Eines meiner GOTYs ist ein Spiel, das Sie wahrscheinlich noch nicht gespielt haben (Aber du solltest)
Soapbox-Funktionen ermöglichen es unseren einzelnen Autoren und Mitwirkenden, ihre Meinung zu aktuellen Themen und zufälligen Dingen zu äußern, über die sie nachgedacht haben. Heute, Kate gets green fingers…
Come here. Sit down. Den Mund halten. Why haven’t you played Seltsamer Gartenbau noch? Nicht, that was rhetorical. und sie entscheiden, ob sie den Spieler oder eine andere Fraktion angreifen sollen, je nachdem, wo der Spieler in Bezug auf seinen Fortschritt steht, a trap. I said shut up, habe ich nicht? You gotta listen.
Okay, In Ordnung, I won’t tatsächlich yell at you for not playing this game, because that’s not the way to get people to listen to you. I want to highlight the brilliance of this hidden Switch gem, because GOTY season tends to trample all over the smaller, quieter indie games in favour of blockbusters with seven-figure budgets — but even so, those small indies can get a lot done with the resources they have, and that’s precisely why I want to bring Strange Horticulture to your attention.
Strange Horticulture is almost everything I want from a narrative game: Intrigue, Geheimnis, subtext, and COOL MAPS. It draws you in with plants, and hooks you for good with something deeper and scarier than you expected. Wenn du möchtest Verschlüsselung, Die vergessene Stadt, oder Rückkehr der Obra Dinn, you’ll like this too.
You can choose to interact with this conspiracy however you like, as long as it involves flowers
You play a horticulturist who runs a plant shop, and people come in and ask you for specific flowers and leaves for various reasons. Sometimes they have an upset tummy; sometimes they’re trying to poison their terrible husband. Hey, no judgement here — although it’s important to know that you can not only refuse requests that you disagree with on a moral basis, doch kannst du dupe the requester into thinking that you gave them what they asked for, instead providing them with a plant that induces death-like sleep but leaves the victim ultimately unharmed.
But the plot begins to unravel as you stumble into cults, horrors, and conspiracies, and suddenly even the innocuous requests start to seem like they’re part of some grand behind-the-scenes plot. Mehr, you can choose to interact with this conspiracy however you like, as long as it involves flowers. Sie können “versehentlich” poison people, help the other side, and generally just stir things up for the sake of it, all by providing your customers with plants.
Strange Horticulture is a masterclass in subtextual narrative design, in which the player is presented with facts, and can make decisions based on those facts without the game ever telling you was zu tun ist. If I leave a bottle on a table that says “poison”, I’m not telling anyone to poison anyone else, but someone could draw conclusions about the bottle’s contents and applications from just the label. Likewise, Strange Horticulture provides you with plants that look similar, but have drastically different effects, and then walks off, whistling nonchalantly. Hey, you’re the horticulturalist, es ist nicht our fault if you get it wrong, is it?
I love games that trust the player to use everything in their toolbox without having to be handed the tools. It’s a growing genre — Rückkehr der Obra Dinn, Äußere Wildnis, The Witness, und Tunic are all pretty hands-off, and in being hands-off they allow for these fantastic moments of self-made discovery. There’s this feeling that the game exists without you, and you are just exploring it, like a museum, and putting together everything yourself, without the game state ever really changing.
I love games that trust the player to use everything in their toolbox without having to be handed the tools
Strange Horticulture is more on-rails than many of these, as it doles out new plants carefully to advance the plot, but it still captures that feeling of discovering things for yourself — it never tells you what to do, to the point that there are some things it doesn’t tell you at all. There are many things that you’ll need to find out by reading between the lines, catching onto the subtext, or simply by asking yourself, “I wonder if this would work?”, and honestly… there’s no feeling better than finding out the answer to that question is a hearty “yes”.
So, Strange Horticulture is easily one of my Games of the Year, and I sincerely hope that 2023 brings more of the same. Jetzt, go play it. Or you’ll be in trouble.
What’s your underrated gem of 2022? Write me an essay in the comments! Und go play Strange Horticulture!