The Flower Collectors
1977 was an exciting and turbulent time in Spain. Their leader General Franco had just died in 1975 after four decades in power and Spain was just beginning to transition into a democracy. Despite this, however, the old guard traditionalists were unwilling to give up their power easily and were prepared to do just about anything to hold on to it. This is the unique setting of Mipumi’s latest game, “The Flower Collectors”.
The twist in this game is that this world is populated entirely by animals in a new and rather odd “animal detective” sub-genre. I’m not quite sure why this sub-genre has taken off all of a sudden but I’m here for it!
In this game you play as Jorge, a retired ex-cop who is in a wheelchair and lives alone in his apartment in Barcelona. There are elections coming up in a few days and the country is on edge as these are the first elections since Franco took power back in the late 1930’s. One night Jorge is out on the balcony when he hears a gunshot. He turns around to see a dead body and someone running down the alley. At that moment there is a knock on the door and that’s when the game really begins…
The setup is certainly intriguing and the developers have certainly done their research on the time period and the setting. Politics played a big part back then and even though the dictatorship was over, there was still a lot of tension in the air. Furthermore violent police raids were still common if you were believed to be on the wrong side of the “family values” according to the far right wing government and Catholic Church. This is demonstrated throughout the game and it’s easy to follow even if you don’t have a lot of knowledge of 1970’s Spain. This conflict is also shown through the characters as Jorge is a conservative older male and the other character he meets is a more liberal young woman who writes for, as Jorge puts it, “one of the few leftie rags in the country”. Despite their differences they agree to team up and investigate the murder to find out exactly what happened.
Since you can’t leave your apartment you need to rely on your new found partner to do the investigating. While you don’t know her name at first and she’s not exactly forthcoming about who she is you still have no choice but to trust her if you want to get to the bottom of this murder since nobody else seems to be taking the slightest interest, including the police who still haven’t removed the body overnight. To do this, you need to head to your balcony and from your vantage point you need to scour the plaza and then through the transmitter you need to tell your partner where to go. For example, if you see two people arguing, you need to tell her to eavesdrop. If there are police patrolling the area, you need to tell her a safe path to avoid them. This could have been frustrating but thankfully the developers have wisely chosen to make this easy to get through. You also need to instruct your partner to talk to other characters who may have seen what happened including a priest, an elderly lady who lives in an apartment across the way and two mechanics who curiously had the lights on at same time as the murder. Early on you also receive a camera which allows you to take pictures of any suspicious activity.
At the end of every chapter you need to gather all the photos you took and all the drawings you made and pin them together on the wall to keep track of what’s going on. While this is certainly on the easy side it does help you keep track of the different suspects and their motives and adds some variety to the gameplay.
What’s most impressive is how well the game works for the most part especially considering how these are indie developers. At times though, your partner asks you to let her know when a certain character is out side even though she can clearly see them and once or twice she does run out in front of the police but they somehow don’t see her. Still though these are very minor issues and the gameplay works remarkably well throughout overall. One thing I would like have liked to see however is for characters to use their animal traits more, such as a dog sniffing out clues but instead the characters are all basically human in animal form which is a bit of a missed opportunity.
The graphics are in 3D which in this case was a necessity considering the way the game plays out and they look very impressive as well. The characters all have proper facial expressions and the plaza looks lively and vibrant. The sound effects also certainly help with birds chirping, rain coming down and people talking and singing in the cabaret next door. That said, the lip syncing isn’t always exact and the characters’ reactions at times look like people from The Sims which can sometimes slightly detract from more intense scenes.
The game is helped by truly superb voice acting. Thankfully there are no forced Spanish accents as the only Spanish we hear are a few words such as “Si”, “Senor” and “Dona”. Instead the characters have American accents which suit the characters well. Jorge has a gruff grizzled voice and the young woman he meets has a more youthful energetic voice. The game also has a nice jazz soundtrack in the background which is never intrusive and pleasant to listen to.
If there are any drawbacks then it would be the lack of a manual save system. The game is composed of ten chapters which save automatically at the end of each chapter. While each chapter is only 20 - 30 minutes long it isn’t a huge issue but I believe the game would be enhanced greatly if a manual save was was added to the game to allow the player to save at any time. This would help ensure that the player would not need to replay large sections of the game if they had to quit playing in the middle of the chapter.
At 3 hours long the game isn’t the longest but the length felt just right. The story kept me gripped throughout, with some beautiful graphics, fantastic voice acting and some memorable characters as well as a unique setting and time period this is a game I can highly recommend if you want to get your teeth into a good old murder mystery with a political twist. Here’s hoping we’ll see more from this world in future!
Pros
Unique vibrant setting and time period
Gripping story
Wonderful voice acting
Beautiful graphics
Memorable characters
Pleasant jazz soundtrack
Cons
No Manual save system
Lip syncing not always exact
Not a hugely challenging game.
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