Welcome to Strange Horticulture, an eerie plant shop nestled somewhere in Undermere that you inherited from your recently deceased uncle. Your mission? Save the world or help them burn it to the ground.
Released in 2022 by a British independent developer, Bad Viking, this single player went ahead to win PC Games’ best puzzle game of the year.
Since I’ve never played a puzzle game before, when I read the ravenous reviews about Strange Horticulture I decided to try it out, and luckily that night didn’t end up with me asking for a refund on Steam.
Now, let’s talk about the game, and mind you, after 10 hours of gameplay, I haven’t finished it yet.
The game starts with me opening the shop, finding on my table a map of the country I live in, the Strange Book of Plants, two magnifying glasses with different abilities, a weird round object with random symbols on it, and different types of clues. I’m currently on day 18 and some of the clues I have are encrypted letters that still need solving, a card giving me clues of a plant location on the map, and a riddle that will help unlock a hidden drawer of my table by identifying the right combination of plant icons illustrated in the top left corner of the wooden table.
Each in-game day, I ring the bell, calling my customers one by one and trying to solve their little dilemma by giving them the correct plant they’re looking for. The more days pass by, the more cryptic their messages get, giving me a hard time to solve these tiny puzzles. But if I give them the right plant, I’m rewarded with new plants or a new page to add to my horticulture encyclopaedia.
Said encyclopaedia contains detailed descriptions of all plants, which combined with the clues I find by taking a ‘closer inspection‘ using my microscope, gives me enough hints into identifying my plants.
However, if I give my customers the wrong plant, I gain some dread. Here my nervousness starts to kick in because it means I’m allowed to fail two more times before I literally lose my mind and am thrown into a jigsaw mini-game, which upon solving it, takes me back to the shop and I redo my attempts with the last customer.
Upon discovering a plant, I take my time labelling them before I forget their name and I’m back to square one. In fact, I’ve spent a decent amount of time putting them in alphabetical order and by splitting them in three categories: poisonous, medicinal, and multi-purpose plants.
The puzzle doesn’t end with the plants though, instead, it looks like I’m part of a town that has strange cults. One cult is trying to revive some sort of monster to worship, and the other wants to kill it. It’s up to me to decide which cult I want to help.
Apparently there are eight different types of endings to discover and for my first play through I decided to help the cult that wants to get rid of the monster.
What I enjoy about this game is that there is always something new to discover the more progress I make. The most recent one was the addition of my laboratory where I need to create potions by mixing the right plants together, making it harder to not gain dread due to the cryptic puzzle I can’t seem to solve.
It’s my first puzzle game, but it definitely won’t be my last. Now, I just need to find a way to avoid killing any of my customers by accident, because, yes, there’s that option too.
Score: 5/5