Florence is one of our 2018 Apple Design Award winners. These awards celebrate the creative artistry and technical achievement of developers who set the standard for app design and innovation on Apple platforms.
Florence is less a videogame and more a dynamic, interactive graphic novel—one about the highs and lows of falling in love. It’s the story of a headstrong girl, Florence, who dreams of being an artist but spends her days toiling at a boring day job. Sparks fly when she meets Krish, a handsome cello player who aspires to perform on the big stage.
Not surprisingly, developing Florence wasn’t a linear process, according to the game’s creative director, Ken Wong.
“The story of making Florence was one of discovery,” he says. “For each moment in the relationship we wanted to portray, we often had to try many different images and interactions before we found the right combination that would evoke the right feeling.”
Below, Wong reveals the ideas and concepts that didn’t quite make it into the final game. Spoiler alert! You have been warned.
Fragments
“This is an early mock poster for Florence, back when we were calling it ‘Fragments.’ You can see here the first steps toward our final art style.”
Growing
“Here are two iterations of the same idea: Florence growing from a happy child into a worrisome adult. Each image is a jigsaw puzzle that the player needs to put together, and the number of pieces increases, suggesting her life gets more complicated.”
“In testing, we found that players were too focused on the puzzle-solving to care about what was actually in the images. The version of this scene in the game uses a clock instead and is combined with other scenes of Florence’s childhood.”
Clock
“These are captures of an early prototype level where the player turned a clock to watch a year go by in the life of Florence and Krish. We were excited about the story we were telling, but in the end we didn’t feel this was the best way to do it.”
Crush
“This scene was intended to show Florence having a crush on Krish. The player would have to tap on the ‘footsteps’ button to get Florence to approach Krish with a love note. The idea didn’t feel very strong, so we cut it, but this mechanic came back when Florence needs to push Krish into applying for music school.”
Distance
“This was intended to show that Krish and Florence had grown apart by putting together a jigsaw puzzle of a couch that pushed them further and further away from each other. Ultimately this was too similar to our Drifting level, which we felt was a stronger expression of the same idea.”