A black screen, which is black river water, swept now and then by searchlights. Gunfire continues. Suddenly the screen shakes hard, as if something was thrown into the water. Every sound goes quiet; the river grows louder. Fish lift their heads. In the flickering light, the black silhouette of a man holding driftwood floats past. The title appears: Flow.

Row wakes up caught in a tree, puzzled that such a huge tree stands in endless water. A few lines of dialogue set up where he is. The player clicks, the branch snaps, and the drift begins: slow pace into fast.

• Keep your balance and dodge rocks.
• Try to grab three things floating by: a dead body, or a strange, dreamlike animal; a bombed-out window; sometimes even a crocodile’s mouth.
• Catch the belongings that wash out of his clothes, to hold on to his confidence. Different objects are worth different amounts, and connect to the memories of Level 3.

Leaves are scattered over open water. A crow tilts its head and stares at him. Three boats come close, one after another, seen first as shadows. To get their attention, the player must throw away the things that keep Row going: his sketchbook, his father’s pocket watch, his mother’s photo.

• Every boat sees that he is dead. None of them saves him.
• The three boats can differ: enemy and ally, a big ship and a small boat, fishermen and soldiers.
• Confidence hits bottom. The crow lands beside him, and the view shifts to the crow’s.

Row keeps hitting ice floes. The crow watches, then flies away. He can no longer move at all, and the inner notebook unlocks: the diary he was made to keep as a child, now written only in his head.

“I don’t know when it started, but my time seems to have stopped. I lost the ability to speak, first in my body, then in my mind. So I began forcing myself to keep a diary in my head. Mom, you know, the kind you made me write when I was little. A person has to find some way to make sure he’s still alive, right?”

• Steer around the ice to stay alive. The odds are low, and the survival play is kept gentle.
• Collect the memories that keep slipping out of him and put them back in his body. Losing memory stands for death and giving up.
• Three objects open three memories: his mother; the daughter he never met; what happened after he died. In them, Row’s three true wishes.
• Swap floes and steer by the angle of each bump, like billiards, against a current that has turned around.

The driftwood in Row’s hands sprouts new leaves. Wherever it passes, flowers bloom, and birds fly over in flocks. The player only steers, lighting up flowers in the water, until he reaches the big tree he grew up under. Things from his childhood drift past; bumping into them plays their sounds.

• Life returns, so shouldn’t a value rise? The idea under test: the number that should climb keeps falling. What Row does and what we see, turned against each other.

Row lies on the bank under the big tree. Toys are tossed into the water one by one and float beside him; click them and you hear children playing on the shore. They are the same toys Row had as a child. “Are these mine?”

A woman’s silhouette appears in the water, wearing the necklace his diary mentions again and again: his mother’s. He can’t speak or hear anymore, but in his inner diary he writes down his joy: I’m home.

A crow pecks at his face and takes his eye. The view switches, and the player now flies as the crow. Suddenly the world has sound. The woman is sobbing over a body on the bank. Row is missing a leg, which is why he could never keep his balance. People murmur: “Poor Row. Looks like a shell threw him in the river, and he floated all the way back.” As the crying goes on, the river turns from white to black. The player flies away.