Horticular (Game)

Horticular

GAME » on July 11, 2024

An isometric gardening game with more than a smidge of Viva Piñata mixed in.

Overview

You are summoned by a bunch of gnomes to help with restoring a wasteland into your own garden. You can build it however you like, but you will also need to meet specific criteria to attract various animals. For instance, to attract a bumblebee you'll need enough items with the tags "foliage" and "flowery" within a 5x5 grid. These habitats become more and more challenging to build as you will eventually need to overlap them to attract the more exotic animals.

You are also periodically attacked by the mysterious "Nemesis".

Story

I think you are the "particular horticulturist" they are looking for, hence "Horticular". Not sure though.

The game begins with your summoning by the "Council of Keepers", a bunch of gnomes that seemingly protect and cultivate worlds of gardens around the universe(s). Something happened with their last "Horticular", Nightshade, and the worlds slowly decayed. Something they call "ruin" and "decay" started seeping in, turning everything into a wasteland.

But they finally got the hold of a new helper. You.

Gameplay

Transforming the wasteland you are given into a verdant garden is done square by square. You need gold coins to buy plants and various other items, but changing the wasteland to other types of ground is free. It only takes time, and the time varies by which kind of ground you want. Grass is fast, but Deep Pond takes a while.

Once you have placed the type of ground you want or need, you can plop down plants, trees, bushes, furniture etc. Almost every item you place increases the daily payout of gold coins you get, as well as increasing the "Love" score of your garden. This score acts like a multiplier for your gold payout, as well as a way to score you every 11 days or so.

Placing down a variety of foliage and items is needed both to have a good score, but also to attract animals, which is your true goal in the game. Every animal needs a specific mix of items within a set square. Some also have items and other animals they cannot co-exist with. The animals you attract is the biggest part of your daily payout, as they add the most to your love score multiplier. There are also quests you receive from various figures, many of which consists of attracting specific animals or making habitats of the "magnificent" tier.

Habitats

For instance, here is what you see of the first animal (Bumblebee) before you have settled any.

At first you don't know any of the criteria for making an animals habitat, but if you have some of what they need they will start visiting. Clicking on a visitor will give you some of the criteria, until you have the basic list. First you'll only have an approximate of what you need, depicted by circles that fill up. So a circle fully filled next to "Water" means you most likely need all of the habitat filled with water, while a circle with barely any showing next to "Flowery" means you need a few flowers.

You only need to fill the minimum requirements for a habitat to be viable. But you can add more of the items the animal needs to boost the score above 100%. If you hit 175% the habitat becomes "magnificent", which means you can have one more animal settled. If you manage to boost the score to 275% you achieve the highest tier, which can hold three animals.

Once you have settled a few of the same animal you unlock the ability to see exactly how many of what items you need to make the habitat, and you also unlock what the animal loves to have on its turf.

You can purchase a lot of new squares of land, but they do cost a daily upkeep and are more expensive the further from the center you get. Oh, and you can give your animals names.

For the Bumblebee you learn that you, in addition to the size that you always know, need at least 5 Flowery and 1 Shade. They also love the Insect Hotel. So in order to make a great Bumblebee habitat you should place an Insect Hotel (which you can unlock in various ways) and place the most expensive items with the tags "Flowery" and "Shade".

Eventually the list of what you need and what you absolutely cannot have within the border of the habitat will get more complex. Like with the late-game "Buttefly", where you need plenty of Land (grass for instance), a bit of Mud, Flowery, Foliage, Shelter. And you cannot have Crows, Rats or Frogs within the habitat.

Luckily, the buildable area can be upgraded to be quite large. So you will have plenty of space to build and make habitats, as well as areas just for you to make pretty.

Conflict and disease

There is a lot to keep track of eventually!

You do have to contend with "Corruption" from time to time. Sometimes at midnight the time will freeze, and you will have to banish waves of corrupted creatures there ruin your garden. Every item in the game slowly decays, which you have a few ways to combat. But these creatures come in and hastens that decaying process. You are given various spells throughout the game to deal with these creatures.

Your animals can also become sick, which eventually makes them move out if not handled. Spells come to the rescue again, or you can just click the animal a few times to make them better again.

Both of these aspects of the game makes it a bit hectic once your garden has grown bigger, but if you want a more relaxing experience you have three difficulties to choose from at the start. You can also play Sandbox mode instead of the story.

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