“he’d love to spend the night in zion / he’s been a long while in babylon / he’d like a lover’s wings to fly on / to a tropic isle of avalon” - digital man, rush

dense, layered, and easy to get lost in all the same as its island centerpiece, flower sun and rain endures as personally-tailored perfection in a video game.

some years ago when i was working my way through kill the past, a good friend of mine advised me to not bother with the completely optional and not at all mandatory lost & found puzzles, as “they suck and they ruin the pacing of the game”. as a matter of pride i simply decided to not heed that advice and go through the game solving as many of the lost & found puzzles as i possibly could. in doing so i’ve made the playthrough likely much longer and more drawn out than it should have been, but it’s only until as of writing this in 2023 that i’ve realized that doing these puzzles actually held some value to me.

flower sun and rain is a game of multifaceted allegory and metaphor, where no ‘truth’ is singular (despite what sumio initially says) and just about any way of reading into it is a valid reading. to me, flower sun and rain is a metaphor about a man unwilling to acknowledge the past and move on to the future; a man eternally stuck in the present. the titular hotel claims its stake on being a paradise to forget about time in, and like a moth to a flame, sumio does as much as he can to waste away in paradise for as long as he possibly can. he lets himself get distracted with the denizens and their issues, letting paradise pull him deeper into itself so sumio doesn’t have to think about the airport and everything outside of this paradise. 25th ward puts a wrenchingly satisfying end to this thread as his life outside of paradise has become completely void of enjoyment. in the end he lets paradise subsume him, never to move on again.

paradise as an idea is something i had touched upon earlier in my thoughts on kaizen game works’ paradise killer, which for anyone who’s played a decent number of suda51 games, can very much see the unabashed ktp cribbing it proudly flaunts. it is rooted in a need to escape human problems ironically caused by humans and the societies they’ve built up. in building these paradises, it comes down to exploitation of resources and people to cultivate these getaways and romanticizing a world fundamentally incompatible with the systems that even lets a vacation spot like this exist in the first place. vacation spots like the flower sun and rain hotel are inextricably linked to colonial structures thriving off of that exploitation. this brings flower sun and rain close to an idea proposed by writer mark “k-punk” fisher known as capitalist realism, in which he proposes that due to the sheer widespread influence of global capitalism, it’s believed that it is the only viable political and economic system and that it would simply be impossible to even begin to imagine any viable alternative. in that sense there’s no such thing as a true-to-definition paradise; it is at best only a temporary state of mind, but it’s one that a person can find themselves unfathomably lost in.

there’s probably not a lot of people who went out of their way to do the ds port’s lost & found puzzles, as they’re technically not really rewarding the player with any juicy lore or narrative revelations, just some stuff to look at in the game’s model viewer and maybe the satisfaction of solving esoteric puzzles that have nothing to do with anything. or so one thinks they have nothing to do with anything relevant. for the player to deliberately seek out the lost & found puzzles and forget about time solving them, it is, to me, the perfect way to reinforce the narrative flower sun and rain presents. sumio is a man who lets frivolous people distract him and seeks out these meaningless problems to solve for others, and for the player to do these lost & found puzzles, they act as an extension of sumio to drag out every second possible to indulge in paradise. one of the most potent executions of a ludonarrative tool i’ve seen in a video game, and it’s entirely done through optional puzzles that a good deal of the people who played this game likely did not do.

i don’t regret doing the lost & found puzzles. i think they’re the best part of the game.

A sunny surreal vacation of a lifetime

Flower, Sun and Rain represents a tonal shift from Suda's last excursion, The Silver Case. Trading in the dark streets of the 24th Ward for the sunny and tropical stylings of Lospass Island, you assume the role of Sumio Mondo, a searcher hired by the manager of the Flower, Sun and Rain hotel. The mission: locate the terrorist and prevent his plot of exploding a bomb at the airport and wreaking havoc across the island. Seems simple enough right? Things aren't as simple as they seem here...

I think the biggest strengths this game had going for me was the story and characters it presents here. Flower, Sun and Rain as a whole borders on the absurd to the point it almost feels like a dream of sorts. It feels like an immersion that pulls you away so much that it somehow has pulled you in, none of it feels real. A vacation trip in every literal sense of the word, literally and mentally. The notion of checking in with Edo every now and then, interacting with the guests and exploring the island in the sense it almost felt like a surrealist's paradise. It was actually a melancholic feeling checking out to the point I realized that I was extremely invested in the world Suda managed to create. The daily routine I was so used to doing everyday and now that it's gone, I didn't expect to feel like something was missing in the ending of it. All of this accompanying an incredible soundtrack despite being marred by DS limitations still manages to capture the core of the essence Takada wanted to convey during your stay. The use of classical music added with Takada's touch is actually pretty genius too in that it can manage to invoke a sense of emotion and normalcy especially when you hear Gymnopedie #1 every morning which I feel like is a song that is probably the best way to start your morning. I will say this now, it is highly recommended that you play The Silver Case before playing this title, a lot of things will be even more confusing and some moments won't have the same impact but I actually don't exactly think it's a sequel in the traditional sense.

The elephant in the room about this game: the gameplay itself. Flower, Sun and Rain is a bit of an odd title in this regard. Gameplay relies on traversing the island on foot, talking to the citizens of the island and figuring out puzzles with the help of your vacation guidebook which holds all the answers to your problems along with Catherine, your trusty case. The biggest criticism about this game is the amount of tedious walking and I can see where they are coming from. I will acknowledge that I don't have a very high attention span myself so stuff like this would bother me more than most part and I don't even blame anyone for using fast forward for a title like this just to get to the interactions and story moments. Despite that though, I sorta find myself completely intrigued with what was going on the whole time. That said, this isn't rare for me to feel especially for a Suda title who is known to write some avant-garde stuff that gets your attention pretty quickly but despite the tedious walking which the game acknowledges that it is, it didn't detract too much from me surprisingly in that the walking almost feels therapeutic in a sense. Hearing the classical music with a touch along with running along the coast at night was a pretty good moment surprisingly, I did have some moments where I was completely bored with the game though and I don't want to excuse the game completely for that. The puzzles themselves are fairly simple but can bit obtuse on what exactly the solution in as the answers are always numbers. The game does a great job pointing you at the right direction too and is actually linear so you don't get completely lost but there are some moments you might want to consult a guide if your patience is running out.

Flower, Sun and Rain felt like a vacation into the absurd part of humans disguised as a work related trip. I think despite being really bored with the walking, it might actually be my second favorite game by him so far. Even now, I can't really recommend it to everyone but I realized that after playing it that I wanted to replay it again, hopefully a remaster with the uncompressed soundtrack because I truly believe this game deserves it. The music especially deserves to be experienced at its best in game. I remember watching the DS intro (which might spoil some stuff so be warned) like three times because of the music and the whole vibe the whole intro gave off. Happy to say that I enjoyed my time in the Flower, Sun and Rain hotel and I will be coming again in the near future.

Tomorrow is calling me. Maybe you'll catch up with me there?

"content dictates form. less is more. god is in the details.
all in the service of clarity, without which, nothing else matters."
- stephen sondheim

above is a quote from one of my lifelong heroes who passed away a few months ago. mr. sondheim's work defined a great deal of my teenage and transitional years and upon hearing the news of his tragic passing, i took the opportunity to reflect on the ways with which he'd influenced my art, my views, and my conduct. i'm by no means a theatre type - while i spent a few years in high school co-directing and acting as a dramaturge for a local company, by no means do i enjoy the theatre as it exists to the common eye and ear. i left that world to escape the despotism of what 'must be' and what 'sells' by the overseeing eye of the major companies and self-satisfied bigwigs because, as any artist knows, when you climb a few rungs of the ladder no art is political, but all art is politics.

yet i find myself, years removed from theatre, years removed from pushing my own envelope of personal expression to a public eye, many nights in front of a google doc, or a blank notepad, or staring at my shelf, wondering when the spark is going to hit and i'll write the next pieces of my screenplay, or my next chorus to a song, or my next analysis of some 20-year-old adventure game made by a small passionate team from the literal opposite of the world. sometimes i wonder if my minimalism, my expression of big feelings in small boxes, through white and black forms with bright technicolor lights, if it's a crutch, if i'm an imitator of the conglomerate great ideas of people before me... if i shoot half this short film adaptation of a novel as a silent work, am i up my own ass for it? if i push myself creatively as a musician to a one-man audience by design, am i selling myself short? have i missed my shot at truly expressing MYself?

of course, if you've got your head screwed on halfway right, you'll realize this self-talk is a complete load of bullshit. just put the pen to the paper. put the fingers to the keys. don't worry about who sees it, don't worry about why you do it, but if you believe in it - content dictating form - and if your style is simple short strokes with deep, cutting lines - less is more - and if your heart hurts to watch it play back - god is in the details. if you are an artist, if you are a person who needs to be able to say something for the sake of saying it, you must throw away preconceptions, you must disregard what people have said of you and your work, you must take that future into your hands and seize it. all in the service of clarity, without which, nothing else matters.

live your daily rut. get up, go to work.
push hard to make those days count.
let your work be your work, and let your work be your work.
to find happiness is to be honest with oneself.
recognize the monotony but don't let it overtake you.
your career isn't your person.
every person on this site, every person reading this
i think each one of us has art inside of us waiting to blossom.
you need to be willing to find love in your heart for that, for yourself, and the willingness to seize that potential regardless of the cost and regardless of how you've hurt before.
you need to seize the future.
you need to kill the past.

flower, sun & rain was me all along, wasn't it?