Botany Manor Review: Forgotten Flora, Unforgettable Delight

You need to grow one plant in order to leave the introductory area of Botany Manor, but I was so busy basking in the serenity of the world that I accidentally grew my volcanic plant from Sicily six times instead of just the requisite once. Alone in a wing of a sprawling estate, I found myself settling peacefully into the gardening boots of Arabella Greene, a botanist researching for the herbarium she’s trying to publish. Her journal for the herbarium, called Forgotten Flora, becomes your in-game journal, too, keeping track of maps and clues as you make your way around the well-decorated grounds.

Throughout her beautifully rendered 16th century manor (in remarkably great shape, considering the game takes place in 1890) lie bits and pieces of research that help Arabella finish the remaining plants she’s yet to log into the herbarium. As you explore the various areas of the home, you’ll find more and more clues that lead you to a “Eureka!” moment on how to grow these particular little plants, each more temperamental than the last.

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Tabbing through the herbarium shows silhouettes of the flowers you’ll be growing, with space on the adjacent page for clues. Your job in Botany Manor is to put together all the clues you find and figure out exactly what you need to do to grow each plant. The puzzles get increasingly complicated as the game goes on, but never prohibitively so, as long as you’re good at taking a step back and reassessing what you know. Your clues can be anything from a polite postcard from a friend to a complaint from a neighboring farmer, and it’s up to you to make sense of them all for Arabella.

Solve Clever Puzzles To Grow Colorful Flowers

Each clue, no matter how odd it may seem, is critical to growing these plants for the book. The postcard from your friend is how you find out where one of the flowers is from, and with this knowledge, you’ll figure out how to grow Mediterranean flowers all the way up in your Somerset, England home. The farmer, meanwhile, is pleading with you to stop whatever is causing a flash at night and scaring his cows, which leads you to the revelation that the plant in this particular level must require flashing lights in some way to grow.

Exploring the manor in search of these clues is a genuine delight on first pass – this “abandoned” home is gorgeous – but it can become repetitive as the criteria for growing these plants become longer and more involved. You can log your clues in your copy of Forgotten Flora, but you can’t review them from there, requiring you to trek back to where you found the hint originally if you need to consult it for a second time.

I wound up taking physical notes to save myself the time of going back and forth in later levels. The publishers gave me a real-life copy of the Forgotten Flora herbarium at PAX East, and I think Arabella would be proud of the deductive work I’ve done in it!

Speaking of Arabella, Botany Manor features absolutely no dialogue, but it still nails telling the story of a woman seeking validation in a male-dominated field. You’ll put this information together yourself just like the gardening clues, occasionally finding letters from friends that explain her relationships, thoughts, and struggles without Arabella ever needing to say a word. I do wish there had been some way of getting into Arabella’s head throughout the game instead of just wandering the grounds in her boots, but I don’t think the game suffered much without it.

Physically, I did suffer playing Botany Manor, but publisher Whitethorn Games is big into accessibility settings for players like me. I usually take motion sickness medication before I can stomach playing games like this, I’m so incredibly sensitive to the nausea that comes with bouncy first-person steps, but Botany Manor has options designed to mitigate that exact issue. Not only are you able to tweak a dozen or so settings, but they also remove the guesswork by telling you whether increasing or decreasing each option might help.

Is Botany Manor Worth It?

Overall, did I grow the Windmill Wort, the introductory flower, six times in my first moments of the game? Yes, but only because I was so excited to have figured out how to grow flowers that could literally erase the smog in my greenhouse. The day I played the short, five-ish hour game was a gray and dreary one, but I sat snuggled up at my computer immersed in the peace of vivid colors, a minimalistic and ambient soundtrack, and a sense of whimsy.

Botany Manor doesn’t expect much from you – grow some weird little plants in your own time, no rush. But through this, it delivered one of the most relaxing afternoons I’ve enjoyed in a while, wandering the halls of this gorgeous Victorian manor solving puzzles, growing flowers, and helping a woman succeed in STEM.

Developer(s)

Balloon Studios

Publisher(s)

Whitethorn Games

Pros

• The gorgeous art style and ambient soundtrack provide a relaxing atmosphere for this cozy game.
• Puzzles are interesting to solve and become vastly more complicated as the story progresses?
• ?but there?s never any need to hurry.

Cons

• Even with unlockable shortcuts, backtracking becomes a little monotonous.
• Inner monologue thoughts from the protagonist would have added to the story.

A code for this review was provided by the publisher.

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