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One of the best detective games of the decade is free to keep on Epic this week

Published on January 01, 0001

Put down your trowel, stop smelling the roses, and listen to me for a second. Strange Horticulture, a narrative puzzler about running a plant shop that also happens to be one of the best detective games around, is free to keep on Epic this week.

Originally released in 2022, Strange Horticulture puts players in the role of a plant shop owner newly arrived at the alt-history Lake District town Undermere. Each in-game day, numerous customers will enter your store and ask you for a particular plant, though they can usually only provide a partial description of it. Using a magnifying glass and the world's weirdest horticultural textbook, you must identify the plants in your shop and match them to the right customers.

Strange Horticulture - Story Trailer - YouTube Strange Horticulture - Story Trailer - YouTube
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The story behind Strange Horticulture is equally fascinating. Its developers, John and Rob Donkin, spent a decade designing Flash games for sites like Newgrounds before designing their detective masterpiece, inspired by a botanical text called Breverton's Complete Herbal: A Book of Remarkable ทางเข้า winner55 ผ่านโทรศัพท์ มือ ถือ Plants and Their Uses.

"We just found this in a library one day and were like, gosh, how good is this?" John Donkin told PC Gamer's Jody Macgregor. "It's got all these cool plants and they've all got these amazing weird properties and uses. Some for I guess witchy things, others more as medicinal things. It's just so inspiring. We just thought, well, let's do that, but make them a bit more magical."

Strange Horticulture is free until August 28. Now is a great time to play it too. A sequel, Strange Antiquities, is coming in September. It likewise takes place in Undermere, but switches your plant shop for an antique store, while also promising substantially more involved investigation techniques.

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