandbox game. Where’re the guns? Cars? Hookers? Well? Sandbox my ass…which apparently can make centaurs. All of this based upon a syphilitic acid trip.

Was this a good game? I honestly have no idea. Though since I woke up with half eaten lipstick on my mouth next to a garbage can without pants I figured it was at least a good Saturday night. My phone tells me its Thursday. I wish it would stop trying to imitate Dirty Harry, if I need to know the time I’ll open it to colors swirling and then snaps in two, curls back and eats your own ass, puzzle solved. Let the L block land now. (??? -The Swain)

Finally there’s Linger in Shadows. I thought, “How awesome is that title. Holy shit that sounds awesome. And it’s only three bucks.”

This is apparently German. It’s as good excuse as any why I’m trying to spin a concrete flying dog to distract a floating metal squid while time has been frozen. This is after you fly into a cat’s eye to make barrels act like a kaleidoscope, while making a city fall around you.
…

…
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Double-checking blood samples for traces of n0bee no2 BoiY.

-Crickets chirp-

‘And you walk on down the hall, and And he came to a door…and he looked inside Father, Yes son, I want to kill you, Mother…I want to…(And that’s enough of that now – The Swain).