Flower (video game)
Flower is an independent game by thatgamecompany, creators of such works as fl0w and Journey, and described as their 'video game version of a poem'. The game takes place within the dreams of a lonely flower upon the windowsill of a rather dreary, city apartment.
With the 'completion' of each dream, more flowers appear upon the windowsill, and the apartment grows ever less run-down while the view out of the window grows ever more picturesque. Actual game-play consists, for the most part, of guiding a single, wind-borne petal of the presently dreaming flower, awakening other flowers and adding a petal from each to your own, until you find yourself guiding a great, winding current of blossoms and petals (along with the occasional leaf) through the game's vast and varied landscapes while the ambient music shifts and changes according to locations, movements, and events.
As the game's wordless story progresses, it takes on an increasingly subdued and eventually sinister tone, until the player finds themselves witness to a triumphant charge to bring back life to a once beautiful landscape and city.
- 100% Completion: Secret flowers.
- After the End: Perhaps implicit, given the state of all things artificial.
- Beautiful Void: There's no one but the wind, flowers and landscapes. The only animal seen is during an ending.
- Blow You Away: You have the power to control the wind. Combined with Petal Power.
- Cherry Blossoms: Dream 6.
- The Corruption: Girders.
- The Dev Team Thinks of Everything: A minor example in Dreams 5 and 6. Normally, at the end of Dream 5, your petal will fall to the ground before it can reach the goal, and a new one will take its place at the beginning of Dream 6. However, if you finish Dream 5 without getting zapped, the level will just end abruptly without your petal dying, and you'll begin Dream 6 controlling the same petal (albeit without all the petals you collected in Dream 5 trailing it) until you reach the nearby goal.
- Everything's Better with Rainbows: End of Dream 2.
- Evil Tower of Ominousness: Seen in Dream 6. Fortunately, it will be Transformed into a giant flowering tree at the end.
- Foreshadowing: At the end of Dream 3 and 4, you'll get to see what you'll be facing in the next dream in the distance.
- Genre Busting
- Ghibli Plains: You as the player are flying flower petals through Ghibli Plains. There's a lot of vast, grass covered fields, mixed with cities. Ghibli Plains are depicted at different times of the day, some at sunset and some during midday.
- Gray Rain of Depression: Dream 5.
- Green Hill Zone: Dream 1.
- Happy Rain: End of the Dream 2. Starts as Gray Drizzle of Depression.
- Invisible Wall: A strong gust of wind will turn you around if you try to go past the level boundaries.
- It's All Upstairs From Here: The final spire in Dream 6.
- Level Goal: Clearly marked in the first 5 levels. You won't reach the fifth one in the fifth level, so the sixth flower has to finish where fifth one left off.
- Ludd Was Right: Actually averted despite the evil electric Girders. The last stage has you repairing a very non-evil city.
- Mood Whiplash: At the end of the Dream 4. It suddenly gets dark when one of the lights fails.
- A smaller one appears in Dream 3. You're rushing through canyons at high speed and suddenly a lively melody will be replaced with a much calmer one, and the sky rolls on into sunset.
- No Flow in CGI: Averted, big time.
- Petal Power: Combined with wind, these are the only things you use.
- Power Glows: Dreams 4 and 6.
- Recurring Riff: A certain 4-note motif can be heard in all of the dreams.
- Scenery Gorn: The end of Dream 4, the entirety of Dream 5, and initially Dream 6.
- Scenery Porn: Near everywhere, especially the meadows.
- Shout-Out: A hidden area in Dream 3 contains audio and visual references to fl0w.
- Spiritual Successor: To an earlier game of thatgamecompany's, Cloud.
- A Storm Is Coming: End of the Dream 4.
- Variable Mix: The game's music reacts in various, usually subtle ways to events and actions on the part of the player.
- Wham! Episode: The end of Dream 4.
- Widget Series
- World-Healing Wave: Happens at the end of some chapters.