Horticular: Build a Garden, Attract Wildlife

I'm marking this review as negative but it's really more Neutral. There's some desperately needed QOL changes this game needs for me to feel good about recommending it. This sort of game is generally something I would deeply enjoy, but there are multiple compounding issues that make the gameplay more frustrating than it needs to be. I really do like this game when it is going smoothly, but as animals gain more complex needs like other animals nearby the frustration starts and compounds. Managing one nearby animal isn't so bad, managing 2 nearby, one of which needs a different one nearby, that can't be near yet another one another needs nearby... it's fine to have that complexity. But you can't track multiple habitats you are trying to build at a time. Getting one animal set up and happy, then working on the other animal that needed that first animal, and then having the first animal freak out that I ruined it's home by changing one terrain tile. then wanting to move slightly to the left, etc, It's not fun at all. Animal sickness feels so unnecessary and frustrating. Having to pixel hunt to click on a speedily moving bee to spam Cure on it to heal it isn't fun gameplay and adds nothing to the game. There also needs to be a way to set specific habitats only for specific animals to want to move into. It's irritating to have an area that bees and frogs keep wanting to move into and having to shoo them away all the time. Especially when I am waiting for another animal to want to move in somewhere else. It does make you feel like you can't just decorate some areas just for the hell of it, a Bee will want to move in because you have a bunch of plants set up and then get sick over and over again. Personally the Corruption events are fine to me, though I feel like on anything but Relaxed mode they would just become tedious. I feel like with being able to track habitats you are making better, and without Sickness, this game would already be significantly more fun to play.

Horticular started out great but ultimately after a few hours I realized this had one MAJOR glaring issue. I saw almost every single other negative review mention it as well, the habitats for the animals are disaster! The habitats need completely reworked. Why am I constantly battling with different animals and their habitats not being able to coexist? Wildlife will get upset and if you don't move them or fix their habitat they will leave, and the problem with that is, it's nonstop. A frog moves in and upsets a goldfish. A rat moves in and upsets a frog. This turns into a nonstop loop, and it needlessly complicates Horticular. It's the main reason I've deleted the game from my hard drive. Also in addition to the habitat mechanic, I think that animals and their habitat requirements need to be better explained. What exactly is good shelter for a rat or what does a frog need to be able to bask in the sun? These are simple and easy things that I never saw anywhere in the game explained other than, you are missing X number of things in order for that specific animal to move in to the habitat. It leaves you guessing and since you have to purchase new items as you play, you may not even realize what you are missing. Now, I honestly could have missed some details, because there is quite a bit of reading in Horticular. A lot more than you'd suspect, and because of that you are almost overloaded with information. Most of everything you'll read is next to useless information too, because it's trying to drive the story forward, so I wouldn't be shocked if I missed key info. I honestly didn't want to read letter after letter of something I didn't particularly care about. To sum everything up, I guess I don't think Horticular is worth it if continues to have the issues I mentioned. Keep an eye on the game, but I probably wouldn't purchase this game until you see an update addressing the habitat problems.

Would like to have it without the corruption thing, where you have to "hunt" enemies with magic and repair stuff, etc.. Just get the best out of the garden without any pressure, that is what I would wanted. Shame really.

The game has a lot of potential and fun, and I loved it,, until I didnt. The auto placing habitats where I DON'T want them drove me from this game. I've rarely seen such an irritating mechanic in a game. You do your best to prepare a place for a new habitat and boom.. game placed a habitat for another creature there. I don't need FOUR goldfish habitats thank you. Maybe that pond I was painstakingly preparing was for a frog habitat? But nope, now I'm stuck with 4 of the same habitats with no way to delete them, Shame, cos if this wasn't the case I'd happily play this for ages.

The game is sort of fun, but there are some things that are just way too frustrating to actually enjoy myself. For one, I am trying to create a Dragonfly habitat, and I added everything I have in my already established Dragonfly habitat, all prerequisites (including the Bumblebee). Yet, it still is not becoming a habitat for some reason and there is no way to know why without just happening to place the exact thing the game wants you to have. For two, the corruption monsters at night are too annoying. There comes a point where there are too many of them to kill before they end up destroying your items and killing your animal residents. I guess that would be fine if the game actually told you what was destroyed and where so I know what to replace to make my newly unhappy cat/rat/keeper happy again. You need to keep track of thousands of items and remember exactly what you had placed or else the corrupted creatures destroy it and you're screwed. For three, there are a lot of tedious things that just seem to be time wasters. For instance, I want to place grass. I can pause it and create it myself, but I have to sit there and hold left click on it for a few seconds (other ground types take a lot longer) instead of just instantly creating it. It's not fun and just punishes the player. Why allow me to pause it and create it if I have to waste time on every single tile anyway? Plants get corrupted way too quickly and it's a lot of micromanaging that's just frustrating. Animals get sick far too often, leading to the same issue mentioned previously. One of the worst parts of the game, however, is the fact that there are items (boulders, ancient trees, etc.) that you cannot remove. It's an eyesore on the garden and it gets in the way. It's frustrating to have to work around it rather than just build the way I want to. For all of this, I have to recommend against renting this game on Steam (yes, it's renting since you own nothing and apparently will be happy about it). The frustrations far outweigh the fun I was having.

I enjoy decorating games, but often find panorama games too heavy on the sandbox and light on the direction to really get as into them, as much as i *want* to. Horticular doesn't suffer from this problem, and so I've been deeply absorbed in this game far beyong the lifespan of my interest in games like Tiny Glade and Make Room (beautiful games I recommend, but I couldn't quite get into myself). While it reminds me a little of the particular types of mobile game represented well by the Kairosoft games (e.g. Pocket Harvest) purely in aesthetic it has a great story and interesting habitat puzzle type mechanic that differentiate it from mobile games of that genre. The thing that really sets Horticular apart from similar games is that its story mode features a delightful layering of objectives that keeps me engaged, while also offering several forms of creative mode from pure sandbox, to a peaceful mode with unlock requirements for those desiring more freedom, or freedom with a lighter level of direction. To explain what I mean by 'layering objectives' is that there are a variety of tasks to work towards that provide direction from the short term to the long term. You have the story line quests that start out quite simple and soon become an overarching long term goal, character quests that focus on a specific collection of items or a particular animal, and then the recurrent 'Horti Day' celebration which gives you broad sort of a focus across a few days in the lead up and then feedback on your progress - for example it may ask you to place as many items as you can, do as many upgrades as you can, reclaim(delete) as many items as you can, expand as many times as you can etc etc. This may feel overwhelming at first, but there's not much in the way of punishment for not completing any particular task, challenge or horti day requirement, and it ensures that the player explores aspects of the game they may neglect otherwise (e.g. I'm loath to delete an item after its placed, but a horti day demanding I reclaim items meant I invested in the perk to get more money back from reclamation and also did a bunch of reclaiming I would never have done otherwise). I think that if you have ever wished that a game like Planet Zoo had a cute and chill pixel-aesthetic version, or thought fondly of Viva Pinata, or wished that Make Room's objective system was a bit more fleshed out, then this may be the game you are looking for. And if you think that tripling the roster of animals in a game and having 90% of those new animals be insects is appealing you should definitely check out the really high quality mods available in the workshop. (Honestly, love an insect-centric fan base)

Great great game. Here’s a tip: If the conditions are right, it will automatically generate a habitat. Then, an animal will show up, and you’ll be tempted to put the animal in the habitat. You do NOT have to do this. DONT house a frog just because there is space. Leave that fella hopping around without a home. It’s okay. There’s no way to remove an auto-habitat other than removing qualifying items in it’s chunk.

Really scratches that Viva Pinata itch. Since it's newer, some of the mechanics are improved which is nice. I do miss having pinatas though.

I recently played this game's predecessor, Viva Pinata, again for old time's sake, and I realized something: I think as a garden simulator game, Horticular is probably the better game. I like both of them, but after getting a better look at both games I can't lie about this.

Scratches that Viva pinata itch.