Flower Playstation 3

Released last week in the Playstation Store, Flower is more than just a game: it’s an elusive moment of videogame poetry.

In flower, you are the wind incarnate. A gentle breeze or a rising mistral, you decide. Apply pressure to any button on the controller and the wind starts, making the petal that you control glide gently through the air, thanks to the sensitivity sensors in the Sixaxis controller. Fly over the flowers that surround you and their petals will also start to follow you, creating a chain of flowers. The aim is to cause other flowers to bloom and to create life around you, in a shimmering, verdant landscape of colourful fields, at the mercy of the wind.

The graphics are sublime, so finely detailed that you can see every blade of grass before you cause it to burst into flower with the excellent motion-sensitive controller. Superb harmonies, gentle and soothing music that develops each time a new flower blooms, everything here makes the game deserving of the moniker ‘Zen’, and it could be said to be one of the most relaxing games in existence.

A beautiful escape from the din of daily urban life in the form of a successful ecological narrative.