Botany Manor is a charming puzzle game that does an excellent job of creating a sense of space. The game is designed around combing an area for clues, sorting out which applies to each plant, and then doing the mental math needed to make the plant grow.

It's a low-fi, calm experience, and I think a lot of the satisfaction comes from walking from place to place, picking up on small pieces of environmental storytelling, and having to create a mental map of the manor in your brain. While the puzzles will not challenge you like in Myst or the Witness, it does a great job of putting you in a place and letting that space be play a role in the puzzle.

They captured the romance of life at a quiet estate turned into a garden, where life is simple and one could just spend their days studying exotic, fantastical plants and the stories behind them. It's an easy game to recommend and a nice way to spend a couple hours.

Cool concept with the controllable terrain in the form of tetris-like blocks. Unfortunately, I feel that almost everything surrounding that doesn't do much to elevate the concept.

You can utilize the system to do some cool tricks in combat but it never feels quite right. The feel of movement and combat is decent but once again the game feel isn't quite there.

I love the visuals, from the pixel art and environments to the UI. Characters and world are a combination of dark and silly that works for me.

What is stopping me from coming back is that it lacks the gripping replayability that roguelikes desperately need. I hope to see this game get a sequel or for another developer to take the general idea and further it in another project in the future.

visuals that got a genuine 'wow' out of me and good music but almost everything else is beyond bare bones. the setting, such as it is, is a lot of alice in wonderland and surprisingly, coraline (did anyone else clock that?). i could easily see this game captivating an 8- or 9-year old and eventually leading to other action rpgs with a little more depth.

it's easy to overlook a lot of this game's shortcomings but one actively got under my skin: as pointed out by another reviewer, your attacks make exactly one sound effect. by the end of the game you are hitting enemies 5-15 times and it's just that same sound effect over and over. i also have thoughts about the typography (cococucumber hire me to do your typography)

Toem is a fun and stylish puzzle-adventure game that tasks players with solving problems by taking photos of various objects and animals. The game's art style is distinctive and charming, with a vibrant and colorful aesthetic that helps to bring the world of Toem to life.

Each area in Toem feels unique, with great music and quirky characters that help to make the game a joy to explore. The unique environments, along with the compelling music and characters, will make you want to 100% the game to fully explore everything it has to offer. Some of the puzzles in the game are clever and require creative thinking to solve, and new mechanics are introduced through fashion items that the player can collect.

While the story in Toem may not be as strong as other adventure games, the style and creativity on display more than make up for it. As a bonus, the game includes a bonus island called Basto, which introduces new mechanics and is of the same high quality as the base game.

Overall, Toem is a fun and engaging puzzle-adventure game that is worth your time thanks to its stylish visuals, quirky characters, and clever puzzles. The bonus island of Basto is a great addition, offering more of the same high-quality gameplay as the base game.

Obviously no one should have high expectations for a cute little April Fool's visual novel, but the fact is there really isn't any deduction happening in this game. You basically just click through dialogue, click on the clue you found in the room, and then play a little Sonic minigame that stands in as you "thinking." The handful of actual choices you can make are solvable just by brute force guessing down the list of people. I guess it probably would be cuter if I had a connection to these characters.