The beauty of botany with none of the mess. Botany Manor is a botanical puzzle game from Balloon Studios, a new development studio led by Laure De Mey. In the game, you take on the role of Arabella Greene, a retired botanist in 1890 Somerset who’s compiling a new herbarium book: Forgotten Flora. To complete the book, you must explore her stately home to uncover long-forgotten seeds and solve puzzles about to grow them.
This will be a quick review of a relatively quick game and, to cut the suspense early, I liked the game. The first thing that caught my eye were, appropriately, the visuals. A bright and clean visual aesthetic permeates the entire game. This result is an experience that’s pleasant on the eyes while also lending itself to naturally screenshot-worthy scenes. The audio design and music, done by Thomas Williams, accents the visuals well. Light musical tracks and gentle audio cues guide the player forward and help even the confusing puzzles not feel frustrating.
Your time in Botany Manor is mostly spent engaging with its puzzles. As you gain access to more and more areas in the estate, you will find clues that help you grow a variety of unique and colorful plants. There are a total of 5 chapters and, while not equally proportioned, they take about the same number of hours to play through. The game’s puzzles are mostly well-balanced so, with the exception of a few vague ones in the second act, they are often satisfying to solve.
As someone who loves any excuse to crack open my notebook and scribble down notes, I liked the number of numbers, dates, and codes I had to remember in Botany Manor. That being said, it would still have been nice to have some way of recalling items you’ve seen too. As it is now, to reference something you looked at previously, you have to go back to where you found it. Thankfully there is sprinting in the game with no stamina bar so, if anything, that makes this game a jogging simulator.
I do have one real gripe with Botany Manor and it has to do with the plethora of letters and books littered around the estate. While I won’t say they are placed at random, it is a bit absurd to me just how many papers are sitting on oddly placed tables. I can kind of buy it when it’s inside the manor (as I said, I like taking physical notes) but when they’re lying outside on a table, in just the right locations mind you, it sort of breaks the suspension of disbelief, at least for me.
One thing I didn’t expect to land quite as well as it did is the game’s portrayal of a woman in science in the 1800s. Reading the letters about people belittling or discouraging her from pursuing a career in botany as we help her put together the research for a book of her own was a surprisingly effective narrative structure for a game that doesn’t tell a traditional story. I do wish for a more meaty (no pun intended) campaign here, but I also appreciate its presentation as it is.
All in all, Botany Manor is a short and pleasant puzzle game and a great debut from Balloon Studios. I played it on the Xbox and other than some occasion pop-ins, the game looked good and ran smoothly. It is narratively slim but its puzzles are satisfying enough to make the experience worthwhile. Botany Manor is available now on Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, and PC. The game is also available on Xbox Game Pass. Click here to check out the Chapter 1 guide for the game and be sure to check out our interview with Laure De Mey, Founder of Balloon Studios and Creative Director of Botany Manor.
