I feel like I played the That Game Company touchstones in the wrong order, unfortunately. AFTER experiencing the absolutely groundbreaking, emotionally life altering gaming experience that is Journey, I went back to Flower, and then farther back still to Flow. Flow is a lovely experiment in gaming mechanics, and the building blocks for its later games are all there. However, this game lacks the heart and depth of what TGC would soon become known for, and overall felt like a bit of a letdown by comparison. Still, the meditative beauty is there, and I will jump at any opportunity to listen to Austin Wintory's incredible scoring.

Sometime in high school, I found a friend of mine playing this game on his laptop. He went to take a piss and what I saw on his laptop perplexed me. I didn’t know that this was a video game and thought it was rather odd that my friend was staring at his screensaver. I slightly brushed his laptop mouse with my finger to see what he was really doing, but the screensaver did not go away. The persistent screensaver befuddled me as I tapped the mouse key with slight fervor. My friend returned and tilted his head with confusion like a German shepherd dog. “Oh yeah, that’s flOw man. It’s pretty fuckin’ sick dude”, my friend said followed by a slight cough. I realized that my friend was on some serious drugs and needed help…

Nah, that story isn’t true. I just wanted to set up a clever scenario to tell the joke that flOw is nothing more than a pretty screensaver.

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Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com

There's something very addictive to the simplicity of this. Similar to how Flower made me feel, but without the big payoff it had at the end of each level.

I often feel a bit alien when I see people talk about classic games they love, I mean proper GAMES. No story or anything fancy, real arcade type shit. Tetris is one of those that just does nothing for me, and this is almost universally the one I see people laud. I don't hate Tetris, I just get nothing from it. But the way it seems to still hold people after all these years must mean something, and I keep trying to find that somewhere for myself.

Is it this game? No. But I feel like I caught a glimpse here of what people feel when they talk about those kinda games. Simple, rewarding, and almost mechanical after a while.

Also, after this and Flower I am now shit-hot at motion controls. Might try and become a professional Lair player.

Shame that the music is so beautiful because for something called "flow" it does everything in its power not to do so. I just wanted something to help me relax in between blocks of my Bloodborne replay but this annoyed me more than anything in that game. It's a game that doesn't innately push goals on the player and yet punishes them for not quite being the "alpha organism" that the developers want you to be. Funny seeing many video game critics/reviewers toutedthis as some "art piece" upon release in 2006. Y'all were starving. Anyways, death to motion controls beyond the Wii.

A super relaxing, beautiful, and no stakes game where you absorb glowy things as a lil glowy thing yourself to become a larger glowy thing. The motion controls with the Dualshock controller works just fine, though it did get tiring after a while and I kind of wish there was a toggle to go back to using the joystick. Also wish there was a pause menu so I could just put the controller down and tune out to the reverberating ambience. I'd say the game more or less accomplished its mission because I actually feel even more sleepy than when I first started playing this to get my mind off of things, though you do get the big idea after a half hour or so, which can make it a little hard to justify the price if you're looking for more varied gameplay. A cool experimentation in abstraction that'll help you forget about life for a while, just maybe don't play it when you're already exhausted or you'll be nodding off in minutes.