Horticular, The Magical and Cozy Gardening Game

Restore beauty to a withered garden and help The Keepers

Relaxing Garden Building

Turn This Deserted Wasteland Into A Garden Home

Imagine just going about your daily life as usual when suddenly magical otherworldly gnomes summon you from their universe, enlisting your help. These ancient gnomes, called The Keepers, dedicate their lives to tend to every garden, helping the garden flourish and live. However, their former garden steward vanished one day, leaving the garden turning into desolate wasteland. Now, they’ve successfully made a connection with you in-between your worlds, and they come to you with a plea: “Will you become our new steward and restore our world to its former splendor?”

Horticular is a relaxing garden builder where you are tasked by ancient garden gnomes to bring life back to a barren land. Work at your own pace in building up your own garden, just the way you’d picture it to be. While there is a storyline that accompanies your playthrough, there is no time limit—just let your imagination run free! With hundreds of unlockable items and garden cosmetics to choose from, the possibilities are endless. Let yourself be immersed in your own personal garden diorama, complete with different weather sceneries and a day and night cycle, which also affects gameplay in more ways than one.

It’s not just a garden of flora and fauna, it’s an entire ecosystem. Create animal habitats to conserve these adorable creatures, each with their own requirements to fulfill before they come over and live with you. And even if you think you’ve already got them wrapped around your finger, watch out! Take care of your charming garden residents properly, else they leave to find (literally) greener pastures.

And of course—you’re in an alternate, and wholly magical world! Don your magical gloves, and with the help of the adorable garden gnomes behind you, nurture the garden with specks of magic here and there. Invest in upskilling and upgrading new magical abilities to make your gardening journey all the more bearable. But beware…danger lurks in the shadows. Your nemesis is watching your every move, and is determined to put your plans to a halt by feeding your land with corruption and decay!

Everything's Better With Friends

Even if you own the garden world you’ve been summoned into, there are other quirky residents that have found shelter in your world too! Encounter several unique characters that send you letters, asking for your help with their own tasks to be done—of course, with a fitting reward waiting for you as well. Looks like there’s much more to be done in this world than just building it from the ground up—you have to look out for the other inhabitants too!

Free And Open Mod Support

From flowers to decorations to whole new animals! It's awesome to see what modders are doing for the game! pic.twitter.com/ZPNdI2OEzz
— Horticular | OUT NOW 🎉 (@HorticularGame) July 24, 2024

An interesting feature about Horticular is that it comes with mod support on launch day, with players free to modify the game to their liking with the included mod editor and easily accessible game files. While modding is nothing new in the gaming community, it’s rather interesting that support for player-developed mods and knickknacks is available from release. Developer inDirection Games themselves eagerly promote and hype up these modders' works on the official Horticular game X (Twitter), saying that it’s “awesome to see what modders are doing for the game!”

A Dream Achieved

inDirection Games is a small indie studio headed by founder Robert Kaufmann, who has been working on Horticular as a solo developer for three and a half years. The game takes inspiration from silly but fun life simulation Viva Piñata and critically acclaimed classic management game Rollercoaster Tycoon, combining it into a relaxing gardening simulator.

Horticular is the studio’s debut game, a game born from the founder’s passion. inDirection, short for Independent Direction, was founded by Kaufmann as “a means to develop games that dare to be different.” He had long dreamt of creating and finishing a game he was proud to present to the world, and he took that first step in achieving that dream back in 2021.

“For me, the best games allow me to retreat into my own headspace and connect emotionally with something intangible. More often than not, these have been genuine projects where you can see the passion in the resulting art. This is what I want to make for you,” Kaufmann said on the studio’s official website. “I believe that by following a creative intuition and pouring heart and soul into the process, something unique and authentic comes out the other end. Even if it is not your cup of tea, you recognize the piece to have a greater meaning to someone else.”

Since then, Horticular has been evolving day by day as Kaufmann and his team developed the game, as well as sharing their art to the world. In 2023 alone, inDirection Games was able to go flying into different countries to participate in numerous conventions such as WASD in London, Gamescom in Germany, and even in Bitsummit in Kyoto and the famed Tokyo Game Show! And now, three years later in the present, his dream has borne fruit as he celebrates the release of Horticular, and hopefully more games to come.

Reviews Are Glowing, With Many Satisfied

Since its full release back in July 12th, it has been garnering positive reviews as of late, with 94% out of 168 reviews giving it a Recommended thumbs up on Steam. Many players praised it for its “chill and relaxing” nature, noting that it's challenging in some parts but the game is still very forgiving. It’s a game that caters to both “casuals and non-casuals,” being easy to grasp for casuals while also having a treasure trove of content for those who want to take it a step further. Users found themselves sinking hours upon hours of gameplay, even losing track of time as they spent their energy creating and shaping the garden to the best of their abilities.

While there are the upsides, some unhappy players shared that there are some pressing issues that make it unenjoyable for the long run, such as a clunky UI, lack of biome variety, and small animal pool. The habitat mechanic makes it difficult for score-achieving players to get the scores they wanted. “How can you tie the progression and score systems to a mechanic that works on its own?” said one negative review.

A Cozy Gardening Simulator And More

With its simple story but engaging mechanics and gameplay, coupled with a cute pixel art style and numerous content, it’s easy to see why Horticular has captured the attention (and time) of several players already.

Horticular is available to play on PC through Steam, and is also playable on the Steam Deck based on player feedback. There are no concrete plans of releasing on other platforms just yet, but inDirection Games has posted an interest check on the Horticular official X (Twitter) if there would be players who would like to see the game on Nintendo Switch. With most responding with a resounding yes, they replied “As launch dust settles we're trying to plan the next steps :)”