A Flower for Dawne

A Review of Flower for the PS3

Flower for the PS3

As a good and attentive husband, I am constantly on the lookout for new ways to bring more happiness into Dawne’s life, but I never thought that a video game would be one of those avenues. Then I discovered Flower.

Flower is a game for the Playstation 3 that falls firmly under the “different” category. I bought the game for Dawne this weekend, thinking that it was right up her alley. Before I get into the game review however, let me just tell you two things about Dawne that you may not know: First, she is not a gamer. Second, she is really not a gamer. Dawne is a very kinesthetic person, which is to say that whatever is going on in her head is reflected on her face and in her body movements. So when playing video games, Dawne tends to navigate the game by leaning her body this way and that, rather than by pushing on a joystick. Generally not very effective…

Then there is Flower for the PS3. In this game you navigate the landscape by tilting the controller, and there are no other controls to worry about except one button. Which button doesn’t matter, as they all do the same thing: activate the wind. A game couldn’t be simpler to play than this. It was this native simplicity, and the intuitive use of the controller that first got me thinking that this would be a game that Dawne could play. Then I began to learn about the game itself.

Flower, if I may paraphrase one reviewer, is a Zen poem in a video game. In it you enter the dreams of some poor, sad flowers on a windowsill in the city and fly along the landscape, bringing it to life with your magic touch. That’s it. There is no shooting, running, dying, or any of the other standard video game fare that makes many parents nervous, just some simple objectives and a beautiful experience. There isn’t much more that I can tell you about it, because it is a game that must be experienced to be understood. And that is the big thing right there: this is very much an experience that you will either “get” or “not get”. There is no inbetween. Most of the reviews that I read, prior to purchasing the game used words like “emotional” and “peaceful” and “relaxing”.

Just watching Dawne play was an emotional experience for me, bring a smile to my face and a tear to my eye as I watched her soar across a desolate landscape and bring it to life. Flower is such an expression of Dawne’s inner life that I could almost be fooled into thinking that the game had been created just for her. Almost. I’m just thankful that the game was created, for something like this needs to be available for those amongst us who don’t think that shooting things is the path to success.

Here’s the promo trailer for the game, and if you have access to a Playstation 3, I cannot recommend this game highly enough.

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