Review | Strange Horticulture - A Beautiful Bokay

Armed with a collection of plants, I am on a mission to save the world. Or possibly condemn it. I’m not sure yet. But first, I need to identify which plant will help my customer get a good night’s sleep. Such is the life of Undermere’s greatest and only horticulturist.

Having only recently inherited the titular shop from your uncle, you start Strange Horticulture with just a small collection of plants, and a book you can use to help identify them. However, as the game progresses, your small collection of flora will grow to include nearly 80 weird and wonderful plants, each with their own unique properties, from a shrub that can open any lock, to a flower that allows you to see in the dark.

“The flowers are a soft purple with a sweet scent.”*

*MAY CAUSE FATIGUE, BLOATNESS, INTERNAL BLEEDING, HEARTBURN, DEATH AND A SWEET SCENT.

Strange Horticulture has a relatively simple premise: customers come into your shop looking for various plants and you have to correctly identify which plant they want and give it to them. Some of the customers will know exactly which plant they want, while others only know what it does or what it looks like. It’s up to you, with the aid of your trusty “Strange Book of Plants” to work out which plants your customers are after. The book contains names, descriptions and drawings of the various plants you will come across throughout the game and although the illustrations are surprisingly detailed, they typically only depict a small part of the plant, such as the leaves or the flower. The result means that you have to also pay attention to the plant’s description and look at it under your microscope in order to correctly identify it. It’s not a quick process, but the satisfaction of getting it right is more than worth it. Also giving a plant that gives you a burst of energy to someone looking for something to help them sleep may be a bit of a problem.

Alongside professional embarrassment, if you give a customer the wrong plant, your “Rising Dread '' meter will start to fill up; get three plants wrong in a day and your mind will shatter, meaning you have to complete a puzzle to fix your broken mind and continue. Despite how devastating a shattered brain may sound, t’s a surprisingly gentle and forgiving mechanic; you’re encouraged to get things right, but you don’t lose any progress if you don’t.

It isn’t a small British Victorian town without a mystery!

As you play through each day, you will receive clues pointing you to the location of new plants, or pages for your botany book. Some of the clues will be given to you directly by your customers, while others come in the form of letters, delivered each day by the friendly postman (who incidentally is the only recurring character I trusted). Each of these hints and scraps of information will lead you to a specific spot on your map, where you will find your prize. Of course, this is a puzzle game, so it’s rarely as simple as going to a location and getting what you want. Instead, you usually have to solve a puzzle either to find the location, or to access your reward. These puzzles tend to be simpler than identifying plants, but are incredibly varied. Whether it be using a plant to unlock a gate or solving a classic X marks the spot puzzle, Strange Horticulture does an excellent job of giving you a variety of fun distractions from your day job.

Some of the more cryptic clues are the ones you receive at the end of each day when you are transported to a tranquil dreamscape. Here, you draw a card from a tarot-esque deck which will lead you to a new plant. This is also where you begin to discover the story of an unnamed woman, and how she relates to certain ominous goings-on in the forests and hills around Undermere.

Despite Strange Horticulture's relaxing feel, it doesn’t take long for you to start to realise that not everything in and around Undermere is as peaceful as your cosy shop. 

In your first couple of days, you meet a woman plagued by terrifying nightmares, receive a letter from a friend who has been brutally attacked in a nearby town and hear about the recent murder of the leader of a local coven of witches. Your knowledge of plants means you are soon called in to help with the murder investigation, and as you do, you will begin to uncover a far more dangerous plot involving an ancient evil, cultists, and magic, all while continuing to sell ferns in your small shop. 

Every now and then, the game will offer you a choice; when a rude man enters your shop demanding something to cure his rash, you can choose to either help him or make his rash worse. Or, you can join a cult and potentially bring about the end of the world. Y’know, just the little choices all small business owners have to make.

God, people in the 1800s had some serious style. Most of them also had a vitamin C deficiency but you can’t win them all.

These choices will determine the fates of the various recurring characters you meet, and ultimately which of the game’s eight endings you receive. This means that, despite the plants not changing for subsequent playthroughs, depending on your choices, there may be new elixirs to brew and vastly different endings for each character, meaning each playthrough still feels rewarding. 

Overall, the game’s story and aesthetic put a delightfully dark twist on what would otherwise be a classically cosy game. It doesn’t shy away from darker topics, such as grief, but equally doesn’t overwhelm you with them.  The soundtrack is simple and relaxing, but, much like the game itself, has a slightly melancholy, ominous feel to it that sets the game’s tone beautifully. It’s set in “an alternate history version of Victorian-era Lake District, England”, which has to be one of the more niche game settings I’ve encountered but works perfectly for the game. 

Besides the fantastically written main storyline and characters, the simple joy of organising your plants is honestly addictive. I could happily spend days leafing through my growing book of plants, identifying and labelling my colourful array of flowers and mushrooms, and petting your cat, Hellebore (the real star of the show). The animations for moving things around on your desk and shelves are beautifully satisfying, even down to how the map unfolds. It’s a truly wonderful game, relaxing in a beautifully dark way and is easily one of the best detective games I’ve played in a long time.