An occult puzzle game in which you play as the proprietor of a local plant store. Find and identify new plants, pet your cat, speak to a coven, or join a cult. Use your collection of powerful plants to influence the story and unravel Undermere’s dark mysteries.
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- Started playing in September 2023, forgot about it, decided to finish today
- Ending II: Elderphinium
- Plants Identified: 56/77
I enjoyed this, but there's lots of room for improvement.
The depictions of the moon phases are inaccurate (the moon's illumination should grow from right to left, not left to right), and the writing wasn't great. I spent a lot of time mentally revising the choice of words used in the letters and dialogue. More commas would be appreciated.
- Ending II: Elderphinium
- Plants Identified: 56/77
I enjoyed this, but there's lots of room for improvement.
The depictions of the moon phases are inaccurate (the moon's illumination should grow from right to left, not left to right), and the writing wasn't great. I spent a lot of time mentally revising the choice of words used in the letters and dialogue. More commas would be appreciated.
Algumas ideias muito interessantes aqui, tanto mecanicamente quanto na forma de contar a historia.
Faltou uma execução um pouco melhor, espero que mais jogos assim sejam feitos porque tem potencial pra algo fantástico.
Faltou uma execução um pouco melhor, espero que mais jogos assim sejam feitos porque tem potencial pra algo fantástico.
Overall a fun game with a neat story. I took a break from it and couldn't remember the plot or mechanics well enough to continue on, I may pick it up again in a bit but I'm not sure that leaving it unfinished will keep me up.
The plant ID system is fun, though I wish I'd checked the settings to see the autolabeller in advance.
If you're playing on the steam deck or with a controller it's a little clunky. It's probably much more easily playable on a PC but as it stands the controls just don't translate well to controller play.
The characters and plot are interesting and figuring out the puzzles is pretty satisfying. The limited choice you get in the game is also fun, and maybe if I'd finished it there would be more fun choices.
Overall I'm sure it's a game some people absolutely adore, but it wasn't so much my thing. I had a good time with it though.
The plant ID system is fun, though I wish I'd checked the settings to see the autolabeller in advance.
If you're playing on the steam deck or with a controller it's a little clunky. It's probably much more easily playable on a PC but as it stands the controls just don't translate well to controller play.
The characters and plot are interesting and figuring out the puzzles is pretty satisfying. The limited choice you get in the game is also fun, and maybe if I'd finished it there would be more fun choices.
Overall I'm sure it's a game some people absolutely adore, but it wasn't so much my thing. I had a good time with it though.
A neat mystery puzzle game wrapped up in a spooky plant lady vibe that sadly doesn’t always execute on some of the cool ideas it attempts and is burdened by poorly-designed UI/UX.
Strange Horticulture is, at its core, a deductive reasoning puzzle game that has you solving clues to identify plants and seeking out new plants to expand your collection. Most times, that loop of looking for a plant based on a vague description and trying to narrow it down using context clues or sketches can deliver a familiar satisfying rush that comes from puzzle games like this. Other times, “solving” a puzzle is just reading through 60 plant descriptions until you find one key word like “stranger” or “smokey” buried in the text. That’s not a puzzle, it's just tedious. The story, told through the visits of customers, is neat and the choices along the way (that set up multiple endings) made me feel invested in the twisty tale that was being told. After finishing the game, I enjoyed going back and seeing how some of the other endings played out.
Later in the game, once you’ve identified most of the plants, occasionally a customer will ask for one specific plant of the 77 unorganized plants on your shelf. So you’ll slowly scroll left to right looking for the one plant you need, but if you scroll too quickly, the label open/close animation won’t react in time and you’ll miss the name. Some method of auto-sorting your plants would have been a welcome addition to the game.
When not identifying plants to help customers, you’re following clues and solving riddles to visit specific locations on a map and find new plants to add to your collection. It’s a pretty fun idea in theory, but the map is quite large and the writing on it is often difficult to read, requiring constant use of the game’s dedicated magnifying glass button - a baffling game decision.
Searching for plants in your massive collection, reading too many descriptions, navigating around a map, and just interacting with your inventory are all things that shouldn’t be annoying but are due to the game’s poorly designed interface that is only made worse on consoles. I can only assume that this game was designed to be played with a mouse and keyboard on a 40 inch computer monitor that your face is 4 inches from at all times, because nothing else really makes sense. The script-like font is small, requiring frequent use of the magnifying glass just to be able to read literally any of the text in the game. There is an “easier to read font” option, that makes all the text more legible, but the interface does not adapt to the new text size, so conversations with NPCs constantly fall off the screen as you’re trying to read them which results in battling the scrolling dialogue. Additionally, while the “legible text” option does improve most of the menus, the map does not benefit from the cleaner text, so that continues to be difficult to read without the magnifying glass. Even with the magnification, the rivers are actively impossible to read due to the weird font choice. Controlling the game on console is a nightmare as the cursor is mapped to the left analog stick with a set cursor speed of “excruciatingly slow”. There are labels in the game so you can make notes of all the items you’re finding, but that feature is predictably a pain without a dedicated keyboard to use.
The thing that makes these pain points more frustrating is that I actually really enjoyed most of my time with Strange Horticulture, but it constantly felt as though I was fighting against the game to find the fun. Underneath the poorly-designed UI and weird design decisions is a pretty great game! Finding that game, however, takes some work. And maybe a lot of work if you’re playing on console.
+ Satisfying deductive puzzle solving
+ Great spooky vibes
+ Fun, creative plants with interesting descriptions
+ Great story choices throughout the game that set up multiple endings
- Terrible UI that often feels anti-player for the sake of “theme”
- Console/controller support is all around terrible from UI adaptation to controller use
- Some puzzles are more tedious reading than actual puzzle-solving
Strange Horticulture is, at its core, a deductive reasoning puzzle game that has you solving clues to identify plants and seeking out new plants to expand your collection. Most times, that loop of looking for a plant based on a vague description and trying to narrow it down using context clues or sketches can deliver a familiar satisfying rush that comes from puzzle games like this. Other times, “solving” a puzzle is just reading through 60 plant descriptions until you find one key word like “stranger” or “smokey” buried in the text. That’s not a puzzle, it's just tedious. The story, told through the visits of customers, is neat and the choices along the way (that set up multiple endings) made me feel invested in the twisty tale that was being told. After finishing the game, I enjoyed going back and seeing how some of the other endings played out.
Later in the game, once you’ve identified most of the plants, occasionally a customer will ask for one specific plant of the 77 unorganized plants on your shelf. So you’ll slowly scroll left to right looking for the one plant you need, but if you scroll too quickly, the label open/close animation won’t react in time and you’ll miss the name. Some method of auto-sorting your plants would have been a welcome addition to the game.
When not identifying plants to help customers, you’re following clues and solving riddles to visit specific locations on a map and find new plants to add to your collection. It’s a pretty fun idea in theory, but the map is quite large and the writing on it is often difficult to read, requiring constant use of the game’s dedicated magnifying glass button - a baffling game decision.
Searching for plants in your massive collection, reading too many descriptions, navigating around a map, and just interacting with your inventory are all things that shouldn’t be annoying but are due to the game’s poorly designed interface that is only made worse on consoles. I can only assume that this game was designed to be played with a mouse and keyboard on a 40 inch computer monitor that your face is 4 inches from at all times, because nothing else really makes sense. The script-like font is small, requiring frequent use of the magnifying glass just to be able to read literally any of the text in the game. There is an “easier to read font” option, that makes all the text more legible, but the interface does not adapt to the new text size, so conversations with NPCs constantly fall off the screen as you’re trying to read them which results in battling the scrolling dialogue. Additionally, while the “legible text” option does improve most of the menus, the map does not benefit from the cleaner text, so that continues to be difficult to read without the magnifying glass. Even with the magnification, the rivers are actively impossible to read due to the weird font choice. Controlling the game on console is a nightmare as the cursor is mapped to the left analog stick with a set cursor speed of “excruciatingly slow”. There are labels in the game so you can make notes of all the items you’re finding, but that feature is predictably a pain without a dedicated keyboard to use.
The thing that makes these pain points more frustrating is that I actually really enjoyed most of my time with Strange Horticulture, but it constantly felt as though I was fighting against the game to find the fun. Underneath the poorly-designed UI and weird design decisions is a pretty great game! Finding that game, however, takes some work. And maybe a lot of work if you’re playing on console.
+ Satisfying deductive puzzle solving
+ Great spooky vibes
+ Fun, creative plants with interesting descriptions
+ Great story choices throughout the game that set up multiple endings
- Terrible UI that often feels anti-player for the sake of “theme”
- Console/controller support is all around terrible from UI adaptation to controller use
- Some puzzles are more tedious reading than actual puzzle-solving
A fun, and surprisingly dark, game about Plants. Loved the multiple endings, and how choices matter on which plants you give to which people. The gameplay was nothing special, but the puzzles were fun and the right amount of difficult.
- Artwork: 4/5
- Music: 3/5
- Characters: 4/5
- Story: 4/5
- Gameplay: 3/5
- Overall: 3.5/5
- Artwork: 4/5
- Music: 3/5
- Characters: 4/5
- Story: 4/5
- Gameplay: 3/5
- Overall: 3.5/5
Missed potential. Great vibes and a good spin on Papers, Please with a cool adventure game worked in - one that is not unlike a hidden object or room escape game. And downstream from that is some player-driven exploration and branching pathways.
But because it straddles this line between puzzle, adventure, and cozy, the pressure to balance tasks and adventuring with managing your post isn't there like in Papers, Please. Some of the point-and-click-esque puzzles can be a little moon logic. The plant art is great but the character is very amateur-ish, which for a game that culminates in this four-way mental battle of conspiracies clashing really does the storytelling a disservice. And those branching narratives are underserved by the inconsistent puzzle difficulty and limited opportunities for choice.
It could use some QoL changes but not enough to hold it against the game. Nothing is outright bad, but massive missed opportunities at every corner.
But because it straddles this line between puzzle, adventure, and cozy, the pressure to balance tasks and adventuring with managing your post isn't there like in Papers, Please. Some of the point-and-click-esque puzzles can be a little moon logic. The plant art is great but the character is very amateur-ish, which for a game that culminates in this four-way mental battle of conspiracies clashing really does the storytelling a disservice. And those branching narratives are underserved by the inconsistent puzzle difficulty and limited opportunities for choice.
It could use some QoL changes but not enough to hold it against the game. Nothing is outright bad, but massive missed opportunities at every corner.