Facts
Developer
inDirection Games
Based in Gothenburg, Sweden
Publisher
Slug Disco
Status
Active development
Genres
Garden-builder
Strategy
God-game
Release date
2023 for PC (Windows, Linux)
Platforms
PC (Windows, Linux)
Future platforms
TBD after initial release
Price
TBA
Socials
Twitter: @inDirectionHQ
Instagram: @indirectiongames
Contact
hello@indirectiongames.com
About
Horticular is a relaxing garden-builder that begins with mysterious gnomes summoning you. Their wish? For you to breathe new life into a long-lost garden, abandoned by its previous caretaker.
Enter a magical world where you build up and expand a lush garden at your own pace. In your journey, you attract adorable animals to inhabit every corner; uncover helpful upgrades; and assist quirky characters for rewards and story development—all while juggling decay and fending off corruption sent by your nemesis!
Features
- Creative building, where you get hundreds of ground surfaces and items to rebuild your dream garden with.
- Animal ecosystems that drive gameplay progression. Each species comes with its own requirements to keep inhabitants happy.
- Relaxed pacing in an adorable and immersive diorama world. You get to decide what to do and when.
- Magic. Use your magical gloves and seek assistance from gnomes to manage situations like unhappy animals and corrupted gnomes.
- Upgrades to make things more comfortable. Purchase new items to use and improve your abilities in a passive skill system.
- Curious characters writing you letters, handing out tasks to do for story progression and rewards.
Story
Horticular is set in a mysterious diorama world, based on the flora and fauna of reality but with a playful and magical twist.
The player is immediately summoned by gnomes through interdimensional magic. It turns out they need assistance, and they are looking for someone from our world to restore a long-lost garden to its former splendor.
However, there is more than meets the eye, and it soon is evident that the garden is under threat from a looming corruption orchestrated by a mysterious character: your nemesis.
Video
Images
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Screenshots
Logos
Key art
Principles
The idea behind the game is to deliver a creative experience where the player gets to build a garden in the way they want, while managing and optimizing its operations. Throughout development, all decisions are run through four principles:
- Creativity – The player should be allowed to express themselves creatively.
- Agency – The player should be in control of what is going on and make their own choices.
- Optimizability – The player should be enabled to optimize their gameplay progression.
- Immersion – The player should be transported to another world in their gameplay session.
In short, if the player wants to relax and admire their creation; build something they find pretty; or optimize their gameplay progression, they should either be rewarded or at the very least never be punished for doing so.
Team
The developer and publisher of Horticular is inDirection Games, a single-person game-company, founded and run by Robert Kaufmann to make unique experiences.
Robert made and released a couple indie games on the old XBLIG program back in the days. However, he soon became busy as a software engineer and took an interest in people, management, and organizations. The days of making games were seemingly long gone.
However, during 2019, Robert was starting to think about new career opportunities and got an idea. An idea to pause his management journey and try his hands at making a game again. So he took the plunge in 2020 with one goal in mind, to release at least one more game that he could be proud of. Thus, inDirection Games was born.
Music
The music is composed and arranged externally by Julia Kaufmann. Yes, they are siblings!
Permissions
You have permission to reproduce the material on this page for commercial or non-commercial purposes, given that you:
- Do not alter any images.
- Provide attribution if that is not immediately obvious from the reproduction context.
For any questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out on hello@indirectiongames.com.