Here’s a short movie I made of me playing the online version of flOw:

I love this game for a number of reasons:

1. It’s a fabulous piece of programming. The game was created in Flash 8.
2. It’s simple—not really needing any instructions—and yet deceptively complex. It took me a few tries to realize that the red and blue ‘creatures’ allowed you to switch levels, and the behaviour of some of the other more complex organisms can only be discovered through exploration and interaction. In that sense, it’s quite ‘lifelike’: there are rules, but they’re completely implicit…
3. The creatures themselves are marvellous. Their movement and growth are just right.
4. Excellent sound design.

You can play it yourself here. Jenova Chen’s website is here, with the flOw-specific pages here. This contains Chen’s academic background materials along and other release/marketing information (there’s a commercial version available for Playstation 3).

Enjoy.