Botany Manor might look cozy, but it hides a streamlined complexity

polygon.com:

Open up Botany Manor for the first time, and you’re immediately struck by, for lack of a better term, an overwhelmingly cozy vibe. This game oozes positivity and brightness; your ears get hit with what sounds like white noise, with a calming harp mixed in with the sounds of birds chirping and water running. The world around you is incredibly vivid, with intense, saturated colors for the trees and plants and soft-looking grass that crunches slightly under your feet as you walk. If you’re looking for a game that’s the definition of “cozy,” this would be toward the top of that list.

That vibe never changes throughout the game’s short run time, but this aggressively twee visage is only part of the story. While Botany Manor just tasks you with growing some rare plants, you quickly learn that it’s not so easy. All these plants require unique conditions to grow, like wind that blows at just the right speed or soil imbued with the correct amount of unexpected ingredients, which likely won’t be readily available. You’ll need to find the missing pieces, along with answers about your character’s history, across the sprawling Botany Manor.

The game gives you just the right amount of tools and information to go about your tasks, starting with a simple tutorial during which you’re tasked with growing one plant. For the most part, you have to figure out how to play by poking around and clicking on objects, bringing separate bits of information together to grow the plant. It’s not too complicated once you find what you need — and you’ll assign all the discovered clues to the appropriate plant in your journal, so it’s easy to keep track of it all — but that’s just the start. That tutorial then sets you up for much more difficult tasks later on.

Botany Manor isn’t a difficult game overall, but it’s more complex than you’d expect, with each puzzle intricately laid out in various areas of the estate. Many sections are initially closed off, and you can only unlock them by solving