Flutter is a game where you walk in a line, from left to right, so I suppose it doesn't fit neatly into the adventure game label I've laid on it. There are no puzzles, and it lasts 5-10 minutes, but you get a full blast of a dreamy sci-fi story for that brief duration.
Inspired by the band Lightbath, who sound pleasant enough from the track of theirs I've heard in the game, Flutter is set in a world where all the birds have disappeared. I think. (It's a bit vague.) To say any more would pretty much tell you everything, so if you like scrumptious pixel art and washy indie music, you should download it to experience it for yourself.
If Flutter was a short story, it would be a couple of pages long at most, but there is of course a place for such micro-stories. Just as there's a place for brief games like this one, that serve up a slice of mood, of atmosphere and an unfamiliar world.
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Tom loves exploring in games, whether it’s going the wrong way in a platformer or burgling an apartment in Deus Ex. His favourite game worlds—Stalker, Dark Souls, Thief—have an atmosphere you could wallop with a blackjack. He enjoys horror, adventure, puzzle games and RPGs, and played the Japanese version of Final Fantasy VIII with a translated script he printed off from the internet. Tom has been writing about free games for PC Gamer since 2012. If he were packing for a desert island, he’d take his giant Columbo boxset and a laptop stuffed with PuzzleScript games.