December 25, 2022

One of my GOTYs is a game you probably haven’t played (but should)

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Soapbox features allow our individual writers and contributors to voice their opinions on hot topics and random things they’ve been chewing on. Today Kate got green fingers…

Come here. Sit down. Shut up. Why haven’t you played Strange Horticulture yet? No, that was rhetorical. And also, a trap. I said shut up, didn’t I? You have to listen.

Okay, okay, I won’t actually yelling at you for not playing this game, because that’s no way to get people to listen to you. I want to highlight the brilliance of this hidden Switch gem, as GOTY season tends to trample smaller, quieter indie games in favor of blockbusters with seven-figure budgets — but even so, those small indie games can do a lot with the resources they have, and that’s exactly why I wish you draw attention to Strange Horticulture.

Strange Horticulture is pretty much everything I want from a narrative game: Intrigue, mystery, subtext, and COOL MAPS. It draws you in with the plants and forever draws you in with something deeper and scarier than you expected. If you like Inscryption, The Forgotten City, or Return of the Obra Dinn, you’ll love this too.

You can choose to interact with this plot however you like, as long as it involves flowers

You play as a horticulturist who runs a plant shop, and people come and ask you for certain flowers and leaves for various reasons. Sometimes they have an upset tummy; sometimes they try to poison their horrible husband. Hey, no judgment here — although it’s important to know that not only can you refuse requests you disagree with on moral grounds, but you can cheat make the seeker think you gave them what they asked for, rather than a plant that induces a death-like sleep but leaves the victim unharmed.

But the plot begins to unravel as you encounter cults, horrors and conspiracies, and suddenly even innocuous requests begin to seem like they are part of some grand conspiracy behind the scenes. Additionally, you can choose to interact with this plot however you like, as long as it involves flowers. You can “accidentally” poison people, help the other side, and generally just stir things up for good, all by giving your customers plants.

Strange Horticulture is a masterclass in subtextual narrative design, where the player is presented with facts and can make decisions based on those facts without any gameplay I’m telling you What to do. If I leave a bottle on the table labeled “poison,” I’m not telling anyone to poison someone else, but someone might draw conclusions about the contents and uses of the bottle just from the label. Likewise, Strange Horticulture gives you plants that look similar but have drastically different effects, then walks away, whistling nonchalantly. Hey, you’re a horticulturist aren’t you our it’s a mistake if you make a mistake, right?

I like games that trust the player to use whatever they have in their toolbox without having to be given the tools. It’s a growing genre — The Return of Obra Dinh, Outer Wilds, Witness, and Tunika are all pretty relaxed, and by being relaxed they allow for these fantastic moments of self-discovery. There’s this feeling that the game exists without you, and you’re just exploring it, like a museum, and putting everything together yourself, without the game state ever actually changing.

I like games that trust the player to use whatever they have in their toolbox without having to be given the tools

Strange Horticulture is more on the road than many of these, carefully picking out new plants to advance the plot, but still capturing that feeling of discovering things for yourself – never Story what to do, to the point that there are some things he doesn’t tell you at all. There are many things you’ll have to discover by reading between the lines, catching the subtext, or simply asking yourself, “I wonder if this would work?”, and honestly… there’s no better feeling than finding the answer to that question is an honest yes.