Botany Manor

Clever clues entwine with Botany Manor’s charming old English setting to make for a lighthearted first-person puzzler worth tending to.

Developer Balloon Studios cultivates a beautiful puzzle game with the timeless allure of a summer's day stroll.

Botany Manor is a blissful, smart, and creatively conceived puzzle adventure. It’s just challenging enough to be engaging without veering into stressful territory, and its whimsical elements add fun, fantastical touches. I don’t think it made me better at gardening, but unearthing its appeal was satisfying.

Potter around a stately home as a Victorian botanist, figuring out how to get eccentric plants to grow

Botany Manor is a beautiful, focused and entirely peaceful game that creates an oasis where you solve puzzles and marvel at the world. It's wonderful stuff.

It looks like The Witness and it plays a bit like StreetPass Garden, but Botany Manor blooms into something that's not only entirely its own, but also something quite special. Don't let its cosy aesthetics fool you - Botany Manor is packed with nicely challenging, well-designed puzzles, and isn't afraid to tackle heavy subjects, too.

Despite its brevity, Botany Manor is a wholesome puzzle game that turns academic research into an engaging endeavor. The central theme focuses on finding the conditions to allow a living entity to flourish, a concept that is elegantly reflected in both Arabella’s personal journey as well as in gameplay. The game thematically underscores the overall interconnectedness of nature and highlights the influence that one's environment can have on well-being. Botany Manor left me yearning for more botanical discoveries and I can only hope that the developers sow the seeds of a sequel someday.

Botany Manor is a genuine delight, a charming little adventure game with a nice story, a lot of creativity in its plant designs and unique botanical work, and amazing puzzles that feel like a throwback to the classics of yore while having their own beautiful twists based around thorough exploration. It's an absolute gem, so make sure you don't overlook it just because Victoran-era botany doesn't seem all that intriguing at first. As it turns out, it can make for one amazing game.

I never truly felt lost while playing, even if some of the puzzles didn’t make complete sense right away, it just meant that I had some more exploring to do! The constant rotation of discovering a new seed, determining the correct clues that fit the growing conditions, and producing a magical dream-like plant never felt monotonous. Despite my small issue with motion sickness, Botany Manor was still a delightful experience and left me wanting more seeds to discover and cultivate. I encourage you to try the game whether you are a puzzle game lover or not, as the cozy aesthetic outweighs the challenge of the hardest puzzle- which truly isn't that stressful!

Botany Manor is a gem among adventure games. With clever puzzles set in a fictional plant world, it challenges players without overwhelming them. And if you ever need a break, you can make yourself comfortable on a virtual park bench and unwind with relaxing chamber music. What more could you expect from a virtual vacation in game form? It's certainly not a game for everyone, as not much happens in this slow-paced adventure game other than challenging your brain cells. But sometimes it doesn't take much to excite me. A beautiful presentation and clever puzzles are enough.