Botanicula

TLDR Family-friendly point-and-click adventure in a “botanical” setting, charming and unique aesthetics, although simple gameplay [18/20⭐, 5h🏅, 1/5💡]

Context Botanicula is a family-friendly point-and-click adventure game, which follows a group of creatures trying to plant a new tree to inhabit after an invasion by parasitic creatures. Being an Amanita game you can expect an exquisite experience, even if very simple in gameplay this time.

Writing The game takes place in a tree habitat that is being corrupted by some parasitic creatures. You play as a group of… botanically-inspired creatures as they try to reach the surface to plant a new tree. As they adventure to the bottom of the tree, they meet and help varied creatures, but there really isn’t much of a deeper plot. There is no voice acting and all dialogs with other creatures are all pictorial.

Aesthetics This is the point where my writing skills just can’t make justice to Botanicula. Amanita excels at creating unique and artistic aesthetics that perfectly capture the game’s world, and this one is no exception. The visuals and the soundtrack are simple and cute without feeling childish. The game progresses essentially by interacting with other creatures, which always result in whimsical animations.

Gameplay Technically, this plays as a point-and-click adventure: you interact with creatures, and collect and use items. At some points you can choose which of the playable characters should act. But don’t expect any remotely complex puzzles. The game is straightforward, and mostly about finding the right creature to interact. Even the extras, finding every creature and collect their cards, follow the same design, and toughest challenges amount to clicking in several hotspots with medium speed. But don’t get me wrong: that’s exactly how a game like Botanicula should play out, where you are mostly exploring the environment and the beautiful animations.

You can’t die, there are no gameovers nor deadends. The game auto-saves automatically, but you can save at any place manually.

Value It took me 3h to finish the game, which is split into 6 chapters, and then about extra 2h to get all the creature cards (they do not accumulate through runs). You can save the game at any point, although there are only 6 slots. Achievements are related to collecting those creature cards, which may not require an additional complete playthrough if you keep saves games at the right places.

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lovely game

قبل مدة طويلة، اقترح علي أحد الأصدقاء تجربة لعبة معينة، وفي البداية رفضت بسبب الصورة النمطية التي كنت أحملها عنها واعتذرت بحجة أني أفضّل الاستمتاع بالألعاب التي أعرفها، ومع محاولات صديقي لي وافقت وحددنا الساعة 11:00 للبدء.

حان الوقت، لعبنا لمدة طويلة وكانت هذه هي “الخطوة الأولى” لي في عالم ألعاب ميازاكي، وتحديدًا Dark Souls 3. وفعلاً بدأت أجد نفسي مستمتع وبشكل كبير باللعبة. بعد مدة وقفنا اللعبة ورحت اصلي الفجر، لكن بعد كذا شعرت بشيء يجذبني للعبة. ولم اعرف ما هو بالضبط، لكن كان واضح لي ان عالم اللعبة والشخصيات تركوا أثر قوي.

قررت العودة للعبة بمفردي واستكشاف منطقة “undead settlement”. في ذلك الوقت، لم أسمع سوى هدوء المنطقة وخطوات الأعداء وصوت طلقاتهم. مع مرور الوقت، بدأت أتعرف على تفاصيل العالم بشكل أعمق. بعدها أخبرت صديقي أنني سأكمل اللعبة بمفردي. وهكذا، لعبت حتى أكملت اللعبة بالكامل.

A lovely game with a soundtrack that is just as lovely.

an actual story about how Ungoliant sucked the life out of the Trees of Valinor (⌐■_■)

Fun characters, amazing music, cool story, bit short, but would recommend

Absolutely beautiful.

Wonderfully strange.

Lovely game that can be played with kids.

Eccentric and endearing <3

Original. Creative. Fun to play.

A nice cozy puzzle game, but price is somewhat high so wait till it's on sale

peak

Meh. Boring puzzle game.

Such a way to play games as a child, and such a good feeling to play again many years later, now understanding all the humour.

This is a pretty good relatively low stress game! I say relatively because some parts can be frustrating if you don't know the game mechanics, but once you figure that out, the puzzle seems much easier, but then again, there are a few puzzles/mini games that do put you on your toes. I played it once before, but I didn't get all 53 achievements, so I just went back and completed it again and got them all! In order to get all the achievements, I recommend the text walkthrough on walkthroughking.com as well as the 7 part videos of Gamer Walkthroughs on Youtube. Sometimes the text explains things better, but sometimes watching someone actually do the task makes more sense! There are some Youtube videos that claim all achievements, but they don't even come close, and miss a lot!

My wife said if this review gets 50 likes and 5 awards, she will buy a case of beer, guys help me out.

Generally I enjoy the games of "Amanita design", but I'm not sure if I fully understood this game. Objectively this game has much more positive sides than negative, and it's not a bad game by all means. But this just became to weird, surreal and farfetchd for my taste.