Flowers and Favours Review (PC)

The dingle of a shop bell; a beaming ray of light; and a freshly snipped bouquet of white roses ready for the celebratory shift in seasons—three elegant ingredients taken from of a bubbling pot of floral gold that, at least in the case of Flowers and Favours, gracefully provides a great deal more than mere fodder for your mood swings.

In this cozy shopkeeping simulation game, you have more than a colorful bouquet; you have a vessel for enhancing cognitive stimulation and an opportunity as a fledgling florist to staple your own ribbons to a plethora of possible combinations of petals and stems, colors and flowers. Moreover, you have friends—wholesome folk who each have their own unique personalities and preferences—to help elevate your floral creations to exceed your wildest desires. And then there are other things—small but meaningful upgrades, seasonal improvements, and customizable features, which also allow you the chance to make an otherwise ordinary garden bloom.

Flowers and Favours takes a leaf (or a petal) out of the same book that we’ve no doubt read countless times before, with its general premise emphasizing flamboyant design and wholesome storytelling over strenuous gameplay and painfully complex lore. To that end, the game is something of a love letter to cozy concepts and fruitful ideas—a passage that we know full well has a certain “feel good” vibrancy to it. It doesn’t go much further than that, but to be honest, it doesn’t need to embody anything more than a simple, to-the-point floral arrangement.

If you’re looking to get your hands around the stems of a new bouquet of simulation goodness, then be sure to stick with us a while longer as we trim the edges of MISK Games’ latest entree to the colorful genre.

In Bloom

Flowers and Favours invites you to embark on your own fruitful journey across a sketchbook world of eccentric characters and enchanting bouquet designs—a place in which you, the proud owner of a florists, can befriend the local townsfolk and use your wealth of knowledge to create and distribute spectacular floral arrangements and personalized art in exchange for invaluable connections and boutique collections. Much like your traditional shopkeeping sim, in the case that, as a viable owner of a business, your sole purpose is to provide a service to customers and, with the power of reputation and coins, build upon the foundations to create a sustainable ecosystem. The only difference here, of course, is the product.

The game itself is as simple as it is heartwarming, in the sense that it doesn’t require you to think outside the box, so to speak, but to grant you creative freedom to build your own bouquets and embellish them in any way you see fit. There are requests that you are tasked with fulfilling, for sure, but this isn’t the sort of business simulator that makes a habit of slapping you on the wrist for miscalculations or nonsensical errors. It is, if anything, a straightforward game that urges you to unleash your inner creative and paint wherever the brush lands, so to speak. With no time constraints to tackle or high expectations to overcome, Flowers and Favours dials things back just a notch and hands you the ball to do with as you please. And I love that. No, I adore that.

A Bouquet of Color

Over the course of a relatively short adventure in the whimsical world of Flowers and Favours, you have a number of requests to fulfill, with each one having its own criteria and citizen preferences. With each task that you onboard, a character—a villager who has a unique ability and sense of purpose—will eventually become acquainted with your business and the items that you have for sale. With that, your idea is as clear as day: learn how their minds tick, and make floral arrangements and bouquets that resemble their personalities. The more you sell, the greater the rewards you receive, with coins and hearts serving as the in-game revenue stream that drives your business.

For a bite-sized indie that doesn’t stretch much beyond the basic infrastructure of a business sim, there’s a surprisingly in-depth creation suite for you to explore here, with the in-house bouquet system providing a multitude of blooms, colors, and all sorts of accessories to choose from. And without sounding overly optimistic, I’d say that there’s plenty here to keep flower enthusiasts and fledgling green thumbs busy for at least an hour or two. Granted, there isn’t much for you to pursue after all of the arrangements have been finalized, but there’s more than enough to keep you immersed, if only for the short duration of its existence. Like a bouquet of flowers, then.

Verdict

Flowers and Favours cuts, arranges, and adds a floral twist to a beautiful cartoon-like world that’s as equally vibrant as it is brimming with eccentric colors and cozy touches that make you feel a part of the furniture for the short while it keeps you entwined. Much like your traditional shopkeeping simulator, it touts a good selection of tools to help unlock your inner creative, with a plethora of features, flowers, and accessories to keep you busy over a short but incredibly delightful campaign that’s teeming with charming characters and stories.

To cut a long story short, if you, too, share a soft spot for design-centric indies that foster minor business simulation aspects that don’t require much more than a frequent flick of the wrist à la Tiny Bookshop, then it’s highly likely that you’ll enjoy arranging your own colorful tributes in Flowers and Favours. And the best part is, it isn’t the least bit taxing on the brain, so you needn’t fret about the possibility of onboarding anything particularly overwhelming or mechanically challenging en route to its blooming conclusion. If that sounds like your perfect cup of tea on a warm summer’s morning, then you should definitely try your hand at Flowers and Favours the next time you’re scrubbing the garden for a new bouquet.