Spring and Flow is a game which is centered around moving water to have things come to life. Simply by transforming the environment and witnessing the mountain come alive after a long period of it being dormant is quite a sight to behold. The mountain’s springs bring color to dull and grey. The core mechanic is simply just lowering the hexagonal rock-shapes which allow for it have this water flow and allow for fauna to see new life.
When certain blocks get hit with it they pop to life, and they have an accompanying sound with it. Eric Billingsley, the sole developer of the title, told me after the demo that he spent hours of foley work just for this project. His time and dedication to this project really shows because the sound design is extremely thoughtful. The more time I spent with the game, the more I appreciated the ambiance of the game.
The foreground look is extremely simplistic. It consists of hexagons making up the side of a mountain. When you first begin coming down the mountain, you see a vista of clouds. As each puzzle gets solved you begin to slowly move down the mountain. Each background changes to signify that you are moving down. The background which in the beginning is above the clouds and as you make your journey back down to the ground you begin to see a forest, which gives you a sense of progression.Spring & Flow is about finding that peace along that journey. Reaching that zenith, only to come back down from it.
The core mechanic of the game is to adjust the rocks which allows pools of water to flow down the mountain and spring life. When you make a wrong move the pool of water falls off the side of the mountain, and you have to restart. Spring and Flow requires your touch to shape the environment, as you touch the screen the environments responds to those movements. It is quite simple at times, but it requires some thought to how the you shape the environment.
These paths that you are creating sometimes take multiple tries, and it is fun to experiment with possible solutions. There was one puzzle where I was thought what the solution couldn’t be what it actually was, and that was a neat way of turning making you think outside the box. When you are introduced to a new mechanic, it doesn’t walk you through a tutorial in any way. It forces you to introduce yourself with this new mechanic. The levels where it is introduced aren’t difficult because it wants you to understand what this specific hexagon does. It is an extremely smart way of bringing in new challenges without forcing you to go through a tutorial.
Spring and Flow is about making slow steps, and appreciating take every move. Each move is thoughtful, because it will either bring the mountain to life or have it die. As you are climbing down from the zenith, it feels absolutely fantastic to do so. Everything feels intuitive in the game and that makes the game feel all of the more natural.
