Strange Horticulture

The game revolves around identifying rare plants with sometimes magical properties. You start with a book about such plants which already contains a few pages, and while progressing through the game more pages get added to the book. Each page shows a plant's name, a sketch of one or two parts of the plant, a some descriptive text - which is sometimes helpful in identifying the plant (e.g. mentioning the color or texture) and sometimes not (e.g. mentioning what the plant can be used for). It's your task to manually match this to an actual plant in your greenhouse, i.e. by guessing or eliminating other possible candidates. You collect new plants during game events. These events often prompt you for a plant name or property (e.g. something that is able to lift a curse), and you must assign the proper plant from your greenhouse to progress. Many events also involve some kind of puzzle, e.g. by mapping symbols or initial letters to cardinal directions or map coordinates. What I disliked most was the missing game manual or tutorial. I didn't know what the game expected me to do, so I followed the instructions of a wiki about the first three days and experimented from there. The controls were quite intuitive, but I was at a loss whether the game expects me to randomly explore the map (answer: it does not, most places on the map are locked behind certain events) or just click the bell on the counter to handle the next shop visitor (answer: if any hint or event prompts you to travel somewhere, do so. otherwise, receive the next visitor or end the day. Each day unlocks further progression of the story.) You can label your plants, but each plant can only have one label. Your book of plants is organized alphabetically and has an index, which is better than nothing. As others have already mentioned, there is no search functionality to quickly find a plant in your greenhouse by any criteria, so you have to memorize quite a lot, or are forced to do an exhaustive search.

First of all: I love identifiying plants in real life, so I was overjoyed to see a game that featured that. I would like a bit more complexity and steps with identification rather than vague descriptions in the book that describes them. The atmosphere in this game is incredible. There is a beautiful soundscape and the drawings of both people, plants and the map feel consistent, beautiful and immersive. The puzzles in this game are logical and mostly quite original, which is quite hard. I would liked to be able to save my game and branch decisions rather than playing this game anew. Recommended to those with an inquisitive and curious mind.

Well written, beautiful, nice gameplay and you can even pet the cat !

The main gameplay in this game is examining evidence closely. You try to identify plants correctly based on single-page old-school-botanist descriptions, and you choose locations on a map based on clues you receive. There's a story, text-only with simple sketches for locations or character portraits for people. The Lovecraftian idea of the danger of curiosity is really prevalant throughout the whole game. My favorite part of this game is using the magnifying glass to closely examine everything. 10/10 would be a botanist again.

As a crazy plant lady, avid gardener, and agriculture student, this game ticked all the boxes for me. So worth it.