Horticulat was provided by inDirection Games for review. Thank you!
As the one who handles all the social media for SteamDeckHQ, I am regularly perusing the web for interesting content to cover and new games to check out. X/Twitter is by far one of the best places to see new games in front of my face, and that's exactly how I discovered Horticular. Initially, I was drawn in by the gorgeous pixel art and the description of it being similar to Rollercoaster Tycoon and Viva Pinata, but it was the specific mention of controller support and the Steam Deck that won me over. After playing it, I can say that not only is the description pretty accurate, but it is a perfect fit for portable play.
Horticular is designed to be a casual experience, and it is best played with the intention of taking your time to move forward and grow your garden. As per the story, you have been summoned to restore a long-lost garden and rebuild the habitats of animals so they return. You will have to do this while using magic to stave off corruption and evil creatures that try to destroy your glorious landscape.
There is a story mode to experience this tale, but I would say this is mostly for the tutorial to learn how to play. You can enjoy the game this way, though I prefer playing the sandbox mode. Story Mode is the same each time, with some minor differences due to the difficulty you select, while sandbox is much more random and challenges me more excitingly.
In the game, you have to rebuild the garden using different tools. You will place down new terrain and features like plants and leaf piles to create suitable animal habitats. As you place everything down, animals will wander in, and you will assign them to these areas while also trying to improve them to bring more animals. The more animals you get, the more points you will receive to upgrade aspects of your garden and more currency to unlock more terrain and features to create different habitats to attract different animals. You get more currency when each day passes, and you can increase the currency you get daily by placing down different features for your garden.
You will also have to use magic to defend yourself against evil creatures and gnomes that can come at night to destroy your land. This doesn't happen often, but once every five or so in-game days, they will appear.
For the most part, Horticular is a lot of fun. It's enjoyable to just relax and build your land, plus the game is glorious, and the pixel art is just a joy to look at. It is rewarding to expand your garden and see how beautiful it can look with the different biomes, deserts, lakes, and greenery. It does have a very slow start, which can last a little as you need to get currency to buy information and parts to create different habitats, but it gets significantly better as you get more money to buy everything. You will primarily buy and get new parts from the market, which refreshes every 5-6 days, and use the money to also place features. Because of this, the playthrough will ultimately change, and your strategy for building the most profitable and diverse garden will adjust accordingly.
You can expand your garden and encounter mystical rune stones. Coupled with the random marketplace in Sandbox, there's enough replayability to go around and play consistently. And it is a perfect match for portable play.
As I expected from just looking at the game, Horticular is flawless on the Steam Deck. Without any changes, the game runs at around 9W on 90 FPS, while it sticks to 7.5W on 60 FPS. This can add around 30-60 minutes of battery life and lower temps slightly, and since it does still feel just as smooth, it only really has benefits. But since it's a relatively low battery drain, either way, there's no requirement in my head to change it.
The only odd part, I would say, is the controls. It is designed to work with a controller, and for the most part, no issues are going through all of the menus and moving around the map, but there are little nuisances here and there. Making fine-tuned adjustments can be harder when using the D-Pad, going around and gathering nectar, in the beginning, is a lot of going back and forth, and using different tiers of magic can be harder (if you want to use lower tiers, so no nectar is wasted). These are minor, but they do come up semi-often.
Horticular does have a solid amount of features to change up. You can change language and camera speed, toggle tutorials (doesn't affect story mode) and notifications, bring in custom creature names, change font mode for people with dyslexia, make the overlay more accessible overall, change volume sliders, rebind keys, and even turn on/off Twitch streaming integration.
The game does support 16:10 resolutions and has controller and cloud save support. There are no HDR settings.
Horticular is a gorgeous and relaxing game that truly feels perfect for playing on the go. Building up your garden and creating habitats to attract animals is addicting as the ball gets rolling and you have more pieces and terrain to place. It is a slow start, and dealing with enemies and using magic can feel very monotonous or difficult to use with a controller, but there's just so much more to love in the game. It is perfect for playing on the Steam Deck, and I don't think I could play it any other way. The battery drain is low, the pixel art shines on the OLED screen, the controller support is well-implemented (apart from the small issues mentioned above), and it's perfect for pick-up and set-down play sessions.
Our review is based on the PC version of this game.
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Horticular is a gorgeous, casual game that starts off a bit slow, but is worth the time investment. And it's absolutely perfect for the Steam Deck.
