I feel like I owe Whitethorn Games an apology. As an indie publisher, they’ve genuinely helped in bringing a large number of cozy games to the masses and yet rarely do we pay much attention to them. Maybe it’s just burnout over the constant influx of “cozy” games these days (with the Wholesome Directs starting to feel overwhelming after a while), but there hasn’t been anything in their lineup that’s excited me enough to get truly invested. At least, not until now. And I didn’t expect to get excited over a game such asBotany Manor,a Victorian-era adventure/puzzler centered around plant cultivation by developers Balloon Studios (or maybe it should have been expected, given how greatStrange Horticultureis). The positive buzz around this is intrugiing, but what exactly is buzz-worthy here?
A Greener Downton Abbey
As mentioned prior,Botany Manoris set in the Victorian era, specifically 1890, and has players take the role of Arabella Greene, a retried botanist who heads back to the titular manor to finally finish her “Forgotten Flora” book and get it published. Finishing it means having to properly grow and study some of the plants encountered by members of their family prior in one way or another, which means having to actively research their prior notes and plant the seeds in the right conditions, and luckily, the manor isn’t lacking in amenities that can help out. So it’s off to explore the manor as it gradually opens (with keys to new rooms being gradually discovered), and see just what exactly can be grown here…
It might not seem like the most exciting premise at first, but there’s a genuinely well-crafted story here lying around as you uncover it through all sorts of documents and oddities lying around Botany Manor. Arabella has faced a lot of obstacles in her life, as you’ll discover, with the main one being that she’s a woman in 1890’s England, and so needless to say, her aspirations to contribute to the world of academia aren’t exactly taken seriously. The story of the Greene family’s members comes up through a lot of small, nicely-subtle details, as you look over every note you come across. It’s all good as is, but the story shines through at its best via the plants themselves.
That last part may sound odd, but the thing to know is that Balloon Studios clearly put a ton of effort into creating fantastical plants to be featured in the game, ones that only grow when specific conditions are met. Specific sunsets, the right temperature of water, certain nutrients and many more. And with every plant comes the details of how exactly the Arabella and the Greene family has seen them, and so in solving the mystery behind each bit of flora, you get several small stories along the way that provide nice bits of world-building, either via the Greene family or the plants themselves, all of which have their own unique looks and unique atmospheres that burst out in a rewarding fashion upon finding the proper solution for growth.
Review: Strange Horticulture
Strange Horticulture is a true hidden gem and a pleasant surprise to start the year on, a delightfully quirky and charming puzzle game.
Secrets Behind Every Seed
Uncovering the details behind each plant, though, isn’t that easy. None of the residents of Botany Manor have merely kept entire journals filled with detailed notes, it would appear, though there are at least a few of those. Instead Arabella has to gather clues from everything around her, ranging from greeting cards to news clippings and posters. And thus the challenge inBotany Manoris solving its puzzles by properly stringing together all of these various clues. For example, you come across a tale involving a fairy who gets trapped in a flower, and elsewhere, you find a painting of a scene from that story which also includes a moth, then another room has a poster of moths where you may properly identify the one seen, so now you can cross-reference it with a date on when it appears, and so on.
These puzzles are the meat ofBotany Manor,and they are a joy to solve, offering up the exact right level of challenge for a game such as this, never feeling too hard but still rewarding proper research and deduction. And what oddly makes it even more rewarding is that while you may access Arabella’s book to see your progress and keep track of the collected clues, the game never keeps track of whole clues. It simply says what the clue you’ve found is, and what part of the manor you’ve found it in. In doing so, it becomes an ode to classic adventure games, where you actually have to take down your own notes along the way. Either that, or simply backtrack to previous rooms. This is something that could easily be a pain, but getting around Botany Manor never feels like a chore at all, with a layout that makes backtracking quite easy, especially with the actual stations where you prepare the potted plants being perfectly spaced apart.
Visually,Botany Manormay not be a stunner, but again, its creative plants make for a ton of impressive sights, especially as you find unexpected places to grow them in. This is a game where your first sight upon entering the manor proper is a giant tree seemingly having burst out of the floor, after all. The music is also nice and calming, perfect for a relaxing, chilled puzzle game. About the only real issue with the game is that it’s rather short, being about a few hours at most. Part of it may be due to the game being divided up into chapters, with each one having up to four plants instead of being more open and having access to the whole book. But it’s easy to see how that approach could become frustrating at times, and in the end, there’s an elegant simplicity toBotany Manorthat helps it succeed in the end. It’s a perfectly-cozy puzzler about the world of botany, one that makes for a true surprise.
Closing Comments:
Botany Manoris a genuine delight, a charming little adventure game with a nice story, a lot of creativity in its plant designs and unique botanical work, and amazing puzzles that feel like a throwback to the classics of yore while having their own beautiful twists based around thorough exploration. It’s an absolute gem, so verify you don’t overlook it just because Victoran-era botany doesn’t seem all that intriguing at first. As it turns out, it can make for one amazing game.
Botany Manor
Version Reviewed: Xbox Series X
