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Play PS3 Title flOw Right Now

Posted by Zonk on Sat Sep 23, 2006 05:38 PM
from the so-shiny dept.
Entertainment Games
The folks at the Tokyo Game show are sending back high resolution screens of titles like Heavenly Sword and Warhawk, but a smaller title that will be on the console is available to play now. Recommended by Tycho in Friday's post to Penny Arcade, the game fl0w has more to offer than just good looks. It's actually a part of a designer's thesis, using the concept of flow theory to make a title more enjoyable for the player. Despite its roots in academia, this beautiful gem may go on to have a fond place in the hearts of console gamers. Joystiq has a hands on with the PS3 version: "FlOw was running at 525p (480p) -- the graphics were akin to what we've seen the Nintendo Wii produce. We aren't sure if the title will available brick-and-mortar or as a download (or even packaged in the console's hard drive). If priced correctly, flOw could end up an essential title similar to what Geometry Wars represents for the Xbox 360 -- a small, casual game with mass appeal sold for pure profit." Download the game, and give it a try.
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Despite the high hopes of Xbox 360 fans Gamespot pegs it as unlikely that Lumines Live will drop this week, or that there will be a Gears of War Demo on the Xbox Live service. In news that does seem to be legit, though, you can see screenshots of the first downloadable games for the PS3 service over at Game|Life. Titles include the previously mentioned fl0w, Lemmings 2, Blast Factor, and Go Sudoku. Commentary on the games available at GameSetWatch.
[+] Grad-School Thesis Becomes PS3 Game 167 comments
Carl Bialik from WSJ writes, "USC student Jenova Chen's Flash game, 'flOw,' attracted interest from Sony, which commissioned an enhanced version that will be sold through its PlayStation Network, WSJ.com reports. From the article: 'Gameplay is incredibly smooth, particularly for a Flash game. But it's the design touches that set flOw apart. Players will notice faint outlines of the creatures lurking at lower depths, a foreboding sign that vicious manta- and squid-like enemies await. The water darkens as the creature advances to deeper levels. The game's ambient sound is somewhat hypnotic. The intuitive controls and design simplicity are among Mr. Chen's mandate: build immersive games for people who don't consider themselves gamers. 'My parents and grandparents don't play games. My girlfriend, she doesn't play either,' he says. 'I want to make games that those people can appreciate.'"
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  • Hmm. (Score:5, Informative)

    by rjstanford (69735) on Saturday September 23 2006, @05:50PM (#16170159) Homepage Journal
    . If priced correctly, flOw could end up an essential title similar to what Geometry Wars represents for the Xbox 360 -- a small, casual game with mass appeal sold for pure profit."


    Of course, making it available for free download months in advance may - just may - reduce the number of people lining up to pay for it. But who knows, miracles can happen.
    • No kidding. I posted about this on my blog [blogspot.com] back on March 19th (sorry for shameless plug, just giving proof of the date). My hope at the time was that this would be developed further into a game with even more evolution, similar (but perhaps not as far-reaching) to Spore. But it looks like it will just be the same game, and they'll try to charge for it, but this is Sony, so no surprise there.

      Although honestly I am a bit curious as to how they intend to give gamers a snowballs chance in hell of completing

  • Poor Chen (Score:3, Funny)

    by Morphine007 (207082) on Saturday September 23 2006, @05:59PM (#16170233)

    I was playing this game this morning after reading penny arcade. It's incredibly simplistic... if strangely addictive...

    Not surprisingly, we appear to have killed his server

    • Okay, maybe I'm dumb, but how do I play?! I can't figure it out! I'm gonna try booting into Windows to see if it's a wird Linux flash issue, but I can't figure out what the hell I'm supposed to do!
      -Trillian
      • Move your mouse; the thing you control follows your mouse cursor (as long as it's in the flash window that is). The left button makes it go faster. You just move it around and eat stuff. The red guys (shown by a red circle 'ping' when they're off the map) make you go down a level, the blue guys make you go up a level.
      • yes, it's linux flash issue. The game requires flash 8.

  • Old. Old old old. (Score:4, Informative)

    by Rallion (711805) on Saturday September 23 2006, @06:02PM (#16170251) Journal
    I played this at least six months ago! It's an intensely simplistic (though cool) game that will take a grand total of about an hour (tops) out of your life. It's been freely available for a long time.

    Everybody's acting like it's some big deal. I don't understand why.

  • Server Load:
            151 Users
    Remaining Wait:
            11 Minutes

    Mirror plz?
    • No, thats part of the game. It's called bandwith flow. See its using a series of tubes to flow your information to you like water. Posting a mirror would open more flows and be like cheating.

  • Filecloud Trick (Score:3, Informative)

    by oskard (715652) on Saturday September 23 2006, @06:05PM (#16170269)
    Two servers appeared in the "Select A Server" combo box.
    Both had a waiting time of 9 minutes
    I select one, begin waiting.
    I become impatient, hit back, select another.
    Viola, the download begins immediately.

    Try it out, hope it works for you :)

  • Yawn (Score:3, Insightful)

    by MeanMF (631837) on Saturday September 23 2006, @06:10PM (#16170297) Homepage
    Crappy frame rate (in a 2-d game!) and kind of interesting for about five minutes. Not quite Geometry Wars, sorry guys.
      • Re-read my comment as tell me where I even mentioned Sony or the PS3. This game would suck just as hard on a 360 as it does in Flash.
      • If you can stay awake long enough, play for a few minutes and see what happens when the big critters appear. Framerate drops drastically and it becomes hard to control.
        • The framerate slows to a crawl when you start becoming a big critter yourself and really struggles when you are a big critter trying to eat other big critters. I noticed the most problems while playing as a fairly evolved jellyfish trying to attack other largish jellyfish towards the end of level 2...
          • Never had this problem myself on a 2ghz Athlon XP. This was the web version, not the downloaded version however.
  • I got to the second boss (yellow-brown world, you play as a sphere) but I can't beat it. Never got it below 4 dots, and we've been exchanging attacks for last half a hour or so. Anything beyond the 4th dot (the one with 2 spikes) is easy, but getting anything closer to the head is nearly impossible, results in being bitten and losing any advantage as the enemy regenerates.

    Any solution?
    • I had a lot of difficulty beating him. I managed to get him down to 2 dots by charging in from behind, but the last two were tough as hell. Basically I charged in from behind, then released the mouse button so my dots were beyond his head. Then I tried to snag one of the dots and zip out of there before he could eat part of me. It took me a ton of attempts since you have to try to slip part of your outer ring that isn't lit up by his head, but finally managed to do it. The only problem was...I didn't s
      • It seems that the game is a work in progress and (at least, the Flash version) isn't finished yet.

        Apparently not so long ago, it was only one level. Hopefully it won't take long until it is several more levels with more creatures to play against and become.

      • I had exactly the same problem, and I did search many levels for anything I missed. I think that's as much of the game as was developed, and it just ends there. Pretty sure at that point I was out of the "flOw" and it wasn't fun for me any more.
      • The problem is "strengthening myself" doesn't help - it increases my survivablity which is more than satisfactory (I spent nearly half a hour in a futile battle and neither of us managed to seriously hurt the other), but doesn't really increase my attack power/speed (instead, it decreases it - it takes longer to refill a spot and take another bite off the boss). For a good while I considered the suicidal strategy of going right from the start to the boss, simply because the beginning "empty" state would mak
    • It's called TGS, where the bulk of all the Japanese gaming news for an entire year is released in the span of a few days. By now, you should also have figured out it's pronnounced Nintendot , 24 hour Nintendo bias, all day, everyday.
      • Speaking of Spore, the little bit of this flow game I played reminded me of the video footage of Spore. The part when you're a single celled organism and you run around eating things.
    • From my reading, the "innovation" is supposed to come in tuning the game's difficulty automatically to the user's performance, not merely the idea that a game should be between "frustrating" and "boring".

      This can be a good idea, but it's worth pointing out it's not new at all. I recently started in on a task that I've had planned for a while working on the same basic idea, only applied to a learning program (can't even call it a "game"): Dynamically deciding which new concepts to introduce when, depending o
      • But this is precisely the point I was ridiculing: They took an ever-present concept of designing games -- one that I'm sure predates videogames themselves -- and market it as an "innovation", claiming it is an implementation of some two-bit psychology thesis with a fancy-sounding name and a colorful chart.

        But guess what, games have been fun and addictive before, way before, and I'm willing to bet that it was not by accident that game makers ended up finding that sweet-spot between boing and frustrating --

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