Originally developed as a small project for part of thesis research, flOw has now found its way onto the PS3 as a small downloadable game. It is the brainchild of Jenova Chen and Nicholas Clark. Jenova worked on the game to develop what he calls DDA, “Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment”. The idea was to allow as many people, of as many different skill levels as possible to play the game and have an enjoyable experience.

You play as a very small multi-celled organism floating in water. There are really no instructions to the game; you are just told to tilt the controller to move, and press any button to boost your little guy. And so, the game begins; with you tilting the controller and swimming in the water aimlessly.

Then you come upon another organism, only it is of the single-celled variety. By this time you have noticed that you have a rather large half-circle for a mouth. So, you decide to see what happens if you try to eat that little guy. With a single pass you have destroyed the tiny single-celled organism. You then notice that your tail has grown by one tiny cell.  A calm comes over your body, a certainty at your mission in life.

You must eat all the little ones.  You must do it with precision, and you must do it without remorse.

You then realize that there are no little ones left; you have depleted your resources. Realizing you are now on the brink of extinction, you search for the red single-celled organism that you think you spotted earlier. Upon finding it you devour it, only to be launched down deeper into the water, where less light can enter. You realize the red ones push you down, while the blue ones must do the opposite, launching you up. Hell-bent on depleting all your available resources, you embark on what could be a never-ending quest to eat and grow.

All dramatics aside, that is pretty much what you do in the game. You eat little things to get to be a bigger thing. Depending on what you eat, your multi-celled organism will grow differently. Along the way you will encounter numerous types of beings, both single and multi-celled. Some may want to hurt you, but fortunately, you have at your disposal a special ability, whether it be spinning really fast, darting out of harms way or a few others that I won’t spoil. At the end of each world you will face a “boss” character.

The whole experience is rather nice, with calming music and sound effects. The game looks beautiful at 1080p, or even 720p, or even just regular television. It doesn’t matter so much, as the graphics are really simplistic, consisting of circles and blobs in pretty much a 2D-type space. After all, it started out as a flash-game.

The game costs $9.35 over the PlayStation Network, which is a pretty good deal in my view. You can also play with 4 other people at once; you will all be on the same screen, floating around and eating things. My girlfriend and I spent an hour playing, and it was really an enjoyable experience that encourages teamwork. The best part was that you really can’t get frustrated at this game. I think it’s the music or something.

If you are looking for a game that calms you down, and like short arcade-type games, you should definitely look at picking this game up, or downloading the PC version which you can find on the internet. The only difference is that the game is significantly shorter on PC, and the visuals are toned down quite a bit. Either way, there is a very good chance you will enjoy this title.