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At one point shortly after finishing Flower, the developers at indie studio Thatgamecompany rounded up members of the God of War team and other staff in Sony’s Santa Monica office, sat them down “in random rooms and closets in the building,” according to producer Robin Hunicke, and presented them with a 2D Flash prototype running on a PC.
It looked more like a 2600 game than anything the studio was known for, with the main character appearing as a circle with a line sticking out — “like a little tank,” says Hunicke — next to flat blocks in a top-down view. Focus testers moved from point A to point B, with mechanics designed to reward them for interacting with one another — when one left a path on the ground, the other could run along it for a speed boost; if the two stuck close together, the camera zoomed out to let them see farther into the distance.
