If any game takes thatgamecompany’s style down to the core, it’s flOw. As the first FFTech Developer Showcase, I’ve chosen thatgamecompany, and in the intro article I outlined thatgamecompany’s unique touch to all their games: an artistically masterful game, that has a very calming effect and no direction or instruction whatsoever. flOw, as thatgamecompany’s second game, meets all those points on the dot.
flOw is also a fairly successful game, with a astounding count of around 4,000,000 downloads, 350,000 of them within the first week. Also, the game was acquired by MOMA (Museum Of Modern Art) in San Francisco, a show of the games artistically and aesthetically pleasing design. Like many other games from thatgamecompany, flOw has very seducing and relaxing gameplay, a quality that is rare in the modern gaming world of games like World Of Warcraft and Call of Duty.
Gameplay
The game is very simple. You are, in essence, a small, microscopic creature. And you eat other, smaller, microscopic creatures. By eating these small helpless blobs, you grow. Once you have found a colored blob, you have a choice. Eating a red one will make you go down a level in the 2D game, releasing bigger creature to eat even some enemies to fight. If you eat a blue one, you go up one level, only really useful to escape monsters or eat some creatures you missed.
The controls are very simple. Your creature just follows your mouse. To eat another creature, just run into it. Although it is simple, the flowing, curved motion of your character is quite relaxing. The game’s not for everyone though. Personally, I’m not a huge fan. You can play it for 10 – 20 minutes at a time, but after awhile the differences between the levels are to mundane. It’s not a game meant to be awed over about the graphics, or the complexity. In reality, the game has pretty much no point. As many other reviewers have said, flOw is not a game meant to surprise and astound you. It’s meant to calm you down, and, although it didn’t work on me, there is a big group of people out there who do play flOw a lot, and who are “addicted”. But for me, for a game to be simple and pointless, it has better give you a feeling of awe and wonder on some level, which flOw couldn’t capture for me but Flower and Journey certainly did.
Overview
Now, I’m not saying flOw isn’t a great game. The farther you get along, the cooler your creature looks. The enemy creatures get bigger and better, and the game slowly gets harder. Unfortunately, the game barely has any replay value. Of course, something I didn’t mention is that there is also a PS3 version of the game, other than the older online Flash version I was testing on. In the PS3 version, you can pick between 1 of 5 basic creatures, each having their own setting, enemy creatures and overall look. This may make flOw a bit more like classic games, straying from thatgamecompany’s normal, but the game still has the main point to thatgamecompany’s style, as I said before.
flOw was an instant hit, and will always be a classic because of it’s originality and new thinking. Not many games back when flOw was created, or even now, can be so simple and without direction, just the player doing what he/she wants, and be such a hit and a genuine good game. The game is relaxing, calming, and suducing. A great game, although maybe not for everyone.
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