flOw

eMTe · Post by **eMTe** » Sun Sep 09, 2007 16:43

Another game from Jenova Chen, Cloud's creator.

flOw is a game about piloting an aquatic organism through a surreal biosphere where players consume other organisms, evolve, and advance their organisms to the abyss.

As part of Jenova Chen's thesis research, flOw inherits an embedded design of active DDA (dynamic difficulty adjustment), players with differing skill levels can intuitively customize their experiences in the zone and enjoy the game at their own pace. “Addicting” is the most common word its fans use to describe it.

During the first two weeks after flOw was released online, it attracted more than 350,000 downloads. Up till today, flOw has attracted more than 600,000 downloads.

http://interactive.usc.edu/projects/cloud/flowing/

Scythe · Post by **Scythe** » Tue Oct 02, 2007 20:25

It works like crap for me. Once I figured it out and started going, all was fine, but before long the frame rate plummeted to completely unacceptable. Unplayable, for me.

UPDATE: I tried playing the "classic" version - that helped tremendously.

Scythe · Post by **Scythe** » Mon Oct 29, 2007 15:09

This is a very magical evolution game. It's something you sit down with to get that artsy feeling while playing, and trying to build your little bugger of a guy into something unique. I love the haunting music and the feeling of descending deeper and deeper into the abyss, looking for food. However, the game would have really improved with a save feature and a radar that showed you more than the way up and down.

Pater Alf · Post by **Pater Alf** » Mon Oct 29, 2007 17:58

Design over Gameplay - that's it!

I sure can see the fascination of this game and I like the magical atmosphere and the wonderful soundtrack that nearly puts you into a trance. But that's exactly part of the problem as well. The whole thing is more kind of a meditation than a real game. And regarded as a game it gets quite boring after a while and it lacks of any features, settings and a gameplay that would make it more interesting.

eMTe · Post by **eMTe** » Mon Oct 29, 2007 23:54

Fun and surprisingly quite replayable game, but boring after some time. As in Cloud - the longer you play the stronger the feeling that what you see on screen is the showcase of programming abilities with all standard gaming features being an addition.

Once first wave of all these emo and ambient "games" will pass away there'll be not much to remember. Surely not this one - soon freeware world will be flooded with similar games. As for similarity...do you remember Snake and Pacman?

This one definitely qualifies to DesignOverGameplay category. Great design, but it's not enough to call it a gaming milestone or even meterstone.

Scythe · Post by **Scythe** » Thu Feb 21, 2008 11:00

flOw was not only picked up by Sony for the PS3 (and got an expansion pack), it is now also coming out as a commercial game for the PSP. I guess we wouldn't have been allowed to host it for long anyway, but I certainly call it a missed opportunity.

http://www.gamespot.com/ps3/puzzle/flow/

http://www.gamespot.com/psp/puzzle/flow ... id=6186394

Scythe · Post by **Scythe** » Wed Sep 24, 2008 1:34

flOw also pretty much is the first stage of the new Sims sequel game, Spore (unsurprisingly, since Jenova Chen worked on that).