You’d thought that a toy game is some kind of bad pleonasm but unfortunately, this is what I found in Botanicula. I must say that since the advent of Machinarium, I’ve been completely hooked by Amanita’s very peculiar style and as I waited for Botanicula, the hype piled up. So perhaps this is only the rant of a kid with shattered dreams but to be honest, I sincerely tried to like this game but I just couldn’t.

To give credit where credit is due, I believe they really did achieved this organic feeling Botanicula was supposed to be all about. You really feel life flowing in the environments you wander through as each and every pixel seems animated by a will of it’s own and in that aspect, the visuals of the game are a success - in my opinion, some of the graphics did lacked some depth and polishing but there is an undeniable care and effort that’s been put into the animations.

On another hand, there’s something really shallow to this world. Machinarium didn’t had a very complex story and neither did Samorost I and II and yet those games compelled you to evolve, they challenged you and to my sense, most of their beauty was in that somewhat magical relation you had with those games when you finally understood their bizzare, intricate mechanisms. In Botanicula, there are no bizzare, intricate mechanisms, only the bland repetition of a simple jack-in-the-box effect over and over as you blindly click on everything that moves and advance in the game in the exact same way. (I seriously believe someone could pass through this game by randomly clicking on any moving objects in about 5 to six hours max).

I often happened to enjoy creations that were mostly intended for kids (Miyazaki’s works especially), but with Botanicula, when I finished the game, I remember telling myself: “this really was a game for children”. So, if like me you crave challenging puzzles and enigmas that will, for a brief moment, grant you some feeling of amusement and wonder, perhaps Botanicula is not for you.

There is no story whatsoever (there is the “save the planet” theme, but no dialogs or interaction). This is essentially a puzzle game.

The puzzles are diverse but a bit too easy. The most memorable one was the bug race, but that was spoiled by the need to do some tricky actions afterwards to get the final result.

Some puzzles require ONLY trail-and-error and these were annoying, i.e. selecting the right rope in a maze of entrances and exits - you figure the right combination only to be taken back to the start after making a “mistake” in the second part of the puzzle. Others required at least some thought, so they were enjoyable in the end, i.e. jumping on “mushrooms”.

The visuals are done great, but the art style is a matter of taste - it works great for the game’s botanic/eco theme. My jaw didn’t drop to the floor, though I must say I enjoyed it a bit. The game features tons of items and unfortunatelly some of them are not polished enough, especially those that are just there for fun. Some of the real world items look really bland and flat. They really do stand out because the rest (the big majority) of the game is so beatiful and you can see that the devs put a lot of attention to the detail.

The game is quite short, so if you don’t buy it in a pack with other games, you may feel that you don’t get what you pay for. As you go and interact with the environment you collect a set of cards that depict what you have seen. When you finish the game you learn that the more you get the more extra presents you get. I wish I knew that from the beginning (and as ypu go there’s no counter)! I don’t care enough to replay the game - and that sums up my feelings after finishing Botanicula.

Great game, but I would have quite a few “ifs” before recommending it to anyone.