thatgamecompany is an independent game company founded in 2006 by two friends from USC, Jenova Chen and Kellee Santiago. All of their games are rather minimalist and visually aesthetic, and the company aims to create games that emotionally provoke and stimulate players.
flOw
flOw is a simple game in which you are an organism swimming around and eating things as you dive deeper, and there are multiple organisms you can turn into. there are no instructions, you’re just dropped into the space and left to figure out how to navigate and progress.
Flower
Flower again focuses on the aesthetics more than anything else, but with a bit more direction. You start off as a single flower petal and control the wind, and the goal is to collect other petals to fly around and “activate” as many flowers as possible. When you’ve completed a section the area blooms, and as you progress through different stages of the game more infrastructure and technology appears in each environment.
Journey
Journey has the most narrative and goal-oriented qualities of the three games, you play as a wanderer in the desert going on some kind of quest. There are no instructions but different creatures help/harm you along the way and much of the game is spent trying to accurately navigate the environment and strategize how to move forward. You can also run into other plays in the game, there’s no communication besides sending a symbol to each other but you can help accomplish tasks together.