I really needed a game like Botany Manor to shake up my recent gaming routine. Lately, all I’ve been playing is a mix of Pokémon Violet, No Man’s Sky and Splatoon 3 and I’ve noticed my brain running somewhat on auto-pilot. The perfect palette cleanser was a cozy little puzzle game to reinvigorate my imagination!
When I first saw Botany Manor during Nintendo’s Nov 2022 Indie Partner Showcase, I had assumed it was a bit of a cozy botany-sim where you just grow flowers and place them around your awesome mansion. But much like the roots of a flower, there’s a lot more going on with this game than one might expect.
In Botany Manor, players take on the role of Arabella Greene, a botanist working on completing her research novel “Forgotten Flora.” Doing so takes her back to the old Victorian Manor where she grew up, which is filled with both flowers and secrets. While there’s no deeper story to follow, the game is peppered with little details that shine some light on who Arabella is.
There’s something of an undercurrent about the difficulties women had in entering the sciences in the late 1800s and early 1900s—where this game takes place. As such, every flower grown is an act of rebellion against a system that was—and in some ways still is—designed to keep women out.
Despite its relaxed pace, Botany Manor’s gameplay is incredibly captivating. As players move through the mansion, they’ll discover seeds that have very peculiar ways of sprouting. Players will need to survey the various rooms of the mansion for any clues that might lead to a discovery on how to get it to blossom. It’s a mostly linear experience, as the game usually guides you around whichever area a seed is found for the corresponding clues. However, there are a few that might take you around the mansion in a small loop—adding story and character to the mansion itself.
“As I’ve said numerous times, ‘A puzzle is something you have all the information to, and the challenge comes from your ability to solve it.’ Thankfully, Botany Manor understands this concept…”
With every new seed, players will need to select the correct clues in order to complete Arabella’s compendium. However, it’s not necessary to get the flower to blossom. I won’t go into extreme detail since that would give away a large part of the fun—plus, the game’s Steam page already gives away the answers to quite a few of the early puzzles—but every puzzle finds a nice balance between relative simplicity and enjoyable ingenuity.
As I’ve said numerous times, “A puzzle is something you have all the information to, and the challenge comes from your ability to solve it.” Thankfully, Botany Manor understands this concept. While it doesn’t necessarily hand you its clues—usually hiding them around the house as an incentive to explore—they’re usually clear and straightforward. If there’s one problem Botany Manor suffers from in relation to its hints, it’s in the way they’re catalogued.
As I said above, when players pick up certain notes or objects, they’re registered as hints that need to be applied to the correct flower in order to complete their entry page. However, there’s no clear indication of what hint contains what information outside of interacting with it in the manor itself. As such, you can be left with several different pieces titled “Letter about [blank]” and not really sure it contained the information needed for a flower unless you work through trial and error.
Furthermore, the game seriously lacks a way to access the information conveniently while trying to solve each puzzle. I get that this is supposed to be a “cozy game,” but it’s incredibly inconvenient when you need to run all around an area you are in trying to remember clues to each puzzle. This is especially true when certain puzzles require doing math and needing to remember which objects represent which number values, which means running back and forth between two rooms and two different notes.
It’s a minor inconvenience since like I said, no puzzle is overly complex, but it’s one small thing that would’ve made the whole experience more chill and enjoyable. Plus, Arabella is keeping a whole book supposedly full of information. Being able to access it at any time would just thematically fit the game as well.
Visually, Botany Manor has a beautiful cell-shaded aesthetic that utilizes colour and lighting effects to make the whole game feel like a painting come to life. In a lot of ways, it’s a similar aesthetic to The Witness, but it works for this kind of experience. Furthermore, the entire manor is filled with little details that really make it feel lived in and unique. And while it looks very good on the Switch—particularly on the OLED model—there are noticeable ways it’s held back by the hardware.
The way foliage and small details all load in as you approach trees and bushes makes a game that’s all about botany and appreciating the calm of nature a bit less enjoyable as you’re noticeably watching the grass grow as you walk towards it. Furthermore, there are some notable framerate chugs that can be a bit jarring at times, considering the size and scope of the game. It’s not exactly enough to really dampen the experience, but the whole time I was playing, I couldn’t help but feel like it would’ve been just a little better on a more powerful system.
In the audio department, Botany Manor has a very calm, atmospheric ambiance that flutters between exciting and whimsical to serene and studious. It’s a soundtrack that perfectly captures the fun and imagination of exploration—both of the manor and scientific exploits. It’s almost like how Professor Layton always has the perfect theme to get you thinking about solving puzzles—Botany Manor has an excellent suite of music to capture the fun of its gameplay.
Botany Manor knows what it wants to be and executes it with aplomb. Its atmosphere is soothing, its environment is engaging, and its puzzles are well-crafted and interesting. Much like the flowers within, this game was clearly tended with love and allowed to blossom into something special. If you’re looking for a low-cost, interesting puzzle-solver, then you’ve come to the right manor.
