The way Strange Horticulture takes something minimal and spins something grand from it is wonderfully impressive and just pure fun. By doing this, we stopped wishing for a mouse before too long and all was right with the world of Switch gaming. We settled for running most of our playthrough on a desktop monitor as if using a PC. Using a larger OLED Switch in handheld mode, we enjoyed ourselves, but it felt less than ideal. Shoulder buttons and the d-pad are used to scroll or skip different interaction areas of the screen, to reduce pointer usage, and there's a ZL/ZR function to zoom in and out that will give you a fighting chance with the text. Captured on Nintendo Switch (Handheld/Undocked)īad Viking and Iceberg Interactive have done everything they can here to mitigate the problems (except for adding mouse support it seems – we did test that). Whether you’re trying to read on a TV from a distance or on a diddly handheld, it can be a struggle. Compounding things for the Switch is the teeny-tiny text in some places. An onscreen keyboard is sufficient to type out the minimal amount of plant labels, but moving your cursor to shuffle papers, water plants, stroke your cat (yes! and it purrs!), and everything else really needs a mouse (a computer mouse – not for the cat). Having been released on PC some months ago, Strange Horticulture is, in truth, crying out for a desktop to play on. In this respect, it resembles games like Papers, Please and In Other Waters – and fans of those excellent games really ought to check this out. It does look attractive – and sounds fantastic too – but the limited variety in the captured images belies the fascinatingly diverse and intricate experience that’s on offer. One critical fact about Strange Horticulture is that its screenshots sell it short. Before we realised it, we were neck-deep in murderous intrigue, long having crossed the ethical Rubicon, and with a desk piled confoundingly high with documents, scraps of paper, books, tools and maps. Hints start to emerge about where interesting spots might be, and the plot thickens as you discover clues buried in letters and items you already had. A gorgeously compelling map invites you to explore the game’s great outdoors, which is done by selecting grid coordinates, after which you receive a text description of what occurs. An early in-game decision allows you either to soothe a customer’s ills or exacerbate them – and you must carry the moral doubt of either action when you decide. However, the game soon takes off into more sophisticated spaces. ![]() There’s a loop of learning and labelling plants to receive more plants and more info pages that immediately sucks you in.Ĭaptured on Nintendo Switch (Handheld/Undocked) By cross-referencing what’s on your plant shelf with what’s in your plant-cyclopaedia, you identify the salves, syrups and embrocations that are needed. Each day, a series of customers arrive at your counter in need of horticultural help. ![]() The player runs an apothecary dealing in specialist plants with medicinal, mind-altering, magical and even mechanical effects. In Strange Horticulture, Bad Viking has created a mystery story set in a bizarro-style English Lake District, where real-life place names nestle amid castles, stone circles and religious cults. The filling-out of the world as we played came from our own discoveries, and we were drawn powerfully into the emerging intrigue of the plot. It creates deep immersion in a well-rounded world while starting from a simple place. But with Strange Horticulture, Bad Viking pulls it off. ![]() It’s such a tricky line to walk between structured gameplay that’s interactive but dry and a carefully managed story that limits interaction. It’s a carefully authored story that wants to be driven by interaction, and it’s a single-scene play space that wants to create immersion in a whole world. Strange Horticulture takes on some big challenges.
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