Environmentalist Playstation 3 Game Flower

A Simple, Elegant, and Ultimately Alleviating Downloadable Game

Mar 5, 2009 Daniel Sims

Flower sets off to create a soothing, attractive experience, and accomplishes this with some gracefully accessible game design.

A $10 download on the Playstation 3, Flower is just that – a game about Flowers. Players control the wind as it pilots flower petals to touch and collect more petals from other flowers, causing them to bloom and eventually color drab environments. That’s pretty much it, and the control interface is at least as simple as the premise.

The wind and petals are controlled with the Playstation 3’s SIXAXIS motion controls and a single button of the player’s choice. It is probably the simplicity of Flower itself that makes it one of the best uses of the PS3’s motion controls. To call Flower shallow however would be incorrect.

Despite how uncomplicated Flower is, the immediacy from that is what ultimately makes the game compelling. Furthermore, it shows elegance in Flower’s design that is missing from so many other games today. Flower ultimately succeeds in what and how it communicates to players.

An Elegant Casual Slant

Where many of today’s games throw a bunch of hints and tutorials at players, Flower’s only instructions – it’s only words even, come right after it’s booted up. As soon as the game is started players are left to discover the game on their own which is never difficult.

There isn’t much to figure out in Flower, but what’s there is made a bit vague but also very interpretable to the player. On top of that there are no enemies or dangers of “losing” in Flower. Players are left to the liberating feeling of flight while also able to follow the game’s linear paths and engage in what is set before them.

The task of finding and flying into the flower petals is fun in a very simple, basic way. Examining and discovering what lies behind that light vagueness in Flower in conjunction with that is what gives the game its driving force.

A Game About the Environment?

While playing and interpreting everything about Flower from its levels to its very interface, one cannot avoid seeing messages or at the very least feelings being communicated by the game.

Flower’s very name along with its narrative – played out through wordless cut scenes as well as changes in its environment, seems to give off a fairly obvious environmentalist theme. The only negative things ever depicted in Flower are black messy buildings and other urban elements invading a colorful and serene natural landscape. The main part of the game ends with a city being “awakened” as drab and dirty streets turn to pleasant and clean ones.

However, the nature of Flower’s game design combined with its narrative seems to use that theme in order to contrast it from conventional games.

By nature, most games are made to be intense and mentally taxing to some extent. Flower on the other hand is decidedly relaxing. It’s extremely vibrant graphics, breathtaking scenery, and yielding gameplay seem as if to say “relax and take some time off from those heavy games.”

The copyright of the article Environmentalist Playstation 3 Game Flower in Video & Online Games is owned by Daniel Sims. Permission to republish Environmentalist Playstation 3 Game Flower in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.