Strange Horticulture

This is a fun little puzzle game with an occult murder mystery subplot! And there’s pretty flowers and a cute cat you can pet, which is always a bonus. But here’s my more detailed review: The good: Strange Horticulture really puts the “cozy” in cozy games. Although you “travel”, most of the game is spent behind the counter at your plant shop. Personally I enjoyed the puzzles, just keep in mind that the difficulty level of the clues varies. Most are easy, a few you might have to think about, and a few you might want to use a guide for to avoid maxing out your dread meter (the minigames are cool at first but there’s only 2 of them and after a while it gets annoying to repeat them). Don’t trust the book, sometimes it’s helpful but it misleads you on purpose. The bad: A few of the game mechanics are annoying. Using the map can be tedious because there's no way to cross off or mark locations you've already gone to and it’s a pain to wait for the Spirit of Adventure gauge to fill up again if you misclicked or guessed the wrong location. I also didn’t like how the book is organized. At the very least I wish there was a way to search for keywords in the book or add notes. Sometimes customers ask for a nickname for a plant, not the name listed in the table of contents, and you have to scan 50+ pages for the entry you need. I’ve heard Strange Antiquities is more polished so maybe it fixed some of these issues, but I haven’t played it yet so I can’t say for sure. The game is short for the price (the main story took me 7ish hours), so I recommend buying it when it’s on sale. But there are 8 different endings and you can choose your friends and enemies, which increases replayability value. TLDR: If you want a relaxing puzzle game, this is for you! If you want something more hands-on or challenging, I'd suggest looking elsewhere.

bem legal cozy

I had fun identifying fantasy plants and I look forward to playing again to get different endings. There was one point I thought I was blocked from progressing because I was interpreting a clue incorrectly, but I usually felt confident in my choices.

このゲームの素晴らしいところは、雰囲気と自分のペースで進められるところ。 客そっちのけで鑑定作業をしてもいいし、採集に出かけてもいい。 クイズはワンパターンで難易度が低めだけど簡単すぎないのがいい。 猫要素はもう少し欲しかった。

Simplesmente meu mais novo jogo favorito... Queria que tivesse uma opção de jogar "infinitamente", principalmente com os elixires (se tem eu não conseguir achar). Recomendo muito!

Surprisingly satisfying for a game where the screen barely changes.

It's charming, but the puzzles are pretty trivial, so I'd recommend it mainly to newcomers to detective games. For veterans, it can still be enjoyable if you're just looking to scratch that basic discovery itch, but it never delivers the deep satisfaction of solving difficult, overarching puzzles. It also scratches that OCD style filing itch a bit, similar to Obra Dinn's book, though on a much smaller scale. Overall, a nice little game. It's pretty cheap and goes on sale often, so no real harm here.