| CGMagazine |
Jordan Biordi |
8 / 10 |
04-10-2024 |
Botany Manor is like spending a Fall afternoon with a hot cup of tea and a good puzzle—relaxing, challenging and beautiful to look at. |
Read review |
| Checkpoint Gaming |
Bree Maybe |
8 / 10 |
04-08-2024 |
Exploring Botany Manor is a great experience as everything feels beautifully interconnected and the puzzles are fun and engaging to tackle the whole way through. It makes up for its lack of difficulty with charm in spades and an interesting personal story happening behind the scenes if you know where to look. Putting together the Herbarium is a lot of fun, allowing you to grow some plants you’ll never be able to kill. |
Read review |
| COGconnected |
Tisha Kambarami |
78 / 100 |
04-08-2024 |
Botany Manor is all in all an excellent choice for cozy gamers who enjoy gardening and puzzles. It offers a smooth and relaxing gameplay experience that is sure to appeal to both veterans and newcomers alike. It’s a cozy gamers dream and reprieve from a slew of farming simulators. |
Read review |
| Digitally Downloaded |
Lindsay M. |
4 / 5 stars |
04-08-2024 |
Cozy means something different to everyone. For me, a cozy game is about a welcoming atmosphere, no death, and a slow pace. That description fits Botany Manor to a tee. The world is so lovingly crafted, the grounds so abundant and colourful, that I’d like to stay there forever. I have screenshots of every room I’ve been in because they are perfectly decorated from every angle. The logical puzzles require careful observation (and sometimes backtracking once or twice) yet are somehow simultaneously quite straightforward. Botany Manor is exactly the kind of cozy puzzle/gardening sim that I’ve always wanted, save for a couple small bothers. I’m already eagerly anticipating my return to the manor. |
Read review |
| Eurogamer |
Matt Wales |
Recommended |
04-09-2024 |
Developer Balloon Studios cultivates a beautiful puzzle game with the timeless allure of a summer’s day stroll. |
Read review |
| GameLuster |
Nirav Gandhi |
8 / 10 |
04-08-2024 |
While sometimes it asks too much of players’ brains, Botany Manor features some of my favorite art direction ever and a wondrous world to explore. |
Read review |
| GameSpew |
Kim Snaith |
10 / 10 |
04-08-2024 |
Gorgeous, perfectly designed and utterly engrossing, Botany Manor is quite simply one of the best puzzle games of recent years. |
Read review |
| Guardian |
Sarah Maria Griffin |
4 / 5 stars |
04-08-2024 |
Potter around a stately home as a Victorian botanist, figuring out how to get eccentric plants to grow |
Read review |
| IGN |
Saniya Ahmed |
8 / 10 |
04-08-2024 |
Clever clues entwine with Botany Manor’s charming old English setting to make for a lighthearted first-person puzzler worth tending to. |
Read review |
| LadiesGamers.com |
Lynne Newey |
Recommended |
04-08-2024 |
There is no denying that Botany Manor transports you to a bygone era. I had a thoroughly enjoyable time digging around to find the growing conditions of the forgotten flora, ensuring my herbarium blossomed in completeness and unearthing Arabella Greene’s life. |
Read review |
| Nintendo Life |
Kate Gray |
9 / 10 |
04-09-2024 |
It looks like The Witness and it plays a bit like StreetPass Garden, but Botany Manor blooms into something that’s not only entirely its own, but also something quite special. Don’t let its cosy aesthetics fool you |
Read review |
| PC Invasion |
Anyka Pettigrew |
9 / 10 |
04-08-2024 |
Botany Manor is a colorful exploration game with clever puzzles to solve and an intriguing narrative to back it up. With each problem solved I felt gratified and smart for putting together the right clues and reading between the lines. The environmental storytelling and the relaxing atmosphere made me want to explore every nook and cranny of the manor. |
Read review |
| Press Start |
Kieron Verbrugge |
8.5 / 10 |
04-08-2024 |
Botany Manor is a delight. It’s sweet, succinct and serene, packed with clever puzzles that reward thoughtful exploration and engagement with its narrative. At a little under three hours it’s the perfect lazy weekend getaway for those that like to stop and smell the flowers as much as they like to enrich the soil of their mind. |
Read review |
| Rock, Paper, Shotgun |
Alice Bell |
Recommended |
04-09-2024 |
Botany Manor is a beautiful, focused and entirely peaceful game that creates an oasis where you solve puzzles and marvel at the world. It’s wonderful stuff. |
Read review |
| Screen Rant |
Deven McClure |
4 / 5 stars |
04-08-2024 |
Though short, the time players do get to spend in the world is made immersive and engaging through its diverse map, classical soundtrack, and ambient nature sounds. It’s definitely one of 2024’s most relaxing puzzle games so far, and I found myself thinking about Arabella and her strange plants even after I’d finished the story. Because of its length, some players may wish to wait for a sale to pick up Botany Manor, but it’s an undeniably charming title that’s great to explore and unwind with. |
Read review |
| Shacknews |
Larryn Bell |
9 / 10 |
04-08-2024 |
Despite its brevity, Botany Manor is a wholesome puzzle game that turns academic research into an engaging endeavor. The central theme focuses on finding the conditions to allow a living entity to flourish, a concept that is elegantly reflected in both Arabella’s personal journey as well as in gameplay. The game thematically underscores the overall interconnectedness of nature and highlights the influence that one’s environment can have on well-being. Botany Manor left me yearning for more botanical discoveries and I can only hope that the developers sow the seeds of a sequel someday. |
Read review |
| TechRaptor |
Samiee Tee |
8 / 10 |
04-10-2024 |
A puzzler that challenges as much as it inspires, full of life and passion, even if its narrative offerings tend to stumble towards the end. |
Read review |
| Windows Central |
Zachary Boddy |
4 / 5 stars |
04-08-2024 |
Botany Manor is a lovely little puzzle game that’s relaxing, engaging, beautiful, and approachable. It’s a great first game from Balloon Studios with a lot of charm, but it’s not perfect, and it’s even shorter than I expected. Being a day-one addition to Xbox Game Pass, though, makes it stupendously easy to recommend Botany Manor for an afternoon of fun. |
Read review |
| XboxEra |
Genghis Husameddin |
8 / 10 |
04-08-2024 |
Botany Manor is an enjoyable puzzle-focused adventure with an obsession in weird plants and an interesting estate. What might be lacking in overall narrative is made up for pleasant pacing and a relaxing homework assignment at a country side world of plants. |
Read review |
