Canada Plays 2025 – Flow, Based on the Oscar Winning Film

It’s not often that Walt Disney Studios – including Pixar Studios – doesn’t win the Oscar for the best animated feature, but that is exactly what happened at the 2025 Academy Awards. Instead, a unique film about animals escaping rising water won the award, and understandably it has spun off a number of new toys and games. One of those games is, understandably, called Flow and will be launching later this year.

In Flow, players work cooperatively to draw and place tiles on a central grid, attempting to connect the animals in the four corners to the boat icon. If you’ve ever played that plumbing game on the computer way back in the day, where you connect pipes to move the flow of water, then you understand what is happening here. Some tiles provide obstacles that cannot be crossed, so players are working to get as many tiles down that help their cause in a single minute.

When the minute is up, disaster strikes. Dice are rolled and tiles will be removed from the board. Not only are broken links required to be fixed, but players will have to use their next minute to continue trying to connect all the animals to the boat.

The simplicity of how Flow plays is going to be really attractive to board game fans, but the game comes with a bunch of different modules you can use to make it harder. There is a deck of challenge cards that can be used that will change up the way you play – perhaps you cannot talk during the game, or any other number of things. These added challenges will make what is ultimately a simple game, much more difficult and attractive to more experienced board game players. I love when games do this, as it makes games so much more accessible, and available to a wider group of players.

We will have more on Flow when it launches later this year, but it’s a game we suggest checking out when it does!