Strange Horticulture

Strange Horticulture plays like a puzzle game combined with visual novel. You play as a shop owner who inherited a plant shop from her late uncle. There's a guide book, but the it's not obvious. Like rarely there's a full picture of the plant, only parts like leaves or flowers, as well as how it feels or smells. With these clues, your objective is to identify which plants a customer needs. Some of them are affiliated with cults, which you can help or hinder. And a map allows you to travel to surrounding areas, taking home new plants or more pages for the book. As expected, you will see a lot of beautiful plants here. Other than the usual medicine or poison, some of these have strange functions. Like there's a lockpick plant, one that snares people, and one that allows you to read hidden text. There are choice elements when giving a plant, like sometimes you can choose between several plants with different results. And there are multiple endings, if you want to get as many paths as possible it's recommended to follow a guide, since you can be locked out. You can turn on auto-labelling so that a correctly identified plant will be given a tag. But there's a small issue, you cannot add the plant's picture to the book. So if you correctly identify a plant one day and someone asks for it on another day, you'll have to reread the clue and comb through your plants to find the correct one again. It would be better if identified plants have their image drawn on the book, besides making it easier it's also what a normal person would do rather than finding it again. If you're looking for games to chill without being overly difficult, Strange Horticulture is a title that you should try, especially if you like puzzles and mystery. It has a lovely artstyle and atmosphere, plus you can pet Hellebore the cat as many times as you like!

I bought it on sale, -60% - didn't think too much about it on GOG. Was done in a few hours over two days. The gameplay was nice, and all the other "most helpful" reviewers said can be confirmed: - the puzzles are not too hard - sometimes, finding the correct plant/mushroom is a piece of work (if you don't remember the descriptions) - naming your plants is a chore - placing them as well - I forgot about the watering can pretty fast - story is okay - multiple endings in this game? That's why I removed one star. I won't play this ever again, I assume. But as said before: nice little game if you don*t want to bury yourself too deep into something.

It was a fun game with an interesting story, but the puzzles were, for me at least, fairly easy and straightforward (that said I'm a puzzle gamer, so perhaps I'm more familiar with the kinds of logic and deductions needed than the average gamer). A good time-kill, and definitely nice to "play with plants" at the end of a cold winter when I'm craving some green to enjoy. Would recommend.

This game is a small gem. Gameplay is intuitive, the background story is rich and the atmosphere is very calming. The puzzles are somewhat repetitive (identify plants and locations on the map) but nevertheless entertaining and solving them is very satisfying. It is the perfect game for a rainy weekend day.

There are a lot of games out there making you feel you´re doing something great, until you suddenly realize how dull the game is. Well. Strange Horticulture ist NOT of that sort, but I´m not really sure why I think it was so great as I think it was. I LOVED that game and played it twice in two days, the second time because I didn`t like the first ending, but mostly because I didn`t want to abandon this cozy little place with my purring cat, my customers and - of course - my plants. And when I finished it the second time I was just ... happy and calm and satisfied and the world was a better place for a little while, and that is an extremely seldom after-gaming-condition for someone like me. Maybe it´s because of the mixture. A nice story, nice characters (as tiny and cliché as they are), nice puzzles (some are very easy, most of them require a little thinking and searching, neither to hard nor to childish), the plants you have to identify and to organize (I would recommend to do this in time, some of them you need to find again later), every gameday something to do until it´s time to close the shop for the night. You never wonder what the heck the developers want you to do now. No stress about food, euquipment and fight. This can be obviously quite satisfying in times, and it is extremely well done in Strange Horticulture. I think :)