In Strange Horticulture, you run a plant shop in Undermere, a town ringed by hazardous forests and mountains. Customers bring you into an occult mystery with roots stretching back centuries, while your work as a horticulturist ties the shop’s everyday encounters to the town’s darker secrets. The game’s premise blends botanical investigation with a story shaped by the people who visit.
Identifying unfamiliar plants is central to play. You consult an encyclopedia and clues gathered during explorations, then use each plant’s effects to influence the story, with possibilities ranging from hallucinations to poison. Beyond the shop, context clues help you decide where to explore and where danger may lie. That combination of deduction, careful choices, and eerie discoveries gives the game a distinctive mystery-solving design rather than a focus on action.
Its adventure and simulation elements meet in the rhythm of tending a collection, interpreting evidence, and seeing how plants affect the unfolding narrative. Even small acts, such as identifying a specimen or responding to a customer, sit within a larger effort to unravel Undermere’s mysteries.
