—— A Love Story Could Be Imperfect
Introduction
This is 25-year-old girl —— Florence's story. As many plain people, she has a simple coroutine which repeats again and again. However, one monotonous day as usual, she walks aimlessly on the street. There is an exquisite melody swinging in the air which immediately attracts her heart. She follows the melody and meets a street performer —— Krish. Maybe it is their destiny, they fall in love in a short period. Everything becomes different from that moment. More and more color comes into Florence's life. Both of them support each others' dream, everything looks perfect at that time. However, after a year, more and more tiny cracks begin to happen between them. The cracks gradually accumulate and lead to a break up at last. After that, Florence finds out that it is more important to follow her own dream and decides to go forward.
Gameplay
The interactions in this game are quite simple. Like complete a simple puzzle or drag something on the desk and so one. But all of them work pretty well in the game. I think it is because this game doesn't use word to show characters' emotion but use some indirect methods to indicate characters' feeling in the scene. For example, when Florence is talking to Krish, the player needs to drag different polygons to finish a puzzle. If both of them are happy to talk to each other, the player will find that the amount of polygons decrease and become easier to finish the pattern which indicate they have a good time to communicate with each other. But when they are arguing, the polygons will flash into the screen with a high speed. Also the angle on the polygon will become harsher which indicates the characters are angry. This game use a lot of this kind of details to convey characters' emotion which is pretty cool.
There is a part which makes me very impressive in this game. After two main characters break up, the player will meet a scene that Florence and Krish walk together. The name of this scene is let go. It means the player needs help Florence forget Krish. And the player will find that Florence's walking speed is greater than Krish. But whenever the player touch the screen Florence will slow down which makes them come closer. It is tricky that the player wants to do something, but the strategy of this part is to do nothing. If the player doesn't touch the screen, the distance of this two characters will become farther and farther which will lead the player complete this part. I think this is a really highlight point in this game. Because it works in a reverse way which might be a surprise to the player. And it might have another meaning that if people want to forget someone, they don't need to do something intentionally, time will figure it out.
Art style and Music
For the art style part, I like this game's color method best. There are many contrasts in color in this game. For example, at the beginning, this game uses grey color to show Florence's monotonous life. But after she meets Krish, her world becomes more colorful. This contrast gives the player a very good visual feedback. Color is very powerful, the player will feel different emotion from color, and this game does a well job in this part.
For the music part, each part's music is quite suitable for its own theme. The music will change according to characters' mind or emotion. And this game also uses a lot of sound effects to show some details in this game. All these parts work well with other elements.
My thought on this game
As I said in the introduction part, this story does not have a perfect ending. Florence and Krish break up one day. Since this game doesn't use words to convey information, so the player don't know what exactly happened. But he could see some cracks happen in their daily life. And they get more and more pressure on following their dream. All explanations about why they break up in this part are fair. I think this is what this game wants to achieve. It wants different people to see different things through itself.
But if you look into this game deeper. You will find that it is a game about reality. At the beginning, Florence starts her dull life in her 25 which is common phenomenon in the society. Then she meets love, it seems that she gets the whole world at that time. But all things are gone in the end. However, the life will still continue. She needs to let it go and starts a new life. It is an imperfect love story, but I think it is a perfect story. This story wants to tell us love is not the most important thing in this world. There are many things worth people experience and find. That is the life.
