Flow (stylized as flOw) is a Flash game created by Jenova Chen and Nicholas Clark. The game involves the player guiding an aquatic microorganism through various depths of the ocean to consume other organisms and to evolve their organism as the player advances. It is currently available in both online and as a stand-alone offline download free of charge on Jenova Chen's official website. Flow is part of Chen's thesis research at the University of Southern California's Interactive Media Division and includes an embedded design of Dynamic game difficulty balancing which allows players with different skill levels to intuitively customize their experience and enjoy the game at their own desired pace.
Gameplay
Both Flow's play structure and aesthetic design are simple and intuitive. The player begins the game as a small, white, worm-like micro-organism on a bright, two-dimensional plane. Using the mouse, the player can guide the worm. Clicking and holding down on the left mouse button accelerates the speed of the worm. The objective of the game is to guide the worm to eat other micro-organisms and evolve. Eating cells increases length, while two types of special cells temporarily increase mouth size or evolve body segments. While many of these micro-organisms are defenseless, there are certain types of multicellular organisms that will attack the worm. To defeat these enemies, the player must guide the worm to eat the glowing cells that make up the bodies of the enemies. Different types of enemies have different ways of attacking the worm, so the player must determine a particular strategy to defeat each one.
Early on in the game, the worm swims in brighter planes. To progress into darker planes, where more difficult enemies dwell, the worm must eat the red micro-organism. Alternatively, the blue micro-organism enables the player to back-track to brighter planes. These special cells are always present, except on the brightest and darkest planes, where the creature can no longer travel in that specific direction. Players are capable of customizing the physical appearance of their organism based on the gameplay.
There are two creatures available to play as in the Flash version. The first is the worm phase in which the player's avatar evolves into a multi-segmented worm. If the worm defeats the last, worm-like enemy on the final bottom level, the worm eats a special orange microorganism and floats to the top, is reborn as an infant "jellyfish" creature and the background screen changes from blue to orange. If the jellyfish replays all levels it will return to the surface and begin life again as a worm but not before fighting a boss, which turns out to be the first worm-like creature the player was previously. A bug exists that renders some players who defeat the boss in jellyfish mode unable to return to the surface.
Gameplay
Both Flow's play structure and aesthetic design are simple and intuitive. The player begins the game as a small, white, worm-like micro-organism on a bright, two-dimensional plane. Using the mouse, the player can guide the worm. Clicking and holding down on the left mouse button accelerates the speed of the worm. The objective of the game is to guide the worm to eat other micro-organisms and evolve. Eating cells increases length, while two types of special cells temporarily increase mouth size or evolve body segments. While many of these micro-organisms are defenseless, there are certain types of multicellular organisms that will attack the worm. To defeat these enemies, the player must guide the worm to eat the glowing cells that make up the bodies of the enemies. Different types of enemies have different ways of attacking the worm, so the player must determine a particular strategy to defeat each one.
Early on in the game, the worm swims in brighter planes. To progress into darker planes, where more difficult enemies dwell, the worm must eat the red micro-organism. Alternatively, the blue micro-organism enables the player to back-track to brighter planes. These special cells are always present, except on the brightest and darkest planes, where the creature can no longer travel in that specific direction. Players are capable of customizing the physical appearance of their organism based on the gameplay.
There are two creatures available to play as in the Flash version. The first is the worm phase in which the player's avatar evolves into a multi-segmented worm. If the worm defeats the last, worm-like enemy on the final bottom level, the worm eats a special orange microorganism and floats to the top, is reborn as an infant "jellyfish" creature and the background screen changes from blue to orange. If the jellyfish replays all levels it will return to the surface and begin life again as a worm but not before fighting a boss, which turns out to be the first worm-like creature the player was previously. A bug exists that renders some players who defeat the boss in jellyfish mode unable to return to the surface.
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