Blossom starts on a speckled sphere. There’s no guidance, just a throbbing globe of blooming colors, a low hum in the background, a dark backdrop. You’re rootless, cast into the stars in a way that misses fear and skips straight into transcendence. There’s a beautiful minimalism to it all so that every tiny undulation feels gigantic, each detail of the little universe has enough room for its own spotlight. And then you wiggle your mouse, and it all changes.
Ken Wong (of Monument Valley and Florence fame) and Hamish Lang have created a lovely little thing with Blossom, a small world to drag your finger over and watch as it wraps around your thumb. Moving your mouse through the wagging flowers causes them to flush new colors and sing out odd timbres. It doesn’t sound like much, I know, but its procedurally generated environs produce enough visual and musical variety to keep you gawking for a while, and —if you’re like me — to leave you aching for a return after you’ve left it for too long.
Fields stretch and warp in astonishing ways, and just when you think you’ve seen all Blossom has to offer, it changes subtly. Some flowers sprout into cones while you’re over them, and others simply swivel in circles as you pass. Sometimes trumpets play, other times popping sounds, and they always intone in different durations: be it dying off quickly, or growing in sound the longer you linger.
It’s a gentle beauty you really have to try for yourself. I was amazed by how quickly I was drawn in, gasping in delight at the way a world trembled under my touch, the way it crooned back at me; and my reluctance to leave it all behind. To draw curtains over the stage and return to a world that’s larger, one that’s familiar.
Blossom is name-your-own-price on Itch.io, and is available for Windows and Mac.
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