Test : Botanicula

Point & Click nature, Botanicula lives as a brief aside simple and beautiful, a puff of pixels without head in a plant world original.

Botanicula

For:
Original universe
A the cool game
Wonderful atmosphere
The Humble Bundle coming

Against:
Enough short
Some too simple puzzles

After time to wear his excellent penciling adventure Machinarium media game, the small independent studio Amanita Design started in any another project with Botanicula. Nothing to do with a love simulation prohibits the country of flowers, Botanicula place the player to joysticks five small creatures who must save their plant world to die. The whole is still in point & click and the beautiful part to small puzzles to the progressive difficulty. A game to the Green message played without glasses green (Nvidia, Eva, same fight?)...

In view of the liabilities of the studio, was expected to immediately fall under the charm of this small nugget indie. The discovery of the first paintings is a disappointment. The universe has cool air, quite pretty atypical graphics, the small display is led charismatic, but despite a gameplay perfectly nested fresh music via successful sound effects, nothing to do, it remains outside this small world. The black bébêtes that suck the vitality of the leaves of this tree without the slightest qualms leave us almost of marble.

And then eventually understand, point & click is good only when it becomes a little more complicated. The first tables there for the last in the mouth and offering strictly no challenge, our neurons of players were simply not enough jostled to wake up. Just time to realize that the system of indices of Machinarium has been abandoned, and we are nose to live. OK, we're going to do this Botanicula. Fortunately, it is also convoluted that could sometimes be his predecessor. Person will need of walkthrough to take advantage.

This somewhat soft startup is quickly forgotten, since the game is little by little life as it discovers new tables, equates the means to unlock the passages and popular more quickly from one point to another trying to click around to trigger interactions with the decor, sometimes unnecessary, or liberating. We are thus left to conduct general click our small unlikely troupe to the right and to the left, and take pleasure to discover all small animations that Amanita Design artists had fun to conceal in their game. The originality of graphics in contemplation. The word is a little strong, but since Botanicula is also humorous in animation while playing without restraint with its characters, it benefits.

The system of these animations is also very malignant creator of surprise, and gives such real life to the game. Some of them trigger immediately, others require the player to insist and click several times without really knowing if it will happen something different. At times it nothing happens. Other times it click three or four times now to be eligible for the highlight of the show. And often, it is at this price that is crucial to our progress in the adventure.

Botanicula is long and tinkering four to five hours decors green & peace enough to what remembered more as a getaway, relaxing parenthesis in life of player doped with testosterone. Especially appreciate the very colourful side of the game. Small explanation as exchanges with other characters being always in pastel sketches, and without any letter. Similarly, Botanicula is a very polished game. When the player is wrong, it simply has the right to a small additional animation and is given the opportunity to start again. That's also probably why that the game is before all a pleasure of discoveries.

But as stated in intro, the real binder of all these ideas, it is music. It is indeed on the soundtrack, mixed with the gameplay with a certain brio, that the magic of Botanicula operates. And when the music becomes explicitly the subject of some puzzles, it said that Amanita Design is indeed a small studio full of creative ideas, and all this is done with delicacy and parsimony. Botanicula sight to see, but to listen also.

Note that even a little less than a week, Botanicula is available for the Humble Bundle indie initiative. You can then download and three other games for the sum of your choice, and fund the rescue of the forest at the same time. If with all that you do not try, no one knows what to do...

Botanicula - available on PC
Config' minimum: Processor 1.6 GHz / 1 GB of RAM / 730 MB of disk space