Let’s just get this out of the way: Florence is one of the most beautiful, unforgettable games I have ever played.

Australian studio Mountains’ debut game, out now on iOS, is a brisk experience, but a powerful and close-to-perfect one. As its credits slowly unfurled after 40 minutes of emotional ups and downs, I blinked away tears. Florence is powerful and rare in that way.

Florence Yeoh is 25 at the start of the story. She’s stuck in an uninspiring routine, like most 20-somethings: She snoozes her alarm until the last possible moment, scrolls and taps her way through social media while on the bus to work, mindlessly balances her company’s books, and argues with her overly involved mother during her free time.

Things change when Florence meets Krish, a cellist she hears playing in the park. First she falls for his music; then she falls for him. A relationship develops over the course of several chapters, each one collected as part of the game’s multi-act structure. Krish and Florence get to know each other, fall in love, move in and ... really get to know each other, then fall out of love and drift apart, emotionally and physically.

I hope you haven’t experienced this kind of heartbreak for yourself, but I know that many of us have. The team at Mountains told me last fall to expect Florence to be more like 500 Days of Summer, not When Harry Met Sally. By this, designer Ken Wong (best known for Monument Valley) meant that the game doesn’t end in a big hug and a make-out sesh. In fact, Florence isn’t really about a relationship at all. It’s more of a window into a moment in a person’s life — an important and life-changing one, yet also a fleeting one.

Perhaps this doesn’t sound particularly groundbreaking, on a story level. But while video games continue to explore a wider variety of emotional themes and experiences, like love and death and the minutiae of daily life, something as cohesive and cinematic as Florence still feels unique. A lot of that is due to how tight the scripting is, especially considering that the game features no dialogue, not even in text bubbles or narration. But what sets Florence apart most isn’t just the beautiful ebb and flow of its story; it’s that it’s a fantastically enjoyable game to play, too.

Developers of emotionally complex, story-based games can tend to prioritize telling those stories, sometimes at the expense of gameplay. Mountains has figured out how to create a cohesive package, however, with each part of Florence and Krish’s relationship conveyed through touch-based minigames.

A scene set at Florence’s computer actually lets us do her accounting, selecting pairs of numbers to make sure everything balances out. Tapping on music notes guides Florence to Krish in the scene where they first meet; with each tap, the music gets louder, until the pair are facing each other. Conversations between the two work as a series of jigsaw puzzles. The more in love they are, the fewer pieces there are to put together.

As the relationship unravels, some minigames return. The puzzles are used in several scenes, as is a game that involves removing and replacing things in Florence’s apartment to make room for Krish. That minigame comes back later, with a heartbreaking twist.

It’s a reinforcement of the game’s emotional core, introducing complexity not just in the story, but also in the actual gameplay. Paired with the astounding visuals — a limited color palette that pops in the most subtle and perfect places; stark but emotive facial expressions; changes in style to represent unstable or evolving feelings — these level-like scenes are like wonderful treasure boxes to dig into.

Florence’s story may just capture a singular monumental moment in what I hope is her long, love-filled life. But the intimate and ever-changing segments that create this moment are what elevate Florence from a relatable slice-of-life story into a beautiful piece of interactive art.