Following the launch of Botany Manor straight on to Xbox Game Pass, I got the opportunity to sit down virtually with Balloon Studios founder Laure De May and Artist and Designer Kitt Bryne. We discuss the creation of Botany Manor, the importance of accessibility in gaming, puzzle design and more.
Let’s jump in!
This interview has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.
Jon: Thanks for taking the time out with me today and congratulations on the successful launch! How does it feel spending years on a project like this to then just see it out in the wild?
Kitt Byrne: Yeah, it’s it’s been really lovely, actually. You know, you never know how people are gonna receive a game. And the reviews have been really good.
Laure De May: It’s so nice to read tweets and things by players who’ve been waiting for the game and to hear that it’s exceeded their expectations or that they really enjoyed it. It’s been great.
Jon: Accessibility has been an increasingly prevalent theme in gaming over the last few years, and it’s unusual for indie games to get many features that fit in that bracket due to budgetary constraints – but Botany Manor has them in spades. Was that a particular effort in terms of mindset? Did you go in thinking we want to make this to be as broadly available to everyone across the planet as possible from an accessibility point of view?
Laure De Mey: Yeah, definitely. I think that was a very conscious effort on our part specifically because we kind of estimated or we kind of knew that people who wouldn’t necessarily, traditionally be into games or be into traditional games in that sense that they wouldn’t necessarily have all the experience to play this game. And it is a first person game, which was like another conscious decision to make it more immersive. But it does come with a bit of a learning curve, a bit of experience to handle the the controls. So yeah, we we felt that was almost like a compromise; a way to to lower the the barrier for people to just pick up and play.
Jon: Botany Manor is also gorgeous to look at. What was the inspiration here? Where did the inspirations for a Manor house and and everything else that forms the art style come from?
Laure De Mey: For me, I think a really strong inspiration was travel posters like the really vibrant, painterly in style, kind of minimal noise, sort of an Impressionist art style like that was for me, a big direction point.
Kitt Byrne: Yeah, I would say that when I joined the project, Laura had some really amazing, very concise references of how she wanted the space to feel and kind of like the lighting and the atmosphere was already partially there. So that was really helpful for me. I would echo travel posters is a great one actually, because I’ve always loved those. I’m a bit of a history nerd, and I’ve always loved any kind of art and design that revives history in a slightly stylized way. And I think there is a bit of a travel poster revival in Botany Manor. Additionally, anything where we really wanted to get that sense of ‘place’. It’s almost like you can smell the light or you can feel the light and that atmosphere was already partially there in the game. From there, it was very easy to be inspired to create textures and clues and things that sat nicely in that space and felt like you could almost feel the dust and smell the smells and have that atmosphere come to life.
Jon: I can echo it. As I’ve been playing, there are plenty of places I’ve stumbled across like the library – it feels musty in there. But then you get these huge swaths of light through windows. And even though it’s painterly in style, it feels very real. So I think you’ve you’ve achieved great success in what you were going for there. I’m not sure I’d use the words “open-world” to describe Botany Manor, but it kind of is? It’s just a super focused one where you’ve just got this sprawling grounds of this house and everything has this detail with little intricate puzzles. How do you go about designing that play space so that you can link from one puzzle to the next and guide that player through them?
Laure De Mey: I think design in Botany Manor was a puzzle in its own for sure! I think what helped me a lot was to think it’s set in a Manor and it always has to be a Manor. So that is set in stone and it we can’t deviate from that. So we started there – we thought about what rooms are there in a manor? There’s an old kitchen. What can we do with that? What kind of plans relate to kitchens? So it went from being defined by the place, rather than what would be a great puzzle. It was almost the opposite of abstract. It was never an abstract thing. It was always what makes sense, what was feasible in the 19th century, which forced it’s own limitations to the design. Another limitation was the fact that it’s in first person. You need to make sure that people don’t miss something.
For example, the plant growing the puzzle design was very deliberate in the fact that we always needed to make sure that the players saw the plant grow, that they couldn’t miss it, so we couldn’t do this thing of – there’s a button in a different room, and if you press it, something else happens outside of your view, over there. We always need to make sure that every action was visible in front of the player. But I think the limitation kind of helped us to really quickly decide – this works. This doesn’t work. Okay, move on. Try a different idea. Limitation is good sometimes.
Jon: Yeah, it keeps keeps you on a straight and narrow path, right? And it’s interesting you mentioned it’s set in the 19th century. There is a story here to uncover for players as they’re as they’re going through the world solving these botanical mysteries and making these plants grow, which revolves around the main character that you effectively step into the shoes of – Arabella Greene. She’s a Botanist in the 19th century. History tells us that women in scientific and research roles, were perhaps not allowed to do such things, and you’ve dropped seeds of that throughout the game. What led to the decision to set it in that time period rather than modern day?
Laure De Mey: Well, we’re both women, in the games industry – and that comes with, you know, some challenges or some experience.
Jon: Gamers can be horrible.
Laure De Mey: Well, it’s not as bad as in the 19th century, that’s for sure!
Jon: I’m glad to hear that!
Laure De Mey: But yeah, so it was a bit of a personal touch. But also I think the idea of setting it in the 19th century was quite natural because the places you find the real Manor Houses across the UK, they all kind of stopped at a certain point in time because that’s when they were carried over to the charities or estates, because people couldn’t afford the upkeep anymore. So when you visit these places, they are kind of all 19th century or around that time, maybe a little bit later, but definitely not modern.
But also from a scientific point of view, it was more romantic to set it in that time. So much science was still being discovered and the tools weren’t always there, and the contraptions were really interesting.
In terms of inspiration for me personally, Marianne North was a really big inspiration. She has a gallery in Kew Gardens, and she was a botanical painter, and she actually contributed a lot to to the science of botany – but through a non traditional way.
Kitt Byrne: I would just add that even if we only had kind of the seeds of the idea early on not to use a plant pot, that in the process of researching information we needed for the puzzles and for the narrative and looking into history, we were constantly finding examples – new examples of women who had published really important things but weren’t very well known anymore or had even had to publish under pseudonyms. Things like that. And so there was constantly these really inspiring examples that we felt like we wanted to try and at least have a nod to in the game as much as we could.
Jon: As you guys look forward now, Botany Manor is out on Game Pass, across PC, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch. Are there plans for adding more to Botany Manor, or is it onwards and upwards for Project #2 for Balloon Studios?
Laure De Mey: Never say never. I think we’re keeping our all our options open at the moment we don’t have any immediate plans. There isn’t like a clear, decided road map or anything. I think we’re just kind of waiting to see what the reception is. But yeah, we also have of course we also have other ideas for different projects. I think the focus right now is just to take a break!
Jon: A well deserved one! One final question from me – the gaming industry is suffering a bit at the moment – we read all sorts of horror stories and you know, we’ve seen the impact of layoffs this year as well as as the games industry kind of ‘rethinking’ how big games need to be. And for me, as a fan of indie games – because indie games are where you get the really unique ideas in, where you see most people take the most risks, and do something completely different. I always appreciate developers for that, but for anyone that might be reading this interview, and wants to get into gaming or wants to pursue a career in narrative or game design or anything of that nature – where would you say is a good place to start? Where should they focus? What would your advice be to to people that perhaps are inspired by games like Botany Manor?
Kitt Byrne: You know my tutors at Uni used to say this to me and I’m not sure how well I took it on board, but I guess I’m here now. It’s just don’t wait for somebody else to give you permission to start making things, to start doing things you might not have a lot of experience or you might not have learned certain technology yet, but you don’t need to be told you’re allowed to by anybody else. There’s a lot of resources out there. There’s some amazing resources out there like YouTube and things like that these days. Or maybe it’s just practising writing, you know, taking as much as you can from as diverse sources as you can and just do it. Don’t wait for somebody else to say “Oh, you might have potential. I will allow you to work on this game with me” – you know, just start practising the things that interest you and go for it.
Laure De Mey: I think similarly, I think it’s important to just practise and and do and just start and there’s many ways right now to to try like you can make a like a text based adventure game or something with a with a plug in like it doesn’t even have to be technically crazy – it you can make a paper prototype or something even, but I would also say I think Kitt touched on it as well, like find stuff that interests you. It doesn’t have to be games. Almost try and find things that interest you, like Botany Manor. It isn’t that traditional. It’s about plants. It’s about Manors. It’s something completely different. That was put into a game and I think it’s always worth finding your own personality and and expressing that to people because people want to see different things and new things. They they want to feel something personal. Bring that to your work.
Botany Manor is available right now on Xbox Game Pass, and in our review we said:
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.
