Paper Flowers is a simple game that helps you relax, featuring the story of a paper flower arbor, a small street, and the neighbors, in Hanoi during the 1990s.

The simple storyline tells about your grandmother leaving you the house number 36 on Hang Tem Street, built in 1929, along with a paper flower arbor that has covered the front façade. The Lunar New Year is approaching. You take care of the plants, help the neighbors with a few small tasks, take photos to stick in your grandmother's notebook, and then celebrate the New Year's Eve in the old street.

Demo version: Spring Chapter (three days of Tet: 28th Tet, New Year's Eve, and First Day of Tet, about 5-10 minutes)

• Take care of and shape the paper flower arbor: water the roots, shake branches for flowers to fall, collect petals. Prune, bend branches, nail branches to the wall, allow new buds to grow, as in bonsai; or choose from 38 available shapes. The shape of the plant will be saved, and you can keep three shapes to switch between.
• Neighbors, each with a story: Sister Hang sells iced tea at the door, Miss Mai rides a bike selling flowers, Mr. Khai from the stamp shop. Each task you help with leaves a memory of your grandmother and your memories on the street. Anyone who has something to say has a soft glow beneath their feet.
• Create pressed flower cards from the petals collected, sending them to Hoi An.
• Film camera: zoom, focus, capture moments for your grandmother's notebook.
• The street lives by the hour: shops open and close, drizzle, trams clattering, cycle rickshaws, bicycles, street vendors, New Year's Eve with fireworks.
• Record player with lo-fi music composed specifically for the game. After completing the Spring chapter, you unlock the record "Dusty Rain in January".
• Admire the street: freely choose the season, choose the time, watch the street through all four seasons, from the afternoon autumn sun filtering through the flower canopy to the full moon of August above the rooftops. You can still water the plants and shape them here.
• Change drawing style: watercolor, hand-drawn with ink lines, or pixel; add cinematic colors or vintage film colors if desired.

Everything is drawn in watercolor and ink lines, in the spirit of propaganda posters, old postage stamps, and textbooks.

Play directly in your browser, or download the installation version for Mac, Windows, Linux, and Android.

Controls: mouse or touch. Click on people and objects to see, drag branches to shake, scroll to zoom. Shortcuts: S for notebook, C for camera, X to shape the tree, H to sit on the porch, Z to sleep, Esc to pause. The pause menu is a page from your grandmother's notebook: music and street sounds volume, record player, drawing style and film color, language, reduce motion, and in the installation version, you can change the game icon. From the menu, you can also jump straight to Admiring the street and return to the Spring chapter.

Note: Hang Tem Street is a fictional street, inspired by the old streets of Hanoi. The real Hanoi tram stopped running around 1990-1991; in the game, the tram still runs as an intentional exception. The game auto-saves (in the browser or on your device with the installation version).

This is the first trial version. The three chapters Summer, Autumn, and Winter will be included in the full version. Any feedback from you, especially from those who remember Hanoi back then, is greatly appreciated. Please leave a comment below.