Flower

a small tribute to the spatial game theory of the immersive gameplay of Flower

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Flower is a simplistic game that is suitable for any audiences, where players can create their own Zen-like storyline as they navigate their Flower’s way across scenic fields

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Flower as ‘art’

Flower has cultural significance as an experimental game: its visual spaces push the boundaries between video games and art, each scene representing an aesthetically pleasing snapshot

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Flower as ‘art’

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Video games are immersive. Their immersion involves the players devotion and absorption within the game: it is interactive. The player’s input and how they play the game determines how the play pans out. In Flower, the flow of the game is very zen-like and you realise a form of escapism as you become immersed in directing your flowers through the fields of the game. you become immersed because if you ceased directing your flowers the game would cease. Immersion involves an original sense of time and place within a game and in Flower your sense of space is tunnel vision, you are interacting with the space you can see in front of you. 

(adapted from https://www.gamespot.com/ gameplay)

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From very artistic and aesthetically directed in the early stages of the game, Flower infers social and political connotations in its message and disposition. The design of an initial visually beautiful game turning into a dark polluted man-made ruins offers a social message. Learning your flowers provide lightness to these industrialised man-made cities, the game becomes an artistic metaphor for the ‘power of nature’ over man-made industrialisation. 

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Games are not stories but are not not stories

Henry Jenkins

Games have traits of all cultural productions. This quote understands people playing games in virtual environments make up their experience and interpretation of the gameplay from their past experiences, as one does with all media artefacts and cultural productions. One could move through the game of Flower and complete each game objective and believe it is a purely aesthetically pleasing, simplistic game. Or, one could interpret Flower as a commentary on human industrialisation, as a darkness compared to the prosperous and bright mother nature and ‘flowers’

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the flow of the game becomes the player sculpting spaces: you are the narrative architect

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Understanding elements and connotations of a game makes it more immersive. The spaces created are built to be explored and tested by the player to decipher meanings that the game presents. In Flower you do this literally: you build new cities by destroying the old run down, left behind constructions to explore a theme of industrialisation. 

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A Bright New World

Games offer messages throughout the gameplay as a commentary on society. Human experience in virtual environments and games are made of the same elements that all other experiences consist of. In Flower’s setting, players experience of the gameplay is constructing a bright new world from the power of mother nature.