Florence Critic Reviews

Florence doesn’t last long but when it's finished, I was left with an overwhelming series of emotions. I don’t want to sound hyperbolic, but I found the simplicity of this game to be profound. Florence right now retails for $2.99 on the App Store and although it doesn't have any replayability, I think it’s worth every penny. I hope that Florence inspires more games of this kind that captured an hour of my day and transformed it into an intrinsic adventure that I’m not soon to forget.

Anyone can pick this up and be moved. Florence is universal art.

Experience-centric games like That Dragon, Cancer , Gone Home and others have found massive audiences of people who love the experimental side of gaming that focuses more on conveying emotions than they do high scores. If those are the sorts of things you're into, chances are you're going to wish Florence didn't end so soon.

Florence is a love story, a story that merges videogames and comics, able to give shape to a delicate and poetic narration, but with an overwhelming emotional impact, which leaves you truly speechless: at the end of this short story, you will then find yourself with a lump in the throat that would only want to melt into tears.

While the deeply relatable narrative, sketchy art and evocative music could all conceivably be delivered in a short film, it's the brilliant metaphors of the touchscreen play that make Florence truly special. It's breathtaking and emotionally affirming little game.

A stunning work of interactive art.

Every Android and iOS user should delight themselves by this fateful story. This is an almost perfect mobile game, an experience unlike any other. Florence will feel close and familiar to all the people in the world.

For less than an hour of your time, Florence is one of the most beautiful coming-of-age stories you can experience.

Once I started Florence, it was hard to stop. I went from knowing nothing about Florence to knowing everything about her daily life and then about her and Krish. It reminded me of my relationships, and I'll admit it — I got quite emotional. I love slice of life experiences, and Florence is definitely one you don't want to miss.

It might not last long, but Florence is an intriguing experience that's well worth checking out.

Florence takes a pretty familiar plot line and adds more life to it through clever gameplay mechanics and a bright aesthetic. It’s not the most involved game out there, but the relatively small amount of stuff Florence does have to offer is dang near close to perfectly executed.

In a medium so fixated on hurting others, it's refreshing to enjoy a slice of life story about the complexities of love, romance and life itself.

Florence is a beautiful experience that isn’t afraid to tell an ordinary story. This isn’t an action-packed, heroic tale or a somber story filled with tragedy, but it still hits some of those notes in subdued ways. Florence is happy, distressing, and admirable in its reflection of young romance, and it left me with a sense of unexpected hopefulness.

Florence's costumbrist love story touched us and surprised us. Its proposal is direct and effective. Its realization, in mechanics, drawing and sound, doesn't have objections. And each hint of colour, each musical note, helped us to see the credits with tears in our eyes.

This short collection of small moments manages to cover a wide range of powerfully relatable emotional highs and lows, beautifully capturing what it’s like to fall in love for the first time.

Florence is an imaginative, breathtaking, heartbreaking tale of two artists trying a love they’re not quite ready for. It’s as honest a look at the subject matter as you’ll find in a game -- or so I've been told by others who've been writing about it incessantly since its release. But as much as Florence focuses on love, I’m not quite sure it’s a fan of it.

Florence strikes a chord that resonates long after the cello fades.

Florence marks another interesting step in the exploration of narrative in videogames: its story is simple but meaningful, as is its interaction.

Although not a game in any conventional sense, more a work of interactive fiction, Florence is about falling in love, its protagonist drifting through the tedium of adult existence before meeting the love of her life. From the mild awkwardness of their first date, to moving in, daily routine, arguments and beyond, your part in each scene sometimes amounting to no more than scrolling through its practically wordless pages, but making you feel a part of its story in a way that graphic novels and films can’t. At only 30 minutes long and with little replay value, this is not for everyone, but its unique emotional journey is an experience that stays with you.

Florence may be short, but it's still an excellent interactive graphic novel about love.