You haven’t played anything quite like Botany Manor, a new narrative puzzle adventure now blooming on Xbox Game Pass for Xbox Series X|S, Windows PCs, and Cloud. Playing as 19th century English botanist Arabella Greene, you explore a scenic manor, finding seeds of some very unusual plants and discovering how to make them flower and grow, filling up the pages of your Herbarium along the way.
Much of the game’s enjoyment comes from figuring out these horticultural headscratchers without assistance. But if you’re worried you’re becoming a bit of a late bloomer, allow me to plant the seeds of inspiration with a few spoiler-free tips to help you decipher these daffodils a bit faster.
Every Document Matters
These plants’ very particular preferences mean that most puzzles require a precise answer. The little notes, newspaper clippings, and advertisements you find around the mansion will all help guide you in setting up growing conditions to make a specific plant happy – so read them! While many hints will seemingly have nothing to do with botany, like a book on English history or wind speeds in the Alps, all play a part in unlocking various locks and mechanisms to either manipulate the local environment or grant you greater access to the manor. There’s also an interesting story embedded in these notes, revealed through various correspondences with Arabella.
Pick Up the Pace
Arabella’s leisurely gait may not be to your liking, especially as you’ll need to traipse back and forth throughout the manner to pick up certain items or to place a plant in just the right spot. To put some pep in her rather sluggish default step, hold down LB for a boost. Like… all the time. Even better, I recommend players activate Sprint Toggle in Accessibility settings to maintain that speedier pace. The game may be about plants, but there’s no need to remain rooted in place.
Don’t Forget Your Map
It’s easy to get turned around in sprawling Greene Manor and its surrounding grounds, especially as you open up access to new parts of the property. If you remember passing by the Orchard, for instance, but forget exactly how to return, there’s a map for that! Press Y to bring up your Forgotten Flora book and tap LB to flip towards the front, where you’ll find handy, labeled maps of the manor’s interior and surrounding grounds, which handily auto update as you explore further into the game.
Out of Order
While Botany Manor starts in a pretty straightforward manner, solving one floral mystery at a time and with materials and hints right in front of you, things don’t remain so easy. In later chapters, you will start to find clues for plants you may not yet have access to. If a hint or document seems unhelpful at the moment, don’t rack your brains trying to apply it to the plant at hand; it may make sense later. Keep moving, you can always come back as the game never locks you out once you’ve made it somewhere new.
Sort Your Hints
Related: as the game progresses (chapter 3 and on), you’ll be collecting hints for multiple different flowers at once. It can be valuable at this point to pick up and read everything, then sort these hints in your book as you start to make sense of things. When all hints for a particular flower are found and correctly sorted, they’ll get satisfyingly inked into the page, and you’ll have a much better idea of what your next steps are and which hints can be ignored. Even better, if you correctly place every hint in the Herbarium book, a succulent 100G achievement awaits!
Even with these hints, you’re sure to get stumped from time to time, but with a keen eye and some curiosity, you’ll complete Arabella’s Herbarium before you know it. Just keep planting! Botany Manor is available now with Game Pass on Cloud, Console, and PC – cue that download here.
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