Go With This Flow
HIGH Addictive puzzle combat with lots of variant play.
LOW The writing and character art are… not great.
WTF Why isn’t turn-based mode the default?
Like many games birthed through Kickstarter, Flowstone Saga spent a long, long time in development after its successful crowdfunding run. And like many of its Kickstarter siblings, it’s overfull, ambitious, kind of shonky, and undeniably uneven — but it’s also generous, ambitious, and engrossing.
Elevator pitches are kind of gross, but using one here is the easiest avenue with which to approach the core of Flowstone — it’s an indie 16-bit style JRPG, with all the narrative and aesthetic trappings of the genre (or it at least attempts at them) but instead of traditional turn-based, menu-select combat, every battle in Flowstone saga resolves with a game of non-copyright-infringing Tetris.
During battle, main character Mirai stands at the right side of the screen, and any enemies on the left. Between them lies the empty play field into which the tetromino-ish shapes are dropped, one by one. Any time an entire row of blocks is made, those blocks are removed and Mirai does damage to the targeted enemy. Clearing multiple lines at once increases the amount of damage done.
This is the basic premise onto which Flowstone layers its many, many systems, festooning the puzzle battler core like it’s the last Christmas tree at the end of the world. The first one introduced is Heat, in which certain blocks that fall have golden inlays on their faces. Align three of these faces and Mirai’s Heat meter rises, which makes attacks more powerful.
Mirai has a combo meter too, which works as expected, and the ability to charge up a 5×1 “Super Block” which is great for doing mondo well clears, or covering a lot of horizontal space at once. Then there’s the flask, which is kind of strange. It can be, um, stuffed with food? This food can be deployed into the well as blocks with various special effects.
And then there are the enemies to consider. Enemies do not play their own, separate falling block game as they do in Puyo Puyo Tetris. Instead, they have counters beneath their health bar that tick up, and once these counters are full, they’ll either do a standard attack or start preparing for a special attack which usually throws something unpleasant into Mirai’s play field in addition to doing damage. For instance, just one instance is when a horned beetle’s special plops down shield-emblazoned blocks, and as long as these blocks remain, they give the beetle a defense boost.
[Deep breath]
…And then there’s gear. Like many an amnesiac JRPG protag, Mirai can equip weapons, armor, accessories, and rings. In addition to boosting her stats, these often have a special trait that activates under specific combat conditions. E.g, the Blizzard Wand does extra damage to enemies as long as their attack counter is at least 50% full.
There’s also a job system in Flowstone! And a light town-building system, and resource-gathering, and block puzzles that task you with building specific shapes…
Yes, Flowstone follows in the great tradition of “mechanics lasagna” JRPGs — games that groan and swaying under masses of intricate systems and maelstroms of minutiae. One could argue that this many systems is unnecessary, but then that’s missing the point. Developer Impact Gameworks laid out this buffet not because players need every last stat and system to beat the campaign, but because having all of this stuff widens the canvas, allowing for greater flexibility and player expression.
One thing to note — I highly, highly recommend playing Flowstone in its optional turn-based mode. By default, the action moves in real time, so players have to juggle all of the above concerns while the enemies charge up their attacks. Setting it so that everything goes in rounds — Mirai drops a block, the enemy counters go up, full counters fire off attacks — feels so much more manageable, so much more tactical, and so much more unique.
I’ve spent most of this review steeped in the mechanics because that’s where Flowstone shines. However, when it comes to narrative and aesthetics it falls down and bears no comparison with the classics it obviously aims to be like.
The pixel art is competent, but the character designs are… not good. This is an issue I notice often in Western developers’ attempts at JRPG-styled games. They’re so intently trying to rise to the level of their inspirations, but in their adherence to surface-level similarities they never find their own soul, or a distinguishing spark that makes the atmospheres of the best JRPGs so ineffable. At best, Flowstone’s characters lack the stylization of Persona or the baroque melancholy of Final Fantasy. At worst they look like they were sketched out after reading a “How to Draw Japanese Manga!” guides that used to haunt middle school book fairs.
The writing, is earnest but bad, suffering from a terminal case of “Creative Writing 101” syndrome. No character has an individual voice, and they all speak the same flavorless English Major-ese. Sometimes there are awkward attempts at delineation, usually in the form of a verbal tic. I particularly disliked Sihd, the mayor of Mirai’s village, who drops “big words” into his conversation in what is clearly meant to be a running gag.
That said, huge plaudits go to Andrew Luers, Flowstone’s primary composer. The lush, immense, melodic OST successful captures the 16- and 32-bit magic, and the “trope tracks” — battle themes, cozy town music — can be intuitively slipped into like a favorite sweater while still remaining distinctive and memorable.
So what we have with Flowstone is a big, shaggy, messy game — it’s something that stumbles from time to time, but is also crafted with obvious joy that succeeds in its suite of core mechanics, and that’s where it matters most. It’s one of the more uneven titles I’ve played this year and this is not an unqualified recommendation, but it’s memorable, charming, and worth supporting.
Rating: 7.5 out of 10
— Ben Schwartz
Disclosures: This game is developed by Impact Gameworks and published by Doyoyo Games. It is available on PC, Mac, and Linux. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher. Approximately 12 hours of play were devoted to the game, and the game was not completed. No time was spent in the two-player assist mode.
Parents: This game is not yet rated by the ESRB, although it will get one when the planned Switch port releases. All combat animations involve bits of colorful magic flying back and forth with no blood, wounds, or other displays of violence. There is no foul language in the text and the monsters are often cute rather than frightening or imposing.
Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes present.
Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game offers subtitles. The subtitles cannot be altered or resized. There are no significant audio cues. This game is fully accessible.
Remappable Controls: Yes, this game offers fully remappable controls.
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