Game Review: Florence

3/9/2023

A wonderful story with no words, and simple gameplay.

Screenshot of the main menu, featuring the main character, Florence.

Florence is a short visual novel that I’d heard about a few times as being a great example of how to tell a narrative without relying on blocks of text. So, when it went on sale on the Nintendo eShop I thought I would give it a try, but life happens, and it ended up on my backlog of games. So now after a couple of months of collecting dust in my digital game library, I finally set some time aside to play through it, and this is what I thought.

Story:

Screenshot of the title screen for the first chapter.

The story is the game's main attraction as it follows the life of Florence as she navigates being an adult with an unfulfilling career, a strained relationship with her mother, and just going through the motions of life until a new love enters her life. Being able to tell a cohesive story with charming characters that moved me without using any words was very impressive. The story was full of emotion, and I found myself fully invested in the lives of the characters which may have been because of the lack of words or conversation. I could tell that Florence was annoyed when her mom called but I had to make my own inferences about why. And later on, after one key moment I thought I knew exactly how the story would end, but I was actually surprised by the ending not being what I thought it would be. The story was really well done but since I was so invested in the characters and their relationships, I was a little sad when the story sort of fast-forwarded through some of the developments that I think would have been great to see, but instead, I was left having to fill in the blanks myself.

Sound:

Screenshot of Florence flying through the air towards the music notes as part of a mini game.

The music of Florence did a great job of setting the tone and mood of each chapter, and even the more minor sound effects like the static of the TV or the roar of the vacuum helped draw me deeper into the world of Florence. The background music did an excellent job of conveying the character’s emotions and feelings throughout. As the main character Florence went about her everyday activities the music was calm and relaxing, then when she was happy the music got more upbeat and fast-paced, and when she was feeling sad or in a tense situation the music got more intense and darker.

Graphics & Art style:

Screenshot of Florence on her phone scrolling through social media and liking posts.

Florence used a simple 2D art style with a hand-drawn feel. The illustrated art style added to the overall aesthetic of Florence. Florence is meant to play like a graphic novel, focused on telling a story, broken up into chapters, with multiple panels on the page. There were a lot of details in the artwork and as a visual novel with no words the art was front and center. At one point early on there is a part where Florence is scrolling through social media on her phone and you are able to like or repost her friend’s posts which I found fun, but 2 chapters later she is scrolling on her phone again and you are able to like or repost but the images where the exact same as before. I’m not sure if this had a purpose within the story or if the developers just decided to use the same images, but I did find it slightly disappointing.

Gameplay:

Screenshot of one mini game where you must answer math problems.

The gameplay of Florence comes in the form of simple mini games introduced in each chapter. They ranged from brushing Florence's teeth to clicking and dragging puzzle pieces to make speech bubbles to solving math problems. The mini games were very simple and most seemed to lack any kind of stakes as the game just waited for you to complete it before moving on making them seem more like tasks that you had to check off your to-do list instead of actual gameplay. Even though I found the gameplay fitting for a visual novel, as the simplicity and lack of stakes kept my focus on the story while adding a bit of interactivity, after a while, it really did feel like I was just trying to rush through my to-do list. The game introduces a new type of mini game at the beginning of most chapters, then the player must complete a few rounds of the mini game to move on to the next part of the story, which began to feel tedious, especially in later chapters where they re-used some of the mini games introduced in the earlier chapters. I should add that although overall the gameplay was fairly simple and seemed tedious a few of the mini games helped me connect with the characters feelings like the awkwardness of putting together the speech bubble puzzles when the characters were on a first date.

Replayability:

Screenshot of Florence brushing her teeth as part of a mini game.

I really enjoyed the story, art style, and music. However, since the story is the main attraction of the game, now that I have seen the end, I don’t really feel the need to play through it anytime soon. If the actual gameplay was a little more involved, I could see myself going back but since the gameplay was made to be very simple and wasn’t the focus there isn’t much to pull me back in.

Personal Opinion:

Screenshot of a mini game where you decorate a paper sailboat.

I think that Florence is a wonderful story about relatable characters, conveyed through beautiful music and art, with some simple mini games to keep the player engaged. The story was well worth the short time it took to finish the game with the art and music being a wonderful bonus. The mini games were very simple and at some points felt tedious, but since the gameplay was obviously not the focus, I understand why it was so simple. And although it was straightforward, I think the gameplay did a good job of adding to the experience while keeping the focus on the story which in my opinion is the purpose of gameplay in a visual novel.
The story was lovely, and the music and art worked wonderfully together, the gameplay was so-so, but overall, I enjoyed my experience. With art being an important part of the characters’ lives, I decided to score Florence out of 100 paintbrushes.

My Score:

Screenshot of a Florence holding a paintbrush.