Game Name:
Florence
Target Audience:
Casual mobile gamers, especially young adults interested in narrative games and emotional storytelling.
Game Creator:
Mountains, published by Annapurna Interactive
Platform:
iOS, Android, Nintendo Switch, PC
What does it mean to play Florence as a feminist?
Maybe it starts with realizing that nothing in this game is trying to be loud. Nothing screams “empowerment.” There’s no binary choice system, no moment where Florence dramatically reclaims her life in a single swipe. Instead, the game draws you into something much slower and softer: you brush your teeth, you match conversation bubbles, you break up, and then—eventually—you start again. And that’s where the feminist heart of Florence lies.
Reading Florence alongside Shira Chess’s Play Like a Feminist, especially Chapter 4 on “Gaming Feminism,” reframes the game as not just a romantic narrative but a design decision that intentionally centers affective labor, emotional nuance, and slow transformation—things often sidelined or dismissed in game design as “not gameplay.” But Chess reminds us: to play like a feminist is to take seriously the kinds of play that center care, reflection, and lived experience.
Florence never gives you choices about where the relationship goes. That’s not the point. The point is to feel how it unfolds. One of the most elegant mechanics in the game—using jigsaw-like speech bubbles to represent dialogue—visually communicates emotional intimacy as it builds. Pieces become simpler to align as Florence and Krish grow closer, and later, argument fragments no longer require effort to fit; they just slam in. You’re no longer communicating—you’re reacting. There’s no text, but you know exactly what they’re saying.
This kind of design isn’t just clever. It’s political. It resists the language of mastery and optimization. It refuses to turn emotion into a mini-game. That’s a feminist intervention.
At the same time, Florence isn’t perfect. For all its emotional precision, it leaves some uncomfortable gaps. Florence is an Asian woman living and working in what appears to be a Western city, yet her cultural background—while visually coded—is never explored beyond aesthetics. She exists in an oddly frictionless world. We don’t see her deal with racism, community, or even friendship. A more intersectional feminist lens might ask: what pressures does she face not just as a woman, but as a woman of color, or as a child of immigrants, or as someone juggling multiple cultural expectations? These questions remain untouched.
Another tension lies in the narrative framing of Krish. While the story ultimately centers Florence’s self-discovery, almost all of her growth is sparked by proximity to a man—falling in love, supporting his dreams, and then rebuilding herself after the breakup. It’s romantic, yes, but still subtly reinforces the idea that women evolve through men. What would it look like if Florence had found that paintbrush on her own? Or if the game centered a friendship breakup instead? Emotional transformation doesn’t only come from romantic loss, and feminist game design should make room for that complexity.
But still—when the game lets you hold the mouse a little longer, hesitate before moving forward, it’s asking something bigger: Are you ready to let go? Are you sure? That moment (which isn’t “mechanically difficult” at all) becomes profound because you know what it means emotionally. And that’s exactly what Chess pushes us to notice: feminist games often operate in the realm of feeling, not achievement.
From an MDA framework, Florence aligns mechanics (simple swipes, taps, timed interactions) with dynamics (emotional pacing, escalating conflict, slow recovery) to create aesthetics centered on narrative, expression, and reflection. There’s a sequence near the end where you swipe through Florence’s art show in a third-person vertical scroll, seeing her life reframed through the eyes of others. It’s subtle, but powerful: she’s no longer just living—she’s witnessing her own story, owning it.
That kind of perspective shift, especially from first-person (solitude) to third-person (recognition), mirrors what many of us experience post-breakup, post-burnout, post-survival. It’s not just about getting through something, it’s about starting to understand it.
Critically, Florence also invites reflection on ethics—especially how we treat love stories in games. It avoids the toxic “win the girl / lose the guy” tropes, and doesn’t treat heartbreak as punishment. Instead, it gives grief space without melodrama. It suggests that you can mourn someone without vilifying them. And it proposes, gently, that you can leave—and still be whole.
The lack of branching paths or choice-based outcomes might feel limiting to some players, but I’d argue that’s what makes it feminist. This isn’t a power fantasy. It’s a process fantasy—a fantasy where you’re allowed to grow, one day at a time. And maybe that’s the most radical part: the idea that starting again doesn’t require a reset. Just a paintbrush. Just a breath.
If I were to suggest improvements, they wouldn’t be mechanical. They’d be about narrative breadth. Give Florence more outside her relationship. Let us hear her thoughts, see her friendships, confront her doubts not just as “a woman,” but as a woman with race, class, history. Let her hold more than heartbreak and hope. Let her be messy.
Even so, Florence gives us something rare: a story that begins after the ending, and a game that finds meaning not in triumph, but in tenderness. To play it as a feminist is to value that kind of play—to believe that emotion is design, and that letting go can be an act of power.
