It’s a bit weird to think that titles from thatgamecompany are now so revered. When flOw was released, originally as a free browser title, I liked it a lot, and so did many other people (including developers of Spore, most likely), but it wasn’t viewed as something exciting. Flower, when originally released in 2009 on PS3, was perceived as a cute oddity, rather than something astonishing. But when Journey happened in 2012 everything changed and suddenly people were interested in what the studio will create next. And since then we’ve had more games feeling inspired and influenced by the titles like what Flower used to be, including the wonderful ABZÛ from several years ago. Did Flower age well?
Flower is a very simple game where you fly as a petal blooming flowers in a rather small but open area, each series of flowers unlocking new parts of the map. It’s not really about the exploration or challenge of any kind, nor is it about a conventional story. Rather, it’s about the mood, the freedom of flight, nice music accompanying it, visuals that still look beautiful today and the overall feel of creation and rebirth versus death and decay, hope versus despair.
Which is, pretty much, the “make it or break it” thing of the game. If you don’t care much about how the game presents its themes or want to have more than almost linear at times flight, you won’t enjoy this. And because the themes are so simple and there are no layers to what the game is going for, it might feel shallow. Just a pretty visual and nothing more. It’s not helped by the fact that the controls are sometimes more finicky than they should be and that the game port to PC seems to have some technical issues that may pop up randomly.
It was nice to be able to finally play Flower in full since I’ve tried the demo of it so many years ago (and never got the full title). But at the same time, I can’t say that I liked the game all that much. With some of the titles in this vein released after, Flower simply feels a bit too restrictive, a bit too plain and a bit too boring. Still nice, but not as intriguing as it once used to be.