Developer: Balloon Studios
Publisher: Whitethorn Games
Available On: PC, Nintendo Switch, and Xbox Series X|S
Reviewed on Xbox Series S
It’s hard to ignore the “cozy gaming” subgenre that’s blown up over the past few years. While players are still showing up for all of the biggest AAA titles with their big-budget action and spectacle, we’re also starting to see more and more players dig into smaller games that are void of violence, centered around relaxation and wholesome vibes, and made by small or even single-dev studios. Although you’ll never catch me complaining about having options, I don’t think it’s unfair to say that there are so many “cozy games” coming out that several of them are starting to blur together, especially if you’re someone who watches all of the big showcases and have seen literally hundreds of trailers for these types of games. Thankfully, that’s not the case with Botany Manor, the debut game from UK-based Balloon Studios. Though it may have some of the visual trappings that these games are becoming synonymous with, the core gameplay idea and its execution are so wonderfully fun and imaginative that it’s easy to point at this one as a new “must-play” of the genre.
Set in 19th-century England, Botany Manor invites you to explore the home of Arabella Greene as you help her complete a new book about the strange and beautiful plants she’s encountered in her decades as a botanist. It’s a first-person puzzle game where all of the puzzles revolve around figuring out how to grow a wide array of plants outside of their natural habitats. To do this, you’ll have to analyze books and notes about the plants and find ways to recreate their growing conditions in the wild by getting creative with your surroundings, which is such a fun concept. What I loved about this is the fact that there’s a genuine degree of research that goes into deducing how to grow these plants, and while they may all be fictional, how they grow is based on real science and it does a great job teaching you about things like the chemical makeup of plants, how photosynthesis works, and more. It straddles the line between education and fantasy quite well, and I genuinely feel like I learned a bit while playing.
The way the manor slowly expands throughout the game is also handled terrifically. In an almost Metroidvania-like manner, the manor is full of rooms and entire wings you can’t enter upon arrival. Instead, you have to solve puzzles and pay attention to special items and tools in the environment to unlock the doors to new areas and create shortcuts, which in turn reward you with more clues for growing different plants. The manor is undeniably big, but as you open up more and more paths it becomes surprisingly easy to move from one area to another in just a moment or two. While game time will most likely come down to how quickly you’re able to solve the puzzles, I think it’s safe to say most players will get through Botany Manor in about 3-4 hours, and the ease of navigating the manor plays a huge part in that, making it easy to get where you want to go without feeling like you’re stuck or wasting time.
While I greatly enjoyed this game, it’s impossible to ignore the shortcomings of the clue system. As you read notes, comb through books, and pick up all sorts of relevant information, you unlock clues in your journal (designed to be the book Arabella is writing) that you can place on the different pages to cement the information you’ve learned. You can freely add these clues to any page, but your goal is to place the right clues on the correct page, with the page becoming “finished” after you’ve correctly assigned the right clues and successfully grown the plant the page is written about. The problem is that the clues are just the names of the notes and items you’ve interacted with, and it doesn’t actually keep a transcription of what you’ve read. This means that if you want to go over the notes you’ve found for either a refresh of what you’ve already learned or to look for new clues in their writing you’ll have to physically walk back to where that note or item was and interact with it again instead of just reading its content in your journal. This can be a hassle, but most of the clues related to a plant are near the corresponding puzzle, and thanks to the many shortcuts in the manor it’s easy to return to them. It does help that the clue listing in the journal tells you where the note/item location is, but it can still be frustrating to have to run back and forth between notes as you try to work things out.
On the plus side, the game has a charming visual style that makes your journey through the manor and its grounds pleasurable. I found Botany Manor to have a very similar art style to The Witness, so to see that same brightly colored painterly style applied to the plant life and interior of the manor was a nice surprise. This is by no means a game that’s going for hyper-realism, but it’s still quite beautiful and I found myself sitting on the many benches and chairs throughout the place to relax and take in the sights. These moments also utilize the audio design to increase the cozy vibes by playing gentle music when sitting indoors and then pulling all other audio away and playing the sounds of birds chirping when sitting outside. There’s just an overall sense of peace and calm throughout this game, and while some of the puzzles can be a bit tricky, there’s no fail state, which means you can just walk away from a puzzle and enjoy the scenery if you need to clear your head.
There are a few very minor technical issues, but they’re barely worth mentioning. Some of the plants (not related to the puzzles) around the exterior of the manor tend to pop in and out, and the frame rate tends to fluctuate a little bit here and there, but that’s honestly the worst of what I saw. What I think most players will find more concerning is that the game feels just a little too pricey for its length. Although I do think this is a very good game, I can understand some people getting turned off by its $25 price tag for what’s essentially 3 hours of content. Thankfully, Botany Manor is also on Xbox Game Pass, which takes away that sting.
On a final note, there might be a bit of a longer gap than normal between this review and my next, since I’m getting ready to dive into Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth which (due to my playstyle) is going to easily take me 100+ hours to get through. I have another smaller game I’m going to have on the side, but my gaming focus is going to be on Rebirth. I’m sure I’m going to have a lot to say about that game, so stay tuned!
FINAL VERDICT
If you’re a fan of the current wave of “cozy games” or simply love to solve clever puzzles, then you should make sure Botany Manor is on your radar. This plant-based puzzler is full of charm and creativity as it tasks you with thinking outside of the box to recreate growing conditions for an array of wondrous plants. It’s short enough to get through in a sitting or two, and while the puzzles can be tricky, the logic behind them is sound and it never feels too frustrating or obtuse. The implementation of the clue system could be better, but for the most part, this is a rock-solid game that shouldn’t be missed by fans of the genre.
– Zack Burrows
Sight-In Games 