Botany Manor Reviews
Developer Balloon Studios cultivates a beautiful puzzle game with the timeless allure of a summer's day stroll.
Clever clues entwine with Botany Manor’s charming old English setting to make for a lighthearted first-person puzzler worth tending to.
Botany Manor is a blissful, smart, and creatively conceived puzzle adventure. It’s just challenging enough to be engaging without veering into stressful territory, and its whimsical elements add fun, fantastical touches. I don’t think it made me better at gardening, but unearthing its appeal was satisfying.
Botany Manor is a genuine delight, a charming little adventure game with a nice story, a lot of creativity in its plant designs and unique botanical work, and amazing puzzles that feel like a throwback to the classics of yore while having their own beautiful twists based around thorough exploration. It's an absolute gem, so make sure you don't overlook it just because Victoran-era botany doesn't seem all that intriguing at first. As it turns out, it can make for one amazing game.
Botany Manor is a beautiful, focused and entirely peaceful game that creates an oasis where you solve puzzles and marvel at the world. It's wonderful stuff.
It looks like The Witness and it plays a bit like StreetPass Garden, but Botany Manor blooms into something that's not only entirely its own, but also something quite special. Don't let its cosy aesthetics fool you - Botany Manor is packed with nicely challenging, well-designed puzzles, and isn't afraid to tackle heavy subjects, too.
A nice and short first person puzzle game which provides nice puzzles and inspiring visuals while not managing to fulfill the excellent premise of its setting.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Despite its brevity, Botany Manor is a wholesome puzzle game that turns academic research into an engaging endeavor. The central theme focuses on finding the conditions to allow a living entity to flourish, a concept that is elegantly reflected in both Arabella’s personal journey as well as in gameplay. The game thematically underscores the overall interconnectedness of nature and highlights the influence that one's environment can have on well-being. Botany Manor left me yearning for more botanical discoveries and I can only hope that the developers sow the seeds of a sequel someday.
Botany Manor is a lovely little puzzle game that's relaxing, engaging, beautiful, and approachable. It's a great first game from Balloon Studios with a lot of charm, but it's not perfect, and it's even shorter than I expected. Being a day-one addition to Xbox Game Pass, though, makes it stupendously easy to recommend Botany Manor for an afternoon of fun.
Potter around a stately home as a Victorian botanist, figuring out how to get eccentric plants to grow
Botany Manor is a dense and emotionally charged work, designed to bring the player to live in the shoes of Arabella, a young woman who rediscovers her career, finding her own affections. It is a well-crafted and time-conscious production, with well-thought-out and satisfying puzzles. In short, a really convincing test.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Though short, the time players do get to spend in the world is made immersive and engaging through its diverse map, classical soundtrack, and ambient nature sounds. It's definitely one of 2024's most relaxing puzzle games so far, and I found myself thinking about Arabella and her strange plants even after I'd finished the story. Because of its length, some players may wish to wait for a sale to pick up Botany Manor, but it's an undeniably charming title that's great to explore and unwind with.
Botany Manor is all in all an excellent choice for cozy gamers who enjoy gardening and puzzles. It offers a smooth and relaxing gameplay experience that is sure to appeal to both veterans and newcomers alike. It’s a cozy gamers dream and reprieve from a slew of farming simulators.
Botany Manor is a colorful exploration game with clever puzzles to solve and an intriguing narrative to back it up. With each problem solved I felt gratified and smart for putting together the right clues and reading between the lines. The environmental storytelling and the relaxing atmosphere made me want to explore every nook and cranny of the manor.
A puzzler that challenges as much as it inspires, full of life and passion, even if its narrative offerings tend to stumble towards the end.
Exploring Botany Manor is a great experience as everything feels beautifully interconnected and the puzzles are fun and engaging to tackle the whole way through. It makes up for its lack of difficulty with charm in spades and an interesting personal story happening behind the scenes if you know where to look. Putting together the Herbarium is a lot of fun, allowing you to grow some plants you'll never be able to kill.
Botany Manor is like spending a Fall afternoon with a hot cup of tea and a good puzzle—relaxing, challenging and beautiful to look at.
Botany Manor is a delight. It's sweet, succinct and serene, packed with clever puzzles that reward thoughtful exploration and engagement with its narrative. At a little under three hours it's the perfect lazy weekend getaway for those that like to stop and smell the flowers as much as they like to enrich the soil of their mind.
Between its great pacing, breezy atmosphere, and more, Botany Manor shows Balloon Studios has a green thumb for game design.
Gorgeous, perfectly designed and utterly engrossing, Botany Manor is quite simply one of the best puzzle games of recent years.