A story about a man named Row · 01 of 06

Row’s Summer Drifting

罗的夏日漂流

A man killed in the war drifts down a river, holding on to a dead branch, and at last comes home.

Role
Writer · game designer
Tools
Unreal Engine 5 (game prototype)
Game prototype
Flow
Tags
War · drifting · twist narrative · walking sim · collecting · survival
Emotional core
I keep losing things, and I keep getting them back
Status
Full story coming soon

Story

Down the river, back to that tree

I drifted and drifted, down the river, all the way back to that tree…

Elevator pitch

A drift through one turn of the four seasons, about peace and freedom, love and grief, reunion and farewell.

The story

In the war, Row is hit by a shell. When he wakes, he is holding on to a piece of driftwood, floating in water that goes on forever.

The player signals passing boats, strangers and even birds for help, scavenges for food, and fights to stay afloat.

Through summer, autumn and winter, the soldier holds on. Then, in spring, the river carries him home. He sees his family at last, and learns the truth: he has been dead the whole time.

Small interactions along the way plant clues, so the final reveal feels earned rather than imposed.

What Row wants

PhysicallySurvive in the water.
EmotionallyMake it through the war, go home, and see his mother.

Who Row is

Row is an ordinary infantryman, wounded by a shell during the war. He has no defined face; a single recurring mark, such as his haircut, identifies him across the series. His character card is a white paper cutout in the shape of a gravestone, listing his date of birth and a few words that summarize his life.

He is not a hero, but one of countless ordinary soldiers. That ordinariness is the point: his stubborn drift home could belong to anyone.

Creative intent

The one life we get

Everyone is drifting, in one way or another.

Where it came from

The idea came on a walk between classes, shortly after I read the news about new tariffs. Surrounded by strangers and uncertain about the future, I had a distinct sense of drifting.

From that moment came a single image: a grown man, thin as a branch, clinging to a piece of driftwood at sea. The project grew from that image.

What I want to say

The project returns to themes that run through my work: death, separation and war.

Everyone is drifting in some way, until they return to the end of life, which is also where it began. Only there does the reason for the journey become clear: the reason one had to keep going, in the one life we get.

What I believe a game should be

About the real worldGames should speak to real problems, not just entertain. They can hold the struggles and feelings people can’t put into words.
Non-competitiveEach project starts from a social problem or a specific hardship, and aims to offer comfort and support and to draw attention to it. The player isn’t fighting anyone.
No failureThe game is designed as an experience, not a test. If Row goes under, play continues, but sound, color and interaction fade until his oxygen returns. In story terms, he is already dead, so the game cannot end in failure.
Prose gamesLiterature has prose and poetry, and film has poetic cinema. Games should have prose games too: games with no challenge to beat, only something to live through.

Why it has to be a drift

Why set the game on water rather than on land?

A life’s journeyA drift reads naturally as a life’s journey. A journey moves from life toward death; a drift can run the other way, from death back to life. Death is the starting point, and home is the destination.
Room for the strangeOn the water, it is easy to let impossible, dreamlike things float by. The logic of land is solid, and fantasy is harder to slip in.
A stronger endingRow fights all the way home, only to learn on arrival that he is dead. A mother seeing her son’s body carries far more weight than news delivered by a comrade.

References

1917
Sam Mendes, 2019		The visual seed. A soldier clings to a log in a river covered with cherry petals: beautiful scenery against brutal survival.
Pause
Michal Shoshan, 2020		Visual reference and research. A generative game inspired by Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning: you wander out of an empty void, and the world fills in around you.
Flower
thatgamecompany, 2009		The model for level four: flowers bloom wherever Row’s driftwood passes.
Sky and Monument ValleyCharacters without faces: silhouette, restraint, leaving things out.
Cat MuseumHow the truth is revealed at the end.
Dani Diez, En IwamuraVisual development references for Row’s character design.
Material referencesA painting of river stones and a carved coastal landscape, collected as studies for water and texture.

Structure design

Four seasons, four ways to survive

The problem

Early drafts were rebuilt several times because the drift kept settling into a single rhythm. The challenge was to add depth and escalation.

The solution: give each season a different mode of survival.

SeasonMechanicEmotionWay of surviving
1SummerSurvive and exploreLoneliness, testing the waterTechnical survival: he doesn’t understand what happened; he grabs the driftwood and keeps his balance.
2AutumnAsk others for helpLetting go, courageSurvival in the real world: calling for help, and planting the truth of his death.
3WinterSurvive and save himselfSelf-redemption, couragePsychological survival: in despair, he turns to himself. Near-death visions arrive as childhood doodles and diary pages.
4SpringWander and feelRecognition, perceptionThe easiest level: enjoy the view and collect good memories. Then the twist: the truth of his death.

Level by level

Opening
1917, 5:45 a.m.		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. Title: Flow. Fast pace into slow.
Level 1 · Summer
First person · the river widens		Row wakes up caught in a tree, puzzled that such a huge tree stands in endless water. The player clicks, the tree 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, and sometimes even a crocodile’s mouth. Meanwhile, keep catching the belongings that wash out of his clothes, to hold on to his confidence. Goal: introduce the world, learn the controls, and show how hard it is to survive.
Level 2 · Autumn
First person to third · the river opens wide		Leaves are scattered over open water. A crow tilts its head and stares at him. Three boats come close, one after another, seen as shadows. To get their attention, the player must throw away the things that keep him going: his sketchbook, his father’s pocket watch, his mother’s photo. All three boats see that he is dead, and none of them saves him. His confidence hits bottom, and the crow lands beside him.
Level 3 · Winter
Third person to first · the river narrows		Row keeps hitting ice floes. The crow watches, then flies away. He can no longer move at all, and the inner notebook unlocks. The player steers him around the ice to keep him alive, but the odds are low, and collects the memories that keep slipping out of him, putting them back into his body (losing memory stands for death and giving up). Three objects open three memories: his mother; the daughter he never met; and what happened after he died. In them, we find Row’s three true wishes. With all three, he slowly starts to move again, drifts past the last floe, and goes on.
Level 4 · Spring
First person · a narrow river, near the shore		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.
Ending · the truth
First person to third · callback		Row drifts to a big tree and lies on the bank. 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. The end.

The river as the map

The map is built from changes in the river. The waterway goes from narrow to wider in summer, wider to wide open in autumn, open back to narrower in winter, and narrow, reaching the shore, in spring. The river’s speed and the size of its waves set the pace.

Core gameplay

Drift (mouse) and pick up (on contact). The movement is closer to climbing than swimming: the player appears to collect debris, but is actually using it to pull forward, assembling an ark from whatever floats by.

The player wakes surrounded by water. With no input, Row slowly sinks and the screen turns gray; a click brings him back up and restores color. The current carries him faster and faster. Grabbing wreckage and wood steadies his body until he can ride the current. Once he is stable and has gathered enough, time slows and the next level begins.

Systems

NeedIn real lifeIn the game
OxygenKeep your body above waterAlternate left and right mouse clicks to stay afloat. Sinking drains sound, color and interaction until oxygen comes back.
Fresh waterRainRefills on its own; no action needed.
FoodCatch fish, scavenge suppliesSteer with the mouse; press space to pick up.
ConfidenceThe will to liveBelongings keep washing out of his clothes; each one lost lowers his confidence. Low confidence means more frantic input: one kick might keep him up for 10 seconds, but with too little confidence the cooldown grows, or the kick sometimes fails. Looking at his belongings raises it again.
BelongingWhat it holds
Family photoFamily
Letter from his fiancéeLove
Pocket watchFriendship
Origami birdHis dream: a farm, and becoming a bird keeper

Calling for help

Row splashes and throws away pieces of his resolve, his belongings or what he picked up along the way, toward passing boats and people. Every attempt fails in some way, because he is already dead.

Outcome 1Some calls work: he gets food and a life ring.
Outcome 2Some reveal, through dialogue, that they can’t take one more person.
Outcome 3Some are afraid: they are civilians on the enemy side, and fear what the authorities will do if they save him.
Outcome 4He gets on a boat and is pushed back off, because they realize he is dead.

Dialogue is deliberately mismatched: Row speaks as a man who believes he is alive, while others respond to a dead man. He signals for rescue and is handed a bouquet of flowers.

Controls

WASDLook up, down, left and right.
Mouse forward and backMove.
Mouse left and rightKeep your balance.
ClickKick back up to the surface.
Click and dragCollect.
CameraLooking up from the water; you can turn left and right. In a storm, the view flips.
ScreenNo UI at all.

Three narrative lines

Main line · the driftSurvive and get home, in the present. Carried by gameplay and space.
Side line · the fantasyRow to his daughter: childhood memories and imagined scenes, filling in who Row is. “The stars swayed right above my face. The world really is endless.” When the fragment ends, a rough sketch appears; click it, a seagull flies off, and we cut back to the drift.
Side line · years laterHis daughter’s point of view, decades on: a film crew digging trenches uncovers a body no one can identify, with a red star medal beside it. A note drifts down from the sky: “If I make it home, when the war is over, I want to—” Row has found one of his true wishes. Confidence +1. (Whether to keep this line is still open.)

The hint that runs through everything

Against the currentWhat if Row is always moving against the current, as a sign of how badly he wants to get home? Barely noticeable at first, then more and more obvious as things get harder. A visual impossibility that feels slightly wrong, counterintuitive, uncomfortable. If the setup is weak, the reveal will feel like a trick rather than a payoff.
The crowFrom the first level, a crow keeps taking things from him: a diamond that is really his eye, a pearl necklace that is really his collarbone. Row is puzzled, since he never owned either. To him the crow is white; in truth it is black, the same object beautified by his perception. The motif carries the emotional core: I keep losing things, and I keep getting them back.
The missing legHe can never quite keep his balance. The ending explains why.
Another twistA dog tag with a name on it goes home in his place, and turns out to be a friend’s: the comrade who helped you get home.

Sound

Every sound has its opposite, and the game moves between them.

Fierce battleEasy jazz
FireworksGunfire
Children playingPeople crying out
Running waterA ticking clock
BreathingWind under a bird’s wings

How it evolved

First pitchA spring opening where you can tap fish, birds and leaves, then war breaks into the beautiful scenery. Balance, confidence, calling for help, and the reveal at home.
Four-season draftThe rhythm problem solved with four ways of surviving; storyboards for every level; the crow and the inner notebook; three narrative lines.
Latest versionLevels are renamed Fall and Drift, The Ark, The Long Season and Homecoming (spring 1918). Clear win conditions: catch six objects to build an ark; call for help three times; swap ice floes and steer by the angle of impact, like billiards, to reach a mirage in the distance; reach the big tree. Style: cel-shaded 3D.
FeedbackThe draft was overwritten and left the player too little agency. The strongest force in the game is the water, so the player’s actions should grow out of how it pushes them.

Art and production choices

2D or 3D2D is easier to build and allows richer mechanics. Realistic 3D is more immersive, but water and a first-person camera are the hard parts. 2D would be a compromise.
Point of viewFirst person or third? The answer became a shift between the man and the crow.
StorytellingCutscenes or stop-motion; for the reveal, a 20 to 30 second montage of fragments and text.
Without waterCould it happen somewhere else? A letter trying to get home, blown along through sky and over land, or carried by a pigeon you control.
GuidanceOpen water needs clear direction cues. Calling for help could be reduced to a single key to keep the scope manageable.

Open questions

NumbersMap every value and interaction in one table: each trigger, the value it changes, and what the player sees. This includes river speed, whether a grab succeeds, how long Row stays afloat, and the total number of clues.
InteractionAre objects pulled toward Row, or does he move to them? Can he swim or reach out? Showing his hands, tied to the mechanics, would mark what is within reach.
The boatsHow do the three boats differ? Two enemy sides, big ships and small boats, fishermen and soldiers?
Level 4As Row senses life returning, should a value rise? One option is to let it fall instead, setting what he does against what the player sees.
ToneHow can a beautiful summer feel threatening? Some clues should be explicit and others hidden; death should read as beautiful and uncanny.

Read

Coming soon

The full story is being rewritten and will be published here soon.

Reference: Michal Shoshan, Pause ↗

← More stories about Row

The game

Flow, in development

This story is being developed into a narrative game, Flow: 3D, built in Unreal Engine 5 with a toon-shaded look, as a solo project.

Flow
AreaStatus
Concept and narrative structureComplete: four seasons, four levels, three narrative lines, the recurring hint
Level designComplete: each level’s goal, controls, win condition and storyboard sketches
Look developmentIn progress: early Unreal Engine 5 scenes and silhouette style tests
ScriptIn progress: the full script, season by season
Game design documentNext: flow, assets, interactions and the value table
Level 1 prototypeNext: drifting, picking up, the raft and the confidence meter

See the game page →