Sauce Saturday: FlOw

FlOw is a video game where you play as basically a microscopic water creature. Info about the game and it’s history here. It is a game, an art piece, and an experience.

You move through your two dimensional playing area as a microscopic water creature. You eat and defend yourself and grow and evolve. The mechanic that really changed the way I relate to my thinking though, was the change in dimension. The level up. There is a spot in each level where if you touch it you will jump dimensions in scope and scale. (You will hang out with bigger or smaller creatures.) The game will still show the other levels very subtly in the fore and background.

Years after playing this game I found myself thinking about how our lives have different dimensions, and the concerns and details of each don’t necessarily overlap, so you aren’t always aware of how each effects the life as a whole. Visualizing changing the scope and scale of my observance, like the mechanic of this game really helped me find my own tools for checking in with my big picture.

I started realizing I concern myself a lot with things that just don’t matter on other scales, both too large and too small. For example, the checker at the grocery store doesn’t need to know anything about my thought experiments on the concept of self, nor my opinions the differences in the seasons of The Witcher. In the now of buying my groceries we gotta keep it simple and in the most common language. Though they may also be Witcher fans.

I just use small talk as a neutral example. I use this concept of adjusting scope and scale when I am caught in a feeling also. If I feel stuck, I try to adjust the scope and scale of my thinking. How long are the effects of whatever is bothering me going to last? Which parts of my life are affected? I can make choices without putting a hierarchy on facts over feelings. I find ways to deal with facts including my feelings. I can look out for myself and my goals, by adjusting my scope and scale.