Game: Horticular
Genre: Simulation
System: Steam (Windows) (Steam Deck)
Developers: Publishers: Indirection Games | Slug Disco
Controller Support: Full
Price: US $19.00 | UK £ 16.75 | EU € 19,50
Release Date: July 11th, 2024
No review was used; I purchased the game myself.
Horticular is a familiar but all too rare riff on a gaming niche some of us desperately crave. It’s a genre with exactly one major ancestor: Viva Piñata, released in 2006, let players build lush, colorful gardens in order to attract even more colorful residents. There, the pinatas would breed colorful variants or evolutions of themselves, all while you, the watchful protector, kept them safe from invaders and feral piñatas.
It was the sort of game that invited obsession, a blend of life sim and decoration game with a handful of peculiar twists, and Horticular, out now from Indirection Games, is taking that seldom-used formula out for a spin. With pixel art, oodles of things to collect, and dozens of real-life critters from bumblebees to crows ready to visit a lush new world, it’s a game I wanted to take a chance on. Did it pay off? Let’s not be coy: the answer is a wholehearted yes.
Viva Horticular
Horticular’s visual design is going to be a hurdle for people tired of pixel games, admittedly, but the game features a depth of visual interest that is perfect for gamers who love the slightly similar Let’s Build a Zoo. Sure, bumblebees are about four pixels wide, but honestly, they’re bees, and if they disappear into the massive ferns spilling out of their habitat, that’s on brand.
Most critters are just big enough to show chunky adorability, cycling through animal behaviours as they adapt to the environments you make. And that’s where the game’s aesthetic shines; the critters may be small and not as fantastical as the progenitor piñata, but the decorations you unlock and place gradually create sprawling biomes that make it feel like an enthusiastic nature preserve.
That’s what the game encourages from you, and it’s the core of a premise so silly yet well thought out that it’s hard not to embrace its charm.
Gnome Me The Way To Go Home
The garden gnomes call to us, friends. Yes, those pudgy-faced little dudes with the mushroomy hats and the bucolic homes are the keepers of Horticular’s call to action. Not above making more than a few jokes at the expense of their American cookie-baking cousins, the gnomes are nonetheless devastated by the fall of their garden world at the hands of an unknown Nemesis.
Desperate and more than a little goofy, they approach the player via mystical chats, asking them to come to this ruined world of dirt, where they’ll teach you what you need to know to make the wasteland vibrant again. The tutorial they offer is quick, funny, and gives you all the important info you need. Bonus: it’s available to refer to in easily-referred sections in the menus.
The gist is familiar to Piñata vets: Every animal needs a suitable habitat to encourage it to move in, based on factors like biome (water, lush grass, sand, etc) and needs like shelter or foliage. As you create more habitats, you’ll learn that they can overlap a little, and some critters are only going to be happy with the right neighbor close by.
Features are gradually introduced without overwhelming you. They include a shop with more decorations and soil types, an upgrade tree, and a second type of shop that lets you offload the nectar that piles up once your garden—and your enemy—is thriving.
Low-Stress Stakes With Horticular
Starting the game offers a choice of sandbox or story mode, of which I strongly recommend playing the story first. Once that’s picked, there is an option to reduce the stress of facing off against the occasional nighttime onslaught from the Nemesis. Even on normal, it’s rarely a harrowing battle against the dark forces. Mostly, they’re just bad boy gnomes that speed up the rate of natural garden decay and critters that like to leave poison around, making your residents sick.
Adding gnome keepers to your garden will help alleviate the pressure of keeping your garden healthy and free of decay, and it’s not difficult to balance the cost of their upkeep versus your daily income from how cool your garden world is becoming.
In fact, the whole financial system in the game is delightfully low-pressure, mostly there to keep you from overwhelming yourself with too much unlocked territory to decorate and too many decorations to keep track of.
Your major story goals take longer and longer to complete, but not in a sluggish way. It’s more like the game is telling you it’s okay to take your time now; you’ll get to the next quest eventually. For now, just keep unlocking stuff through the shopkeeper and completing the bevvy of little side quests that let you get to know the crew that is helping you.
A note for the arachnophobic: One character that assists you is identified as an arachnid. But its character profile image is cute and harmless and not even easily identifiable as a spider. As someone who made a bad life decision and saw Arachnophobia in the theatre as a kid, I would be the first to tell you if this was a bad game for the phobic. It genuinely is not, with even the pixelated scorpion small and vague enough to make me chuckle it away.
Horticular’s Style Helps It Run Smooth
With a simulated simplistic life cycle going on, where animals are gradually linking to each other across your increasingly large territory, it’s a pleasure to say the game runs perfectly on a Steam Deck, with total controller support. I can’t imagine any issues it would have on a midrange PC, so long as the minimum stats are met and the game lacks any stuttering or lag, even after a dozen plots have been unlocked for me to decorate.
The only fuzziness, which has never caused a disaster, is that aiming your healing or banishing spells at critters and invaders can be a little tricky. Always start by looking for your target’s shadow, and its heart meter will be visible if your spell is going to hit. Sooner or later your target will also pause long enough for you to click on it without trouble, too.
Conclusion
Horticular is the spiritual follow-up to Viva Piñata cozy gamers have been craving for years. While its style isn’t as modern or as polished as some would like, it’s hard to deny the charm of this pixelated wonderland. Its controls are simple and intuitive, and new wrinkles to the gameplay are added at a pace quick enough to keep you interested but without overwhelming you.
It’s also a game that wants you to take your time with it, giving you plenty of reasons to slow down, plant the flowers you want to sniff, and just hang around and admire what you made for a while before jumping off to your next chosen goal. It’s a game that’s received a shockingly low amount of coverage, and I’m hoping that more reviews like this one will help it reach the audience it deserves.
Final Verdict: Two Thumbs Up
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