Flowerworks HD: Follie’s Adventure

Genre: Arcade

Players: 1-2 Co-Op (Local)

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Review:

Flowerworks is an Arcade-style game first released on PC in 2009, ported to Wii later that same year, and then ported to Wii U in 2014 with the added “HD” and “Follie’s Adventure” subtitle. This game has you playing a small plantlike alien growing flowers by firing color-coded pollen at them, trying to snag other bits of pollen on the way to create combos.

The presentation here is plain, but still appealing, using simple 2D visuals in bright cartoony colors. The game promises to have at least something resembling a spectacle in the fireworks you set off for performing larger combos, but unfortunately even this small visual treat is spoiled by slowdown that occurs when things get busy onscreen. These visuals are backed by cartoony sound effects and light, upbeat music that fits the game’s themes well enough.

The gameplay itself is relatively simple – you move your alien onscreen to collect bits of colorful pollen that pops up, and then fire it off at one off a few flowers that appears onscreen. Your aim will automatically target the nearest flower, but you can hold down the fire button to hold your aim on a specific flower even when you’re closer to another. The goal here is not just to get the right pollen color to the right flower, but to also have the pollen you shoot collide with other bits of pollen on the way, creating a combo. Snag enough pieces and you’ll even create a bubble, which you can add to a combo for an increased score.

The game has a campaign mode that has you moving around on a map and collecting items, and then playing stages to gather seeds to appease gnomes and… honestly, I felt like all this stuff on top didn’t really add anything to the game, and only slowed down its pace. Thankfully, there is a game mode that lets you tackle just the core gameplay on its own without any of this superfluous stuff.

As for that gameplay, it’s generally pretty fun, and it’s a nice challenge to try to position yourself in a way to create the most ideal combos. There are really only a few issues I have with the game. First, it’s hard to get a feel for just how good or bad you’re doing. The stages have a timer that expires, but there’s no clear indication that you are or aren’t on track to get past a certain score threshold until after the level is already over. Second, the way that players can keep the cursor on one flower and drag it feels a bit odd, and I feel like it may have been better to simply let players select the flower to target using the L and R buttons or the D-Pad.

In the end, Flowerworks is a decent, simple Arcade-style game that has a few issues, but is reasonably engaging, at least in short sessions. There are a number of areas that could stand to be improved here, from the controls to the gameplay modes to the presentation and performance, but despite these flaws, this is still an entertaining game.

tl;dr – Flowerworks HD is an Arcade-style game that has players collecting pollen and shooting it at flowers while trying to collect other bits of pollen along the way. The gameplay here is fairly compelling, though its appeal is limited by an array of problems, including control, presentation, and performance issues. It’s still a decent game worth playing, but it feels like it needed more work smoothing over the rough edges to make it a better one.

Grade: C+

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