Strange Horticulture

There are a lot of novel and extremely clever ideas in Strange Horticulture, but by the time I finished with the game I was truly tired of its gameplay. I'm sure the issues with the game's UI had a lot to do with this, but even when things are working as they should, there's just a lot of procedural referencing and looking up that can get sloggy after a while. I'm sure another game like this could come around and find some success, but I don't think I'd be ready to play a game like Strange Horticulture again for a good long time.

Strange Horticulture is an atmospheric occult puzzle game where we collect and identify various peculiar plants, aid people in need, and try to solve the mysteries of a troubled little town.

Strange Horticulture is a very solid game for what it is. If you're interested in occult, folk-horror and mysteries you'll definitely be engaged. The unique gameplay will be familiar to players of point-and-click adventures and has some light puzzle elements. However, some issues from the translation to mobile do detract from the overall experience.

As written in the beginning, Strange Horticulture is not for everyone. If you enjoy identifying flowers, herbs and mushrooms, getting to know your neighbors’ dark secrets and unravelling the strange connection between their stories you will find the game engaging. On the other hand, if you consider it’s boring to spend hours and hours going through a botany book identifying plants or hunting for small details in letters in order to find a location on a map, Strange Horticulture is not your ideal experience. It is a novel game, with a dark theme and a slow pace, which is aimed mainly at fans of puzzle games equipped with plenty of patience.

Its peculiar combination of puzzle design with plants suggests anyone's interest would quickly wither, yet Bad Viking's blueprint does a great job of emulating and branching off of Papers, Please and similar work games. With an entrancing atmosphere and world-building to boot, it's easy to appreciate this unique tempo. Although currently lacking the best control scheme (mouse & keyboard) may compel some to get the Xbox version at a later thyme, it remains an evergreen puzzler for start to finish.

Strange Horticulture’s biggest struggle is shoehorning itself into the Switch’s little screen and thumbstick controls. It does that well enough to preserve its wonder, but if you have a PC to play it on, that might be preferable. It comes from a very simple place: a one-screen playfield with basic, heavily scripted interactions.