Review: The Flower Collectors

This is a short mystery game set in Spain in 1977 right ahead of the first free election since the death of Franco. You play as a wheelchair bound former police officer confined to your top floor apartment and balcony. You are thrown together with a leftist reporter to investigate the killing of one of her would be sources in the plaza below your balcony.

I enjoyed this game and was invested in the story. This can be seen in that I felt pretty disappointed when I thought I wouldn't be able to proceed because of what seemed like it might be a game breaking bug and I was pretty happy when I was able to figure out what I needed to do.

First off, I found the setting to be interesting and the story was definitely engaged with it. The plot of the game is very connected with the political situation and also with your history as a police officer. I also thought the story was engaging with multiple threads going on in terms of the main characters around the plaza. The setup with the cop in the wheelchair confined to his home and the lefty journalist who can go out and poke around is interesting even if it is kind of a bit derivative from Hitchcock's The Rear Window. Additionally, limiting the story telling to just that one plaza but having it be a microcosm of the national struggle works pretty well. I also thought the voice acting was pretty good. It was neither monotone nor overly dramatic. Lastly, the existence of some achievements (little badges you can earn that indicate things you did in a video game) that I didn't earn indicates that there is at least a bit of unexplored depth.

On the flipside, the game is quite short. Just 3-4 hours of game time. Secondly, the graphics aren't great. Related to that, the gestures of the people are pretty exaggerated and a bit immersion breaking. I guess in some ways my biggest complaint is that it feels a bit less like a video game and bit more like a story with some mildly gamey elements included. Basically a lot of stuff the game just tells you very directly what to do. The pinup board for making deductions and sussing out the story is pretty simple and it just tells you whether putting something in a given box is right or wrong. There are some timed sections but even these are quite easy and straightforward. Related to this, there are some choices to make but overall things felt very linear. Also, with the few choices you do have it felt like it was obvious what the "good" choice. A minor complaint is that the start of the game is a little slow. This is kind of fitting for someone confined to their apartment with nothing much to do but reminisce but I was slightly borderline on whether I would really continue playing or not in the early stages. One fairly big issue but it could just be me was one place that I thought was very counterintuitive. Basically you are supposed to call down to some children in the street directly below your balcony. I assumed this involved interacting with them directly by calling out to them by shouting. But the game doesn't let you do that. And unlike almost everything else in the game it doesn't tell you what to do. I felt it was so obvious that I should be able to shout down to the kids that I thought it was a bug that I couldn't. In fact you just have to go in and pick up the telephone to get the quest to get the phone booth number using your binoculars. This does make sense in terms of not wanting to draw attention to yourself but it was confusing enough that I thought the game was broken.

One last issue that was neither really a positive or a negative but a bit curious is that the people are animals. Meaning your journalist friend is a racoon, your former partner is a dog, the waiter in the cafe is a fox. I didn't dislike this aspect but I also kind of question why they felt the need to do that particularly when the setting is a really specific real world historical setting. It seems to create some distance from the reality of what the game is talking about.

So, my overall opinion is that I liked it and recommend it but it is quite short and linear and the gamey aspects feel light and a bit tacked on.