Review | Botany Manor

‘Botany Manor’ is what protagonist Arabella Greene calls her home; the Greene estate is a gorgeous plot of land and sculpture, complete with plants of all kinds all over the place—and developer Balloon Studios and publisher Whitethorn Games hopes that you can help the retired botanist out in doing a bit of homework on her estate.

Locked doors, conveniently placed plant-based obstructions, and a beautiful sunny English day awaits players in what is a blast-to-the-past 19th century puzzle narrative adventure.

STEM experience not required. Just a bit of patience, really.

As you likely figured, Botany Manor is all about plants. More specifically, it’s about a set of twelve unique plants that you’ll need to grow to complete Ms. Greene’s journal. It’s in this said journal that she hopes to have published by a major academic journal to not only cement her career as an esteemed botanist (and an astute researcher at that) but to share her findings about some of these soil-creatures. And that’s where the player steps in: you’ll play as Arabella and you’ll explore the 16th century manor as you put together clues on how to make these plants grow.

It might sound tough, and occasionally the game will throw a bunch of numbers and words at you—but if you can read between the lines, you’ll be more than okay.

Heck, Botany Manor pounds its drums on its simplicity. The estate is as empty as can be sans you and your creaky footsteps: there’s nothing to fear in this old building besides your own shadow. The game’s environments are beautiful and its all accompanied by ambience and the occasional melody that plays as you unlock access to the manor’s keyed off areas.

I would like to emphasise how nice this game looks and sounds—the visuals are crisp and the lighting is pleasant to the eye and no matter where you stand or sit, you’ll hear the sounds of birds chirping away, lush flora, creaky house boards, you name it. Botany Manor wants you to simply take your time and enjoy its unique plants somewhat based in reality yet mysterious in their own ways.

And I do appreciate this approach, although I think it is a little flawed. I personally feel the “take it slow approach” should also be accompanied by “go about the workload in whatever order you like”. Botany Manor’s progression is based solely on a fairly rigid puzzle completion path.

You’ll find some story beats along the way, giving you an idea of the whos and the whats of the estate and its inhabitants, but if you find yourself stumped on a puzzle you can’t just walk away from it and go do something else to progress the game, and I think this game could’ve used that at times.

There are some obstructions around the manor that seem rather silly—Arabella might not be a spring chicken, but I’m sure she can move a table a few meters forward or step around an obstacle or two.

Mind you, Botany Manor’s puzzles aren’t insanely difficult. As a matter of fact, I would argue the plant puzzles were the easiest of ’em all and what stumped me from time to time were puzzles built around and into the house. As I mentioned, the game’s puzzles tend to rely on throwing you a lot more information than you really need.

If you’ve passed any written exam before, you’ll be right at home at Botany Manor. And by that I also mean you don’t need any pens or paper to write things down (though it can help a bit) as all you need to do is put two and two together when you’re comparing information found.

Speaking of found notes, the house is full of text logs and story-focused beats that can be used towards finding the ‘right’ solution to growing a plant. Find clues, place them in the right fields in the notebook, and voila! The entry won’t fill in as completed, but now you know which clues will lead you to igniting a plant’s growth spurt. Unfortunately, these notes can only be placed in and cannot be viewed from within the notebook despite being found.

If you need information from a leaflet, you’ll have to trudge back and find it yourself. On top of that, the menu for putting these clues together jumbles all the notes you found into a list and I think categorising them into a tab menu by “area found” would make sifting through everything much easier and cleaner. Ultimately I chose to remember details and avoided the notebook only when I didn’t have a choice.

Now one aspect of this game I really enjoyed was seeing Arabella’s past (and that of the manor) through her house. As you explore, you’ll find her struggles in being taken seriously by the “prestigious” academics, who dismiss her and her work in the Botanics as a knitting circle ritual.

Seriously, some of these letters you find are miffing and if I were in Arabella’s shoes I’d have sent back a box of horse manure in response to these jerks. Alas, she works with what she has, having to use her Uncle’s name to gather research material, being told to find a husband before its too late. She never says a word but you can almost feel the frustration emanating from these bits and pieces you pick up.

I do have qualms with Arabella, or perhaps more so a lack of connection with the character. As you explore the manor you’ll find a lot about what kind of person she is but not so much about who she is.

She’s smart, she travels a bunch, very serious about her work but that’s all you’ll find about her. Arguably her family members, even the house get more character than our protagonist and even despite the slightly bittersweet ending, particularly as I felt her lifelong plight as a woman and a woman researcher no less, I felt that not knowing what Ms. Greene does for fun or what her home means to her ultimately took away my satisfaction with the game’s story.

Oh, and before I forget: Botany Manor has a nice selection of accessibility options that make the game easier to control and can help with motion sickness. Field of view, a setting to control character movement with one stick, toggle buttons for sprinting and zooming—all these are well-appreciated.

I should mention that the overworld has a few visual glitches here and there, nothing bad, but the HDR implementation is not good and crushes all the colour from the final image as you can see in the first gallery. I recommend turning it off when playing this game.

Botany Manor is an enjoyable puzzle-focused adventure with an obsession in weird plants and an interesting estate. What might be lacking in overall narrative is made up for pleasant pacing and a relaxing homework assignment at a country side world of plants.

Botany Manor

Played on

Xbox Series X

PROS

• Beautiful presentation and solid controls with good accessibility options.
• Puzzles can challenge but are based in simplicity and some real science.
• The setting and pacing of the game makes this one a pleasant play.

CONS

• Notebook and clue management is clunky.
• Arabella as a character feels more cardboard cutout than character.

8.0 out of 10

AWESOME

XboxEra Scoring Policy

Available on

Xbox Series | Xbox One | Switch | Windows PC | Steam

Developer

Balloon Studios

Released on

April 9, 2024

Publisher

Whitethorn Games

Rated

Everyone

Price

$24.99 USD | Day One Game Pass Launch

See on the Xbox Store