The game looks gorgeous and every frame looks like art. The level design, the characters, the animation, the music, it’s all ridiculously good. When it comes to the audio-visual presentation, Botanicula is right up there with the best in the business. There is a lot of amusement to be had in poking and prodding everything and the way the creatures react always brings a smile to your face. The game unlocks a card for every new creature you see and some creatures need to be brought out by tapping on some of the existing creatures. There are creatures hiding in nook and crannies that don’t really add to the gameplay but you can tap and pull on them and watch them move or scamper away. You can touch any object on the screen and see it react. The characters and the environments are full of life. The puzzles, in general, are not very hard but in most cases there little to no explanation given so it takes a while to figure out what you are supposed to do.Īll of this happens in Botanicula’s charming world. One puzzle even had a little mini-game that you had to play in order to recover an object. The game has a lot of puzzles scattered around on every branch, each part of a bigger puzzle that comprises a level. The game lets you try all of them, with humorous results for all the wrong ones, until you finally find the one suitable for the job. In some cases, you come across an obstacle that involves the skill of one of the five tree creatures. Some require something else in exchange for their assistance, so then you have to get that instead before you can move forwards. ![]() You face other tree creatures along the way, some of which help you in your quest while others are hostile. Most of the puzzles in the game involve fetching certain items that are scattered around everywhere. They walk from one branch to another and you move around by tapping on the end of the branch and directing them to move in that direction. They all stick together everywhere they go and each one is different with different abilities. Gameplayīotanicula is a 2D puzzle game about five tree creatures who are trying to save the last seed of their home tree from the evil parasites. Since then it has made its way to the small screen and is now available on the iPad. The game was originally released on Steam and won many awards for its visuals and music. Instead, the band’s resourcefulness resulted in a one-of-a-kind game with a soundtrack worth paying for.Botanicula is a puzzle game from the makers of the popular Machinarium. “Bara is a specialist in these noises,” Jan laughs.Īnd to think the whole thing started as a potentially project-exploding bug (the buzzing kind). Overall, about 20 percent of the game’s noises were recorded in the field and the rest were produced by by the musicians. “Once I left my microphone on and I started to sing, umpbudumbudum. “Nothing seemed to fit.” So he put it aside and started working on something else. In the game, “there’s a hole in the tree with a mouse, and I really didn’t know what I could record there,” says Jan. While many of these mouth-made sounds they spit out intentionally, others occurred purely by accident. Need a bug flitting its wings? How about a long, sustained fthththththt like a fly buzzing too close to your ear. When they needed an automobile sound, DVA produced a gutteral bidim bim bim bim bidim bim like the sound the tail pipe makes on a cartoon car. The result is immediately personal and super likeable. The first collaboration went well, so when Plachý signed on with Amanita and started a new game, he asked DVA’s Bára Kratochvílová and Jan Kratochvíl to sign on again - this time for pay. Plachý liked DVA, and asked if they would produce music for his game in exchange for some video work. The band had worked with Jára Plachý, the project’s lead animator, on another project a few years prior. DVA was approached by Amanita Design three years ago to create both the sound effects and the music for Botanicula, a game in which a tree is infested with evil parasites and five woodland creatures attempt to save it. How does a soundtrack elevate an already great game? Let’s start with the setup. Botanicula’s early art was promising - a cross between an avant-garde kids book and indie band cover art - but what ultimately pushed it over the edge were its noises, created by the Czech band DVA. The indie game-maker had a track record in 2009 they released a point-and-click puzzle game called Machinarium that won them heaps of awards and a dedicated fan base. When Amanita Design released Botanicula earlier this year, fans knew the game was going to be good.
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