We love artsy indie games. They make us feel fancy, and more importantly, like we’re entitled to call video games art.

Journey is one such gem. Developed by Thatgamecompany exclusively for the PS3, Journey is the brain child of the same people who brought us Flow and Flower – two good reasons to own Sony’s home console.

In Journey, players take on the role of a hooded figure who must apparently journey through the desert. The game does not  tell you what to do, and there are no maps or objectives, just a large beckoning mountain in the distance.

While traveling, players will encounter other players online, making the same mysterious journey. Players can help each other, but they cannot communicate via voice or text, and there is no indication of other player’s names.

We’ve not yet played the game, but you can expect a review up in the next week or so. In the meantime, reviewers around the world are freaking out about Journey. The game has earned no less than 19 perfect scores, from the likes of Joystiq, TheSixthAxis, The AV Club, Giant Bomb, Guardian, G4 TV and Digital Spy.

Journey

Here is what reviewers have had to say about Journey:

Giant Bomb 5/5

Certainly a game that offers up aesthetic beauty, both in its visuals and score. But where it truly shines is in the experience of playing it. In Journey, the mere acts of jumping, running, and sliding around a painstakingly crafted world are enough to invoke strong emotional responses from the player. Every element, every mechanic, every single little thing works in seemingly effortless concert to deliver a game that is experientially beautiful from surface to core. Read more

Joystiq 5/5

I don’t want to be misconstrued as generic or uninspired when I say that Journey is an awesome game. In the most classical, archaic sense of the word, Journey is a beautiful, evocative and unequivocally transcendental experience. Read more

Gamespot 9/10

By the alchemy of developer thatgamecompany’s skill and vision, it is also unique, exciting, mysterious, and utterly lovely, with mesmerising landscapes and stirring music. It deploys more ‘gamey’ elements than any of the developer’s works before it, and does so successfully, while maintaining the feel of an evocative, interactive art piece. Read more

Journey

Destructoid 9/10

Journey is a defiant bridge between art and game, managing to emotionally connect without being cloying, and succeeding in being mysterious without becoming pretentiously vague and obfuscating. Journey’s interactive, visual, and aural elements work together, rather than fight with each other, in order to provide a flowing, seamless, influential, and utterly exhilarating experience…This is interactive art. This is how it’s done. Read more

Game Informer 9/10

Journey is a visual stunner thanks to some remarkable sand movement technology and excellent animation work, both on the main character and the strange creatures encountered along the way. For a game all about dry, harsh deserts, the way things move in the world make everything feel much more like a vast ocean. The graphical beauty is accompanied by an equally breathtaking musical score, which responds to character actions and changes in location with ease. Read more

Videogamer 9/10

An immaculately constructed, expertly choreographed experience that tells a story in a unique, intelligent way, exploring themes of faith and fate, death and rebirth with a rare delicacy of touch. That it comes at a time where risk is routinely avoided, sent out into a landscape clouded by doubt and dominated by the safe, the tried and tested? Maybe that’s the real wonder. Read more

Eurogamer 9/10

If Journey is about God, then God has played an awful lot of video games. One of the most fascinating things about thatgamecompany’s sand-blown chunk of spiritual eye candy isn’t that it reinvents gaming, or extends the medium’s reach: it’s that it takes old ideas – sometimes very old ideas – and repackages them in clever, stylish, and unexpected ways. Read more

IGN 9/10

Journey celebrates the poignancy of nature, it startles you with the unexpected, and empowers you in an exhilarating, unforgettable conclusion…The hours spent completing Journey will create memories that last for years. Read more