A
small independent Czech game developer founded by Jakub
Dvorský (click here
to find out who's part of the team). They got some attention after
winning a WebbyAward for Samorost
2.
Later getting some attention for Machinarium,
though the attention is starting to catch up again after the release
of Botanicula.
It was debuted as a stand alone game but also in a bundle. This was a
fantastic deal, it consisted of many of Amanita
Design's
games (the developers of Botanicula). Debuted on the Humble
Bundle website; these fine game enthusiasts every so often sell a bunch of
games at an amazing price of whatever you want. So when the Humble
Botaniucla Debut was offered, it was a bit of an Amanita Jackpot.
I'll get into more detail on the Humble Bundle in my review of their
site.
The main story line is about saving the world, but the world is a tree. You start by meeting the hazelnut and all the other characters (see to the right).You find out that something is eating away, killing all the colourful life around the tree by sucking away its colour. You command this hazelnut and its group of creatures to try to solve problems and escape the danger while looking for a way to save the tree.
Amanita
Design has a name based of the iconic genus of mushrooms known as
Amanita. There are
over 600 species of agracis
including a lot of quite toxic mushrooms that should probably be
avoided on a pizza. The
iconic amanita muscaria,
commonly known as the fly agaric, was the specific choice by Amanita
Design for their logo. Though a cartoon version it's still pretty
clear that it's the red domed mushroom with those deadly white
specks. When people think of poisonous mushrooms it's the common
picture. The games name Botanicula is a play on the word botanical.
Botanical
just means relating to plants, since the whole game is played on a
planet, it has creatures seemingly inspired by the very ecosystem of
a tree or flower. 
The art style is
something quirky. With creative creatures all around (see to the left)
the interesting spin on the normal things we see on trees and planets is vast. From characters based off peanuts, to bugs with one wing, characters designed for this story are usually quite adorable. There are some creepy creatures as well (I won't show any more because I don't want to spoil) but to all of you testosterone filled readers there won't be any violence. Amanita made sure that you would need to think about how to get through the game, adding in several puzzles, and designing the tree with many mazes. What that has to due with a lack of violence is, no combat. That may seem friendly and inviting until you want to pull your hair out from one of the puzzles. They probably aren't too hard but I still had to get a paper and pen out to make notes. Regardless if that happens to you I'm the one reviewing the game so just consider that the puzzles get more difficult as you progress. Starting at the top of the tree you try to make your way down, exploring more and venturing farther. A map you get near the beginning helps you keep track and find your way around the numerous mazes.
the interesting spin on the normal things we see on trees and planets is vast. From characters based off peanuts, to bugs with one wing, characters designed for this story are usually quite adorable. There are some creepy creatures as well (I won't show any more because I don't want to spoil) but to all of you testosterone filled readers there won't be any violence. Amanita made sure that you would need to think about how to get through the game, adding in several puzzles, and designing the tree with many mazes. What that has to due with a lack of violence is, no combat. That may seem friendly and inviting until you want to pull your hair out from one of the puzzles. They probably aren't too hard but I still had to get a paper and pen out to make notes. Regardless if that happens to you I'm the one reviewing the game so just consider that the puzzles get more difficult as you progress. Starting at the top of the tree you try to make your way down, exploring more and venturing farther. A map you get near the beginning helps you keep track and find your way around the numerous mazes.
As you can see it's
a leaf that seems to have the outline of whatever part of the tree
you're at. Every map will only show you areas you've already been to
so it forces exploration. Which in this case isn't tedious, it's a
lot of fun because the level designers put a lot of interesting ideas
into each section (at one point even plugging in a cameo from another
game). The leaf maps can only show a certain amount of area at a
time. Once you have filled it all up by exploring the available area
you essentially transition to a new level and that's when you get a
new blank leaf to scout. One could think of the tree as the game, the
leafs as levels, and the little sections of the leaf you uncover as
missions/ puzzles/ quests you need to complete. The presentation is
done fantastically with a prodigious pallet of colour. From the
pictures already one can see the variety. With so many bright colours
it's easy to catch the eyes of the player, though they make sure to
not forget the darker tones for emphasising death. The core problem
after all is the colour that was sucked away by the monsters (the
colour representing death).
Conveying what is good and bad based on tone is pretty common with the old white versus dark idea, but these developers are more artistic than that. Amanita knows not to complicate things and allows anyone to understand the unique world they created. Humour is implemented well, hooking the player in along with all those previous factors. The adorable protagonists you have along your side are usually the catalyst for amusement. The game is a point and click, this means you as the player have to engage everything. So at times when ever you explore or encounter a new creature the reactions from the main characters is usually a silly one. The amount of surprise they emit often translates over to the player (a bit subjective but hey, I'm limited in my statistics funding) which causes a lot of fun and laughable moments. Detail is immense, though even with all that detail the game is not realistic. The game tries to present a unique artistic style. With a lot of perspective shots, depth of field, and lighting done in a way resembling some high quality photography/ cinematography.
The hole game is played on branches of the tree, these branches are a light green colour that is see through (see to the left). Other areas exist that aren't on the branches but for a large amount of the time you'll see the semi-transparent branches. Inside of the branches you can see the veins of the tree and little organisms moving around. Adding in attention to little detail like that make the environment of the game a very stunning and a dynamic one.
Mechanics in this
game are quite simple. As most point and click adventures it mainly
deals with just clicking in the direction you want to move in and
clicking on whatever you want to interact with. The neat thing about
Botanicula is its constant variety in puzzles and how things are
supposed to be done. Having such simple mechanics means the real test
is that of the brain; playing the game starts to feel like second
nature. It engages, the game makes every trial you deal with have
unique obstacles. The mind is the real tool, having fluid and
straightforward mechanics work great as you try to take on each task
as if it were a jigsaw
puzzle in your hands.
That transitions
well into the difficulty and cleverness of the game, which
essentially means the puzzles. The cleverness is defiantly
progressive. The game starts of with very basic puzzles that teach
you how to play as you play, not a tutorial though, just good
conveyance of the mechanics, though this shouldn't be a surprise,
since they are so simple. Slowly adding more elements to the puzzling
system, the game challenges you the further you make your way through
the story. Some examples of this would be the implementation of
backtracking. Not to say that you have to grind
but instead there are unique events that you can interact with and
complete that will in turn help unlock further content in different
areas (sure you have to collect things at times but every time you
try to increase that counter to reach the goal something new/
interesting well happen making you want to continue on - looking
forward to what will happen next).
To the left there is a good example. Here you have to
find all the birds missing for someone and once you do you can move
on to the next area. The issue with that is that just making you
grind to find the birds is not innovative at all. Amanita has instead
implemented the much more fun method of getting a player to play a
hole new sub puzzle or mini game (found within each little hut) to get each missing bird. This takes
the generic concept of grinding and forms it into a quality filled
mission with several objectives, that in the end are all about
progressing through the game. Now that sounds appealing. Instead of
dishing out content similar to the way WoW
(World of
Warcraft) does with quests that make you gather 10 chickens by
killing a bunch of monsters 10 times over. Amanita instead dishes out
content with quality in mind that every “quest” is pieced
together with interesting content (attaining each chicken will be
different and require different thinking).
The soundtrack is
fantastic. DVA was the band who
designed the soundtrack (their name appears in the picture to the right). The points when the sounds
kick in or when you activate them usually help shift the mood a lot
so the soundtrack has a lot of variety to offer because the game
tries to convey the morphing emotions the characters feel. A lot of
the sounds in the songs are so odd I couldn't even figure out what
instruments were being used frequently. A similar style seems to
connect all the songs but I couldn't describe it with just a genre.
Songs like “Nocni Jazz” use ambient sounds very effectively to
set a mood but even if they seem simple there's a lot going on. In
that song one might think ambient as just really simple, but as the
song title says there is a lot of jazz in the song, and a lot of jazz
instruments are being used to make some of the ambience too.
Interesting mixtures such as this with very rare uses of sounds make
the experience refreshing. The lyrics are used wonderfully, since the
game has no narration (I'll talk more about that soon), or at least
no actual words are used, the sounds that come from the mouth are
just that, sounds, not words. Like the instruments, a lot of quick
noises are flowing together from the singers to make a melody, and
this puts a very equal amount of importance on the lyrics themselves,
not taking on a overly important role. No singer would be at the
front of the band, because the attention would always be switching to
what's going on in the back. The music is also interactive. When
playing the game pointing and clicking sometimes causes extra events
to occur. A few times this would even cause sounds to play and if you
figured out what to do, the sounds would actually function as pieces
of a puzzle. Once you solved it just like unlocking a new area, the
game awards you the complete song. Just as you figured out how the
song should play the game follows your lead and plays the rest. This
sort of twist to a point and click really show the desire to take a
simple genre, that people see as limited in so many ways, and
introduce aspects probably not predicted. It emphasises the amount of
creativity that was put into the game when people have a prejudice
towards a certain style or genre because it's so restricting, but are
then met with something like Botanicula. The lack of features one
thinks of will never match the amount of possibilities that could
exist.
Narration is all
done through imagery, there is no speech. This works very well
because without worrying about any of the writing the developers were
able to focus on a lot of the other aspects, like the visuals (it's
why they are so detailed). One might think that they are just
limiting themselves even further by making a point and click game
lacking in any dialogue, but in this case the limitations were a
catalyst. They helped bring more attention to other parts of the
game. The story itself is really simple but the way it's portrayed is
quite amusing. The characters constantly meet new creatures that you
have to help or run from. Each making their own unique sounds and
when they talk to each other it's more of a mumbling of sounds rather
then actual speech. The game really tries to go for the cute feeling,
because later on after spending so much time with these innocent
creatures you get attach to them, and the surreal world they have
been put into. It reminds me of a baby, unable to speak, also you
feel a need to help it, because your the one with all the brain
power, you have the ability to help the baby stay safe and grow up.
In Botanicula you have the ability to help the main characters get
through the tree and proceed to safety.
Settings, in terms
of resolution options, well it has the classic low, medium, and high.
So not very informative, but the game is small enough that most
computers should have no problems with running it. It gives an option
for windowed or full screen and if you choose windowed you can switch
between a 100% fill of the screen or a 60% size. 100% size with full
screen is just a bigger version of the game that doesn't actually fit
the hole screen (unless you have a small monitor [such as and iPad]).
It has a set resolution it can be stretched to. I can't inform you on
what that cap is because it's only given in terms of percent. The
only other feature is the choice to choose between languages and they
do offer a good amount of choices from English, Spanish, French,
Polish, Italian, Japanese, and more. There aren't many settings
available due to the simplicity of the game, it doesn't try to
overclock your CPU
(Central
Processing Unit) or run ultra high-definition graphics, so there
is no need for pushing your computers limits with extra settings.
Even with those limitations the game still looks quite nice, even if
it's got a small resolution.
I was surprised when
I found out the game was developed in Adobe
Flash, since the game is actually one of the better looking games
I've seen in a while, even with all of it's limitations. It would
have been nice it the resolution was higher and I could have had an
even more detailed experience but I'm not sure if that's just greedy.
The soundtrack works really well as you move through out the game and
even when I'm not playing it, the FLAC version (and other formats)
you can purchase is wonderfully composed. The game works great, runs
really fluently and has a lot of interesting and funny moments. It's
diverse library of puzzles really kept a lot of my interest, since
they get more intricate as you go along. With great visuals, music,
and a collection of puzzles this really made me feel like I was in an
interactive children book. With normally only text to guide you in
this case you have everything else but literature. A stunning
adventure that can be yours for 10 bucks.
You can buy
Botanicula at these locations:
GOG (Windows version only but you get the most bonuses: soundtrack,
wallpapers, design sketches, &c...)
Botanicula.net
(Get the Windows, Mac, and Linux version plus the soundtrack for $10 or get the Vinyl)
