One of the general styles of play I’ll admit I tend to be the least fond of in games are what are typically called walking simulators. Played from a first-person perspective, this style can be found in quite a number of genres, but most typically in story-driven, horror, and sometimes adventure games where you spend a good deal of your time walking through environments that typically may have a great deal of detail, but only a limited number of items you encounter are you able to interact with. What I do tend to enjoy are games that can defy my typical expectations though, and Botany Manor is one such example, proving that when you keep players engaged enough the walking around aspect of play can mostly fade away as a concern. 

Played as a mix of an adventure, puzzles, some mystery, and even pointing to the plight of women in the late 19th century, it feels quite unique pretty quickly. Your challenge throughout is to explore and find the clues necessary to get rare and forgotten flowers to bloom, which will then be chronicled in your journal. For the most part, in each new area of the manor grounds you enter there will be clues in a variety of forms scattered about, pointing to key details you’ll need in order to understand the specific conditions each seed will need to be exposed to in order to get them to flower. Thankfully, your first project works as a pretty contained tutorial, with everything you need within a single space, helping to get you up to speed. From there though the clues you need to find, and the elements you’ll need to prepare or assemble for success will tend to be more spread out. This will require you to spend time meticulously exploring, looking for the key clues you’ll need to gather to understand the series of steps and sometimes equipment you’ll need to master each new challenge.

One of the main stumbling blocks people could have with the experience is that the grounds to the manor are quite extensive, so you will spend a fair amount of time simply wandering through them. One issue with this is that though you’re surrounded by many items, there’s only a small subset that you’ll be able to interact with, though they’re at least thankfully pretty easy to spot. I did appreciate that there aren’t that many useless items or red herrings that won’t help you in your fact gathering, at least minimizing wasted time at least yet not making it a sure thing that everything you can interact with will help you with your quest. In general the steps you’ll need to follow to get your seeds to bloom felt intuitive, but I can see where there could be frustrations if you don’t make some key assumptions of where you may need to put your potted seed and what specific actions you’ll need to take to get the desired results. Thankfully that’s what walkthroughs are for, but perhaps some more contextual cues in spots when you have everything you need could have been helpful.

As a whole I really appreciated and enjoyed the general chill vibes and pleasant time I spent with the game. The time it takes to uncover the mysteries behind each new plant wasn’t terribly long, assuming you don’t get stuck on some detail, and there was always a sense of accomplishment finally getting to see them fully blossom. The added story beats that you’ll encounter, giving you insights into your character’s family and her struggles to be taken seriously by the male-dominated scientific community at the time were also a great touch, enriching the experience without distracting you from your primary focus. I can’t say I’ve played anything quite like it before, but given my experience with it, I’d love to see more.