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How Does Flower Hold Up Today?

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On June 21, 2025

Watch your step, for you’ve just entered the Graveyard. Inside, we’ll be digging up games that have long been without a pulse. You’ll see both good and bad souls unearthed every month as we search through the more… forgotten…parts of history.

Launching in late 2006, the PlayStation 3 was a console I didn’t get my hands on until 2009, and it was something of a watershed console pickup for me. It was the first console I bought after my mother passed and has remained a staple console for me since then, despite having to replace the hard drive a couple of times. Luckily, doing that over the past month led to me rebuilding the system with a whole terabyte to work with and just like in 2009, one of my first games played to test it out was Flower. Playing it during this point in time led me to really experience it in a way that I’ve never experienced a game before or since.

The concept of playing as a gust of wind and activating groups of flowers along the way is an odd one, but also a simple concept that opens the mind up a bit when you’re playing. The first time I remember gaming making me appreciate the beauty in the real world was either Shenmue with its world-exploration and GTA III with the rainy nights. I’m going to lean towards the latter being more striking because I can still vividly remember “I’m Hot Tonight” blaring and going down Liberty City’s rain-soaked streets just absorbing the world and Flower is basically a whole game of nothing but that kind of zen. It’s an experience as much as it is a game and thatgamecompany really made this about as perfect as one could expect.

A Passing Breeze

Playing it in 2025 makes it even more impressive than it was in ’09 because of how motion technology via the sixaxis is implemented here versus now, where motion is still spotty and it just flat-out works here. While the game has since been adapted to run without motion, it feels like the most natural way to play. Even with old tech powering it, the controls are seamless and add to the immersion. X begins your momentum and all movement is handled by what you do with the controller and it all just works naturally. Going up moves you up, while a sharp left movement allows you to thread the needle through tight spots. Given that this is eighteen-year-old tech, it’s remarkable how responsive it is and how organic the controls feel.

Graveyard: Rocket Knight

Rocket Knight is a sleeper hit that has been lost in the shadow cast by the 16-bit classics in the franchise.

Slight movements are required to do things like grab every flower available or just avoiding getting struck by lightning-infused parts of metal later in the game and the level of risk slowly escalates as the adventure goes on. Starting off in an open field, the early game reminds me a lot of Mega Man X’s first stage by teaching you the essentials without being an outright hand-holding tutorial. You get baseline instruction and then get the gist of things by seeing all of the lit-up flowers around in groups. Hitting every flower in the group changes the world and brings life back to the environment they’re in and that opens up a new group and the pattern continues on until new areas in the map open up in that stage.

Twisted Steel With Artsy Appeal

It’s a simple formula, but one that has quite a bit of variety in its execution thanks to the environments and variety in the flowers themselves. Every stage stands out visually from the last due to its different-looking clouds, changes in the grass and especially in the soundtrack to tell the tale. The concept of Flower is unique and so is every playthrough along with whatever one gets out of the experience. When I first played through it, I felt the adventure was a bit of an allegory for life itself – beginning with mystery and ending with hope at the end of the journey, with memories being forged and adventures being had in the interim.

The amount of danger you’re placed in throughout is minimal, and yet Flower still manages to strike fear in players during later areas with lighting and thunder littering the world and players being at high-risk for getting shocked by metal if they aren’t careful. The gameplay loop is reminiscent of both a platformer with its unique traversal and also a puzzle game thanks to its layered approach to solving problems to get to new areas. Do you go for going through a stage fast or do you savor each area? I went with the latter in every playthrough and it served me well because it put me in a chill mindset afterwards. Had I rushed through, I’d probably feel anxious.

Going through the game in 2025 during a different kind of turbulent time in life hit differently and yet reminded me of the good parts about playing it for the first time in 2009. At that time, I felt guilty getting the console and yet had I not done so at that exact time, I wouldn’t have experienced Flower in that unique mindset then or been able to appreciate the good parts during a dark time. Much like life, Flower combines a fearful experience with joy to create something special in the long run. Playing it after losing people again in different forms puts a sense of perspective on things.

In the game, you are “just” a gust of wind going from flower to flower and make every area you leave more beautiful than it was before you entered it. Similarly in life, we’re just small parts of the greater whole that go from place to place and hope to make it better and brighter after we’re gone. There’s a beauty in the bittersweet experiences that encompass every part of this adventure. Going through the bright world to start makes the bleak black-soaked skies shrouded by storms stand out even more. The darkness makes the light more special and vice versa. Being able to experience every stage as you want to after beating the game is nice. There’s a set order for the first run, but you get to cherry-pick your experience more in later playthroughs and that offers its own unique experience since the events are the same, but feel different based on the order.

Visually, Flower is very much an example of getting things right the first time and that foundation being something that can impress for years to come. 16 years later, even playing on the PS3 yields an impressive graphical effort thanks to the clean art style and rock-solid frame rate. The PS4 version has a bit of a visual bump as does the PC version, but nothing massive — mainly just higher supported resolution and clean texture work at those high resolutions. Flower makes it so easy to appreciate the world and one thing I’ve enjoyed doing more of since experiencing this game is taking photos of flowers and capturing their beauty with a variety of cameras — and I doubt I would have done that without playing this and seeing so much of that beauty in gaming form.

Graveyard: Burnout Paradise

Burnout Paradise is a must-play for Burnout fans or anyone who enjoys vehicular mayhem and it’s aged wonderfully.

Flower’s soundtrack is magical and one of the few that was made available on-console in this era. This was still the era of CDs being around and yet this OST was sold digitally and could be downloaded right on the PS3. The physical version of Journey included Flower content too and a plethora of gorgeous wallpapers to really drive home the beauty of the experience while also providing OSTs for both Journey and Flower and remains one of the most definitive gaming releases out there in terms of being a game archive available commercially. There is a sense of joy to every song while also having foreboding tunes as well, but always with a hint of happiness in them with a light pick of a guitar showing that not everything is doom and gloom even during dark times. There always bright parts of life to cling to and Flower’s soundtrack reflects that.

Flower is a timeless experience and one that has thankfully been preserved for years to come despite being a PS3 game to start. It’s gotten PS4 and PC releases and is playable on the PS5 and I think that plays a part in there being nothing else quite like it on the market. There’s no market for a knock-off since the original is so readily-available and that allows the magic of the experience to remain untainted as years go on. Thatgamecompany was really something special and has time has gone on, we’ve seen their some of their crew create experiences like Abzu while they craft games like Sky and yet nothing has quite topped Flower in some ways. Journey felt like a natural extension of it only with a desert getting shown the love of flowers here, while Flower is just a pure experience and one that can be enjoyed by anyone at any time – but truly shines during times of hardship and strife. It’s a must-experience kind of game and one that will be as fun to play 30 years as it is 15 years later.