When first asked to try Flowan, an app in its beta form, I was excited to see a brand new concept before it hit the market. Flowan utilizes fictional stories in a mock social media app to create an alternate form of entertainment. When I logged in to the app, I picked one of four fictional profiles to “follow” and then watched their social media, texts with friends and friend’s conversations in an almost stalker-like fashion. This app was an interesting idea, but I had a lot of trouble seeing the relevance and novelty.
The app prompted me to design my own character, which would be cool—except that its graphics were extremely low resolution and the choices were strange and limited. They looked dated, didn’t fit together correctly and loaded poorly. I was disappointed to see that for 2018, their graphics were reminiscent of 2004. The rest of the app is spent lurking in chat rooms and looking at fake posts on walls.
Before trying Flowan, I thought I would have fake interactions with high-profile fictional characters, like being able to chat with Harry Potter or Percy Jackson, people that were in the books I read as a kid, and that everyone knew about. I was disappointed that I was following completely random characters’ lives. I continued to log in throughout the week, but never found what I was looking for. Instead, it seemed to be more like an alternative to reading books, which is really cool in theory, but not what I was expecting.
The idea is surprisingly creative, and I would be interested in trying another iteration of this app once the graphics and app design are updated. If the app looked more current, it would change the overall perception. Strong visuals would help encourage a user to be interested and more engaged, so this would be beneficial.
Overall, I think this app has potential to be a fun source of entertainment, but it just is not there yet. I would definitely be interested in seeing where this app goes, and for sheer potential and creativity I will give it a few points, but I hope to see more improvement in the future.
The Pathfinder gives Flowan a 3/10.
