Strange Horticulture

Someone compared Strange Horticulture with Papers, Please, which I agree is a good comparison. Main difference is that there are no timers here to consider but solve puzzles and identify plants in your own pace. Very enjoyable and occasionally challlenging. I have only unlocked one ending so might give it another go at a later time. This labour of love makes a fantastic start of 2022 in PC gaming and it might make it to many top-lists when the year is over.

Well, the first thing to note is that this is strictly a puzzle game. There are no sim/management elements whatsoever- just a series of puzzles. You have basically no agency- there are about five binary choices throughout the game (more on that later), and you often have some flexibility in what order you tackle puzzles, but that's it. The puzzles are... OK. Mostly quite easy, the odd genuinely interesting, a few a bit obtuse, but nothing terrible. They are a bit repetitive, especially the map puzzles, which are of only a few basic types. The game is quite short- about 5 hours. The plant identifying puzzles are marred by interface/mechanical issues, especially as you progress through the game and collect more and more plants and pages in your plant guide. One odd thing is that even when your customers can't name the plant they need (they just describe it, or explain what they need it to do), the game usually tells you anyway. This feels off, but it's actually necessary because there's no way to search the plant guide by anything except plant name (and if the plant has multiple names, you can only find it under one of them). So when you do (as you do occasionally) have to hunt for a specific effect, or a name that isn't the primary one, there's no alternative but to look through the whole guide. There's also no way to find a plant in your greenhouse that you've already identified besides remembering where you put it, or hunting through all the labels you've attached manually. This quickly becomes a chore. The story is... again... OK. The writing is competent, but the story isn't that interesting, and the characters don't feel very real. Oh, and... this is a puzzle game. As such, it has zero replay value, of course. Yet despite this, the game has multiple endings (thanks to those binary choices). Since there's no way you've ever want to play through it a second time, this doesn't really add anything.

I absolutely love the concept and execution. Ever since Cultist Simulator came out, I feel like there's new ground to be broken in occult-themed card and other slow-paced games. Strange Horticulture allows you to proceed at a detective's pace, discovering things about the region's plants and putting you in a place to help or hinder its inhabitants as you please. The game is perfect if you want a chill detective experience. You get clues about the plants from discovered encyclopedia pages, and then apply them to the situations you're presented, both by customers and circumstances as you go exploring. The game is very well programmed, or so it seems. Every challenge I've encountered so far has had a solution that is available to me. Its style is somewhat along the Papers, Please route, but without the time constraint. Take as much time as you'd like. I would like a harder or more challenging mode somehow, but I can't see how it could fit in the game as designed. I've never actually triggered the "dread" mechanic, which is very forgiving. You'd have to get three attempts incorrect to trigger it, which... I think is nice for kids, but offers no challenge so far. Overall, though, a great game, and well worth the full price.

This game has just the right amount of difficulty with it's puzzles, so that you feel challenged but don't resort to online help forums every few puzzles. It has a very addictive game loop of identifying plants and locating plants on the map via a varieties of puzzles. All in all a very fun game well worth the $20 I paid for it.