Botany Manor (2024)

I never truly felt lost while playing, even if some of the puzzles didn’t make complete sense right away, it just meant that I had some more exploring to do! The constant rotation of discovering a new seed, determining the correct clues that fit the growing conditions, and producing a magical dream-like plant never felt monotonous. Despite my small issue with motion sickness, Botany Manor was still a delightful experience and left me wanting more seeds to discover and cultivate. I encourage you to try the game whether you are a puzzle game lover or not, as the cozy aesthetic outweighs the challenge of the hardest puzzle- which truly isn't that stressful!

Botany Manor manages to combine well-constructed puzzles, with the sole purpose of teaching a little more about plants, with a delicate background story about a woman who fought against various prejudices in an ancient era, resulting in a great title.

Botany Manor offers a unique experience for puzzle and exploration game fans. It combines creative puzzles with a relaxing atmosphere and beautiful cartoon-style graphics. The controls are simple, and the technical performance is excellent. However, some puzzles can be unnecessarily difficult, which may cause frustration. Despite that, the game remains an enjoyable experience for those looking for a thoughtful challenge in a peaceful and charming environment.

With a manor and its surrounding gardens, Arabella has more than a roof of her own to cultivate both fantastic plants and scientific treatises. Botany Manor uses the historical context of a Victorian female scholar to build an ingenious exploration puzzle game, delivering the satisfaction of solving riddles while illustrating a clever historical insight represented by the protagonist's overlooked intellectual life. Both narrative and gameplay are bounded together in our minds by their clues and fragments, making this game a beautiful and worthy whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.

While the story may not be the primary focus and the gameplay is more meditative than energetic, its charm lies in its tranquil beauty and engaging puzzles.