There’s a particular flavour of exhaustion where your body is done but your brain hasn’t got the memo yet. You’re lying down, eyes open, thinking about emails or meals or something someone said three hours ago that you can’t quite let go of. You need something for your hands to do while the rest of you catches up.
Flower is the game I boot up when I’m too tired for a menu screen. That’s not an exaggeration. It has almost no interface at all.
What it is
You are the wind. You guide flower petals through open fields. That is the entire game. No dialogue, no score, no fail states worth mentioning. You tilt the controller and petals follow. Fields bloom as you pass through them. It takes about an hour, or two if you’re not in a rush. Which you shouldn’t be, because the whole point is that nothing is waiting.
Available on PC, PlayStation, iOS, and Android.
Why it helps when you’re running on empty
Flower has almost no fail states. Nothing punishes you for stopping. Nothing demands your attention. It’s one of the most restorative games ever made, and I mean that without any of the usual marketing fluff. It just is. You float, things bloom, the music swells, and for a while your nervous system gets to do something other than brace.
If thinking about what game to play already feels like too much effort, start here.
