Botanicula

Well, all those I know who played it loved it, the music is wonderful, and the characters no matter how bizare are endearing.

Man, what trip! Lil' seed buddies gotta save their gorgeously rendered tree-verse from life-sucking parasites. Not very hard as far as adventures go, but memorable and damned hypnotic! It's unexpectedly long too, which is a fine thing. I can imagine somebody not liking supernatural spaltter-horror or puerile sex gags or classic-styled sci-fi or pixel art (even though I adore all those things), but I am unable to conceive of a sentient human being not loving this awesome little dream salad. Toke up on Botanicula if you are 75 and alone, get goofy on it with the family if you've made brats with somebody.

Before two weeks ago, I never heard of Botanicula. Bought it as a promo and didn't know what to expect. It's a very straight foward game with some nice puzzles. With lovely graphical backgrounds and funny sounds I enjoyed it very much, although I had hoped it would have some form of dialog. That was the only down side for me, at some times I got a bit boring. So it's a great game if you have some spare time to launch up Botanicula for a quick laugh.

I played Amanita Design’s PC point-and-click adventure games out of order. I played the ‘Samorost’ games first. As much as I loved the developer’s signature whimsical characters and richly textured environments, I was starting to get tired of the trilogy’s cryptic puzzles, and the need for aimless clicking to elicit responses. But ‘Machinarium’ (AD's first full-length game) and ‘Chuchel’ (the fourth) broke me free of the tedium of the ‘Samorost’ formula. I loved both of these games in spite of their flaws. ‘Chuchel’, in particular, had the most cohesion in its collection of puzzles, perhaps due to their presentation through a series of vignettes. So I finally decided to check out ‘Botanicula’ (AD's full-length game). It is a beautiful-looking game without a doubt, again with cute characters and imaginative locales. After playing it, it was clear that AD had improved on their puzzle design and presentation over the years. Yet, even judging this game on its own merits, ‘Botanicula’ has weak, poorly designed puzzles. You exploring large, sometimes convoluted environments to look for objects and solve inventory puzzles in this game. I often didn’t get a good sense of where things were because this game is set in different parts of a plant and inside monsters? I disliked the mazes, and searching for up to 14 items in the sometimes oddly placed set pieces. You can also collect Creature Cards by interacting with your environments, but the payoff for which is hardly worth the effort. I got so frustrated with the unclear sidequests that I eventually finished this game using a walkthrough. I’m glad I did because solving some puzzles require my characters to act in ways that were not clearly introduced. Despite having 5 playable characters with its own unique skillset, ‘Botanicula’ hardly features puzzles that encourage thoughtful, cooperative use of them. Overall, it's a disappointing game, and it is a title from AD that can be skipped if you must.

it makes me smile! =D