Florence is a a small adventure game made by the first time game developer miceylulu. This game can be beaten in an hour, so if anyone wants a short play experience, this game is ideal. The game is a tale of a talent show where everyone has problems and you must fix them. So let's begin.

Gameplay: To clarify the game's genre, Florence is not a visual novel; It is an adventure game. Visual novels spend the majority of its time delivering text, while offering the player occasional choices to change the story. This game does not offer story changing events. It is an adventure game because you find players and objects to interact with, and advance from one story plot to the next. The game struggles with the adventure aspect too. In the game the main character, Florence must help the people involved in tonight's talent show before it begins. All of the people in the game list their problems regarding talent show preparations, and you must solve them. Simple enough. The game's numerous technical problems start after this point as well.

When you set off in solving everyone's problems, there are technical problems throughout the game. Here is the first one: The game starts with everyone having a problem. Two girls have an off-key piano, two guys need colored shirts, and a girl needs rope for the stage curtains. At this point, you are free to explore almost all of the game's locations. You will interact with everything but NOTHING will advance until you go to a gap in the right side of the stage (indicating stage left) to discover that the door is locked and you must talk to the boy that is right off stage to inquire about the key. The key is located inside the piano. You the player, will not be able to see the key until: 1.You talk to the girls about their piano problem(Sounds reasonable, but you can't check yet.) 2.You discover that the door is locked (provided that you realize that the room exists.) 3.Talk to the off-stage boy about the key (With no indicator that he is responsible for the key) 4.Go around the piano to its back by exploiting a graphical inconsistency. (see picture below) You can't go around the piano from its back, but you must go down by the railing which is supposed to make the stage look elevated from the carpet floor, but now it's not.


So is the stage is above and below the floor at the same time?


This is not the only time where certain steps must be triggered in deliberate order happens. I had to check the walkthough 4 times for 4 wrong reasons:
1.(Reason shown above)

2.Looking for a yellow dye bottle in a plant, which originally could not be interacted. If I wasn't told about the dye's location, interacting with every object in the game would have been my strategy.

3. Realizing that the green dye simply won't be found. I imagine that the blue and yellow dye could be mixed, but YOU don't do it, the chemistry teacher, who tasked you with looking for the dyes, must do it for you. (Such a wasted opportunity for the players to do it themselves.)

4. Figuring out that I need to open Ted's journal, and how I can be "allowed" to open it.

I found some weird glitches when going through the game. The colored dyes don't appear on the science room table until I talk to the boys who need shirts. I can't even "find" the stolen dyes until I talk to the science teacher. When I do deliver the colored shirts to the men, one of them still thinks they are still missing.

And when the show was about to begin, I was heading back to my room to grab my flute, but my own room is locked. (Where is my room key? Did I leave it inside the piano?) When I do arrive to the prepared stage with the audience in their seats, I go to stage left, return from stage left, and suddenly, the stage participants are preparing their instruments and the audience is gone. I just have to go out of the theater room and re-enter the room to fix the glitch. (I never saw the audience come back in.)

Story: Florence is a flutist in her boarding school and will perform for tonight's talent show, but vital equipment for the show is missing. Solve everyone's problems and the show can start. The pacing is rushed and plot elements just exist to reoccur rather quickly. Florence mentions that her father never comes to her shows. Will that be relevant to the story? It's obvious that Ted likes Florence. Will the romance happen?

Characters: Florence is a young girl who will play the flute for this night's talent show. She is just the all-around nice girl. Ted is a friend of Florence and is the obvious nervous love interest. The rest of the characters are just people with problems for you to fix. The rest of the characters just mention that there is a talent show going on and something is wrong. Lucille is supposed to be Florence's rival but there is no competitive nature about her, nor is there any character development until the game ends with her rushed one dialogue sequence. Annie is not developed at all and she is not important. she is mean and that's that.

There is a forced romance between Florence and Ted. In the beginning in the game, Ted nervously drops hints that she likes Florence. Florence shows no romantic feelings until she discovers that Ted likes her, something bad might happen to him (And she discovers it in a rushed and unnatural way) and he surprised her with a nice gesture (..and Ted's gesture was delivered to Florence in such a short time, even for a nervous boy). And in their next meeting, they embrace each other. Florence's only thought during their meeting must have been, "I guess I'm supposed to like him now."

Graphics and Music: The graphics used were mainly default resources from the VX Ace maker. There are plenty of graphical glitches in the game. Almost all of the door paths can't be re-entered, until you make a step forward. You can climb on drawers in a classroom and a dorm room. When I want to walk above a chair, I can't do it. I thought there was an RPG Maker limitation, but it turns out I CAN walk over some chairs. When I go into Ted's room and immediately go south I can travel around the blackness of the map AND the walls. The music used is very elegant and very rudimentary, creating the proper feel of a school that appreciates the classical arts. The maps help the game's elegant feel as well, but the excessive glitches are not helpful.

Closing: Florence is a short and a fairly mediocre game. In its 1 hour gameplay it couldn't do everything it could have done. No characters were developed, there are plenty of little glitches (Which can easily be fixed), and story and gameplay are very choppy and flawed. Florence is advertized to have an emphasis on exploration, but it actually means you will try to interact with everything many times, and in a ritualistic fashion with the help of the gamepage walkthrough.


Thank you. Thank you. Yes, throw me my...ONIONS?!..Really, audience?

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Reviewer Comment: I apologize to miceylulu to give such a low score of a 2 to a game that was mildly enjoyable. If she fixes the glitches, and adds the proper visual and textual cues for game progression, I will edit my review, omit the glitch segments, and change the review score to a 3.