App Army Assemble: Strange Horticulture - "Should you set up shop in this weird puzzle game?"

• We handed Strange Horticulture over to our App Army
• Recommended for those who enjoy a deliberately slow puzzle experience
• Some found the text a touch too small on mobile

Strange Horticulture is a puzzler that recently made the jump from PC to mobile. Its occult theme and puzzles impressed our reviewer Iwan but we always like to get more opinions wherever possible. So, we handed the game over to our App Army to get their thoughts.

Here's what they said:

This one is for those who like puzzles, an excellent game with well-made puzzles that make us think for minutes and intrigue us with puzzles. Basically, you have a plant store and you have to solve some puzzles. In the meantime, you also have to take care of some chores such as taking care of your cat and identifying the types of plants. The game is well made for mobile and works super well with easy controls and with a beautiful soundtrack. If you're one of those who loves to unravel things, then you'll love this game.

I've never played Strange Horticulture on PC, but I imagine that on computer it's easier to navigate between all the plants and their descriptions. I even thought at first that the numerous texts were going to be tedious on the screen of my iPhone 13, but the developers found many options to facilitate the reading and the classification of the texts: the game is remarkably well optimized on mobile.

Finally, for those who see an interest, you can choose between many languages (15!). I tested the French translation which is perfect. Strange horticulture is a pleasant game to play, addictive and yet very calming, with charming graphics and relaxing music, and it is nice to be able to add it to your collection of games in your pocket. I recommend it to all fans of observation/puzzle games who want to enjoy a game full of delicacy and personality.

Strange Horticulture is a charming puzzler that has you running a shop that people will visit looking for a plant that will help them with a problem. You must identify the correct plant in your store and give it to them. Get it wrong too many times and you will have to solve a puzzle to continue. You will usually get information on new plants in return. There is an overarching story that is revealed as you play.

This game is very much in the mould of Papers Please! Just without the time constraint. The game mechanics of examining plants and reading letters for clues, dealing with customers one at a time and facing choices is reminiscent of that game. I really enjoyed this game, finding the right plants and looking for clues is addictive. Graphically it looks nice as well, a game well worth checking out.

Working in a dark store selling plants sets Strange Horticulture up as a weird puzzler. There are dozens of high-paced puzzlers where you have to assemble pizzas or other food items. Those are based on speed, and keeping several orders going at once. Strange Horticulture has a gameplay based on reading plant descriptions as slowly as needed.

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You are able to zoom in on botanical descriptions, and the plants themselves. Once the correct flower or fungi has been identified a new customer shows up. Slowly. Strange Horticulture is dark with a gothic feel. It isn’t for everyone but comes highly recommended to those who like a slow puzzler with a dark story.

Strange Horticulture on iPhone 8. I really enjoyed this game, but couldn't cope with the small text - even using the zoom feature I struggled to read it. I liked it though, so I went off and bought the PC version (half-price on GOG.com). I've played it loads on PC now and love it - the mix of identifying plants and deciphering clues to map locations is very compelling. So the game itself is great, but if you struggle with small text you might not get on with the mobile version.

Strange Horticulture is an interesting puzzle game about identifying plants and locations to get more plants and explore more locations (or maybe "collection of puzzles" is more precise?) that reminded me of Papers, Please. You get a name, maybe a description, maybe a drawing, and you need to check inside your encyclopedia, your map and your various paper notes scattered everywhere until you figure out which of the dozen plants on display fits. If it doesn't fit, no biggie, you might even poison your customers - which you might even want to do on purpose, to foster revolution and societal change.

I downloaded the PC demo so I can compare it to the Android implementation and, obviously, the mobile port is way inferior. You can still play on mobile (despite having to read a TON of text) because you can change the font and even zoom in the whole screen - the problem is that you can't zoom in forever, and swapping back and forth between your plants, your map, your books, or your drawer. is really cumbersome. The biggest visibility issue is the map, which just doesn't read properly (the font change doesn't apply to it - you need to tap each small dot on the map to finally see the name of that place).

I was also disappointed because the mobile version, with tactile screens, would've been the perfect place to further innovate. For example there's a puzzle where you get four places and need to find a fifth - which is placed at the intersection of the lines between the four places. Obviously, you need to solve this with pen and paper, because drawing lines with your finger on a virtual map is unheard of in the 21st century.

The ultralong line of plants that takes forever to scroll through was also annoying, and so were all the papers that started cluttering my screen, but if I keep listing all the issues with the port I'll need 2000 words, not 200. All in all, a nice game that you should probably play on PC. Why, oh why can't we have nice mobile ports?

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Strange Horticulture