Strange Horticulture Review (PC Game, 2022)
Strange Horticulture is a new mystery/puzzle game from Bad Viking. You have inherited Strange Horticulture after the death of your father. It is a specialty plant shop where patrons come for the aesthetic, practical, and mystical effects of plants. You are learning on the job and have to identify what the plants are with clues from the customers and your trusty guidebook. Meanwhile, various covens and magical practitioners are being targeted by a murderer using the regional plants to produce powerful poisons. You have to learn your business, discover new plants all throughout Undermere, and assist in multiple investigations happening while maintaining your sanity.
Strange Horticulture is an interactive storytelling game with a wide variety of gameplay modes. The most common task is identifying the various plants in your shop. The guidebook features a closeup silhouette of plant features—leaves, stems, flowers, spores, thorns, etc.—and a vague description of purpose or intent. This fungus has a horrible smell, but this blue flower is actually multiple buds combined. This leaf can aid in digestion, but this stem can cause a horrible rash. You have to identify the mystery plants based on what your customers are asking for. Your reward for guessing correctly is knowing the plant for next time; your punishment for failing is another puzzle game.
Fail three tasks with plants and your sense of dread becomes unbearable. Here you’ll have to solve one of two interactive puzzles to restore your peace and sanity. You either need to put a disc covered in engravings back together like a jigsaw puzzle or correctly identify which keys fit a series of three locks by shape alone. Once completed, your sanity is restored and you can try helping the customer again.
Various customers will give you letters and clues as to where to locate more plants or evidence for your investigation. You’ll also get a randomly drawn card from a mystical deck at the start of each day. Both lead you to another puzzle/exploration mode.
You have a gigantic map of the region laid out in a grid. Your clues will give you mile markers, directions, outlines of geographic regions, and other various waypoints to determine where your next plant is. Maybe you’ll have to identify the second tallest mountain on the map. You might also need to follow a traveler’s footpath from one town to a specific riverbank. Choose wisely, as you can only explore the map if you fill up your “Will to Explore” compass.
One of the greatest features of Strange Horticulture is its scalable difficulty. This game wants you to discover the story and will guide you as much as you need. The worst consequence is having to solve the dread puzzles. You lose no progress and they’re genuinely fun game elements. There is no sudden game over, no impossible task because you aren’t the best at a particular element of the game. For example, to restore your compass, you just need to water the plants.
Better still is the hint system. There is no punishment for asking for a hint. The first hint will be vague, like check over your letters or look back on your conversations with customers. Everything is saved in the game automatically. You just need to keep track of it. The next hint will be even more specific. It was this person, that letter, this plant, etc. that you need to find information about. If there is a third hint, it will give you the exact coordinates you need to go to on the map to proceed. It’s fool proof.
This is a way for everyone to get the same story beats no matter your skill level. Strange Horticulture is about the story, mood, and tone, so this makes sense. There are branching elements based on how you choose to interact with either/or options. Giving a nasty customer the correct cure for his problem has a different outcome than punishing him with a worse affliction from a similar looking plant. Nothing is so world-changing that it can totally derail a playthrough. You just can’t possibly experience every aspect of the story your first time through.
Weird fiction fans, puzzle gamers, and mystery fans will find a lot of value in Strange Horticulture. The game is brand new, having just released last Friday, so there are still a few bugs being worked out. My advice at this point: if all else fails, you can go back a day or two in the save file. A patch will inevitably come to address this, but that’s the work around for now. So much is so right in this creepy little indie that it’s easy to overlook little hiccups like this.
Now get in the shop, take over your father’s legacy, and don’t forget to pet the cat.
Strange Horticulture is available on PC.
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