Strange Horticulture - Lost in the world of mysterious plants Storm Knight

The intersection of ideas is always something stimulating and enchanting. Mixing puzzle and simulation games with magical elements, Strange Horticulture opens up a world I’ve always dreamed of exploring.

In Strange Horticulture, the player plays the role of a shop owner who owns plants that can solve all the ‘weird’ problems and requests of customers, from curing diseases to scaring people (:D). To be able to find the tree species that meets the customer’s problem, the player will need to 1) collect a sample of the tree, usually by deducing from clues and identifying a specific location on the map, and 2) identify determine the ‘identity’ of a plant specimen by evaluating its appearance and scent and comparing it with the contents of a plant dictionary.

To talk about the tree species in the game, the specificity and uniqueness of each tree’s characteristics and appearance really overwhelmed me. The game team must have had a fun time letting their imagination run wild and brainstorming dozens of tree species and how they work. By the second time I played, I still couldn’t help but feel excited about the ‘each person’s unique look’ trees. Even the more I looked at it, the more each tree had its own personality.

Of course, visual creativity alone is not enough. The seemingly simple game mechanics of Strange Horticulture require players a lot of patience and attention. The activity of identifying trees is often a repeated cycle of opening the dictionary, reading the description, thinking about and observing tree samples, then continuing to open the document and read again. You will be deceived, will make the wrong choice and won’t even know what to try next after being wrong. You will find these identification processes either grueling or exhilarating, sometimes both, but no matter which direction the experience takes, they will have one thing in common: confusion. and an indescribable sense of pride and satisfaction once you have untangled yourself. At this point, it can be seen that the difficulty of the puzzles has been designed very carefully and meticulously. The details to deceive the player are installed delicately and selectively, creating a slightly twisted feeling without causing any inhibition. The moment the difficulty is pushed up is also a very appreciable plus point of the game. Through the excitement of the novelty of the game mechanics, I could have fallen into a somewhat repetitive, ‘too easy’ experience, but the game solved that problem very naturally by increasing the complexity of the clues, introducing new mechanics, and especially pushing the story to a climax.

Strange Horticulture is truly a flavorful experience combining stimulating reasoning problems with a mysterious, slightly scary plot. During the more than ten days of opening the shop, we were exposed to customers with different motives, sometimes from opposing factions, looking for plants with purposes and uses that could not be more worrying. . The guests make us wonder, “What is going on?”, “What role does this person play?”, “Should I support or betray this character?”. Of course, each choice will take us to a different development and ending.

However, it should be clarified that Strange Horticulture has more than one ending but is not a choose-your-ending game, meaning if you expect an experience that allows you to branch out and explore many directions. change the story significantly, you’re more likely to be disappointed. The main experience of the game revolves around puzzle solving – reasoning; The plot element makes the reasoning activity have many purposes and is therefore more attractive, exciting, and stimulating, but the lack of a story does not reduce the inherent unique appeal of the above puzzle mechanism, like A delicious dish becomes even more delicious when it is delicately presented and the right side dish is added.

I like to describe this experience as complete, not in the sense that it’s flawless, nor am I sure I can confidently call this game a masterpiece, but it’s complete in the sense that everything is just right. Not too long, not too short (about 5 to 7 hours per play), not too difficult, not too easy, not too strange, not too old, not too repetitive but not too chaotic. The most important thing is that everything that is just enough has allowed me to live the fantasy of an erudite researcher and collector, in a mysterious world that appears convincingly even through just a few words and images. just wrapped around trees and characters. Being a wide-eyed person who missed out on the pursuit of knowledge, the feeling of flipping through dozens of dictionary pages to find what you need, or successfully identifying 77 of the rarest and most difficult-to-find tree species on the planet. Life is all moments that touch my soul deeply and I cherish and am extremely grateful.