Last updated on December 17th, 2025 at 07:13 am
Strange Horticulture – Puzzle Game Review
Strange Horticulture is a Puzzle/Adventure/Entertainment game from Plug In Digital, first launched in 26th March 2024.
It’s rated 12+ and currently has 1,034+ ratings on the App Store.
What Makes Strange Horticulture Stand Out
Strange Horticulture is an occult puzzle game in which you play as the proprietor of a local plant store. Find and identify new plants, pet your cat, speak to a coven, or join a cult. Use your collection of powerful plants to influence the story and unravel Undermere’s dark mysteries.
WELCOME TO UNDERMERE
Welcome to Undermere, a quaint town surrounded by hag-infested forests and rugged mountains. You are the Horticulturist, owner of local plant store Strange Horticulture. As a cast of colorful customers come by your shop, you are quickly thrust into an occult mystery stretching back hundreds of years.
EXPLORE THE LANDS BEYOND
Explore the lands beyond your store to find new plants, but be careful! The dark woods and lakes are not always friendly to a simple herbalist. You might discover powers beyond your wildest dreams – or lose your mind completely. Use context clues to determine which places to visit, and which to avoid!
AN EVER-GROWING COLLECTION
Using your trusty encyclopedia and clues found on your explorations, you learn more about the strange plants you come across. By identifying each plant, you will be able to use their effects to influence the story — from hypnotic hallucinogens to powerful poisons.
This Puzzle game offers engaging gameplay and regular updates for mobile players.
Player Feedback
As a newer release, Strange Horticulture is building its player community. Early feedback suggests .
Recent Updates & Development
Latest Update: 4th August 2025
Recent improvements include:
• Bug fixes and improvements
Download & Availability
Strange Horticulture is available through the official App Store for iOS devices.
Get Strange Horticulture on App Store
Requirements: Requires iPhone 5s / iPad Air / iPad Air (Cellular) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina, Cellular) / iPhone 6 / iPhone 6 Plus / iPad Air 2 / iPad Air 2 (Cellular) / iPad Mini 3 or later.
Compatible with iPhone and iPad devices.
Player Experience Highlights
Community Insight:
Ive played three days and we love it. If youre in the mood for cozy, dark academia vibes, not a lot of pressure but a whole lot of quiet thought set to beautiful instrumental music, this is for you.
We love this game a lot, very neat gameplay. Its not too difficult and its not too easy to figure out clues.
Horticulture with sunless skies or series of unfortunate events vibes. Illustrations are beautiful and cozy. The app itself is responsive and intuitive. We're enjoying the story and the deductive reasoning/strong use of observational skills. Good for both longer sessions and short bursts while commuting.
Just finished watching her play Strange Antiquities and had to see if Strange Horticulture was available for iPad. Thankfully, it was.
It took us a little time to get into it but its super fun and atmospheric.
It has some challenges that we had to think through and interesting characters. We like the plot and storylines too. We would like to see more from the creators of this one. We like the spookiness of the storyline, with the traveling to find rare plants. Love a cat in the window, and a librarian friend. We did think we would have to search a picture for plants but they are offered to you. Thank you for the no-ad game play for someone who wants to find clues, and solve mysteries.
Such a lovely, novel game. We never want it to end. The main mechanic is captivating, the puzzles along the way just the right kind of intriguing, and the plot line satisfying. We do so hope there will be more. Pet the cat. Update: we love the game so much we've played it again after giving ourselves enough time to forget all the clues. Please, please, please add a new story.
This game has cool customers that come up for you to identify plants for which is fun and underneath all of the identifying is a huge dark plot line that wraps everything up so nicely. Genuinely love this game.
We like what you have to do in this game plus this game is very good good good.
BUY THIS GAME. If you dont, you are missing out. A significant amount of thought, effort, and love clearly went into this game, and it shows in every aspect. The puzzle design is rock-solid. We completed every puzzle and every solution made sense and felt like a clear result of the clues we were given. The plant identification is varied and creative, and never feels formulaic you never know exactly what clue will lead you to identification so identification remains interesting throughout the game. The single thing we found ourselves disliking (and the only reason Im not playing through a second time) was the lack of quick access to the full width of our plant window simply keeping your identified and unidentified plants separate becomes slightly tedious when you have enough of both it takes more than a second or two to scroll to a new spot; some kind of overall view where you could see the whole window at once would help tremendously. However, thats the ONLY gripe we had after playing for like 5 hours over multiple sessions and identifying every single plant in the game. Even with that flaw, this game is still 5/5. Brilliantly executed and well worth the money. BUY IT.
Best game if your into the mysterious and supernatural genre of video games. We hope they can give it new chapters or even a second game with the same vibes.
Honestly this game is so fun. Def wouldnt say for kids. The storyline is amazing. We saw someone say there was nothing else to do besides the puzzles. As if this isnt a puzzle game. They even said there was no storyline. Which there clearly is. Its abt this woman who receives a letter from her uncle who passed handing down his horticulture shop in this small town. Theres a witches coven in the forest where someone important was murdered and while you identify plants. You meet all the ppl involved and have to make choices that effect how the ending plays out. Been playing off and on for a few years now. And by off and on we mean ill play through a few times. Not get any new endings and put it down so we can forget the way we played again.
We adore this game. Cozy but with gothy elements (beauty in the ugly, darkness in the light), it is addictive. It provides even an addict with good points to put it down and have a life, though, which is more than many games. For those who love organization elements, its perfect. The puzzles are challenging without making you lose hair. Note: we experienced semi-frequent crashes while researching in the book. Im playing on an iPad mini running 18.4.x, with the game on a 1.1.x version, so Playjoy please look into this! This did not affect our game score, ymmv.
Quirky, unique, and fun puzzles with a spooky storyline. Great if you love plants, but its not necessary. A top choice.
This game caught our attention on Steam a while back, and we had it on our wish list. It instantly reminded us of the Professor Layton series both in puzzles and art style so we were very excited to play. We saw it was available in the App Store for $5 and figured why not? This game is so cozy and the puzzles are clever and the characters are intriguing. This game has 8 different endings so we are sure there are lots of things we havent even encountered yet, and Id love to see this game expanded or a sequel. 5/5 definitely one of our favorite games Ive played.
We love the eerie feeling of the game, the graphics, the old timey way of speaking. The occult! Secret societies & psychics! We grow shrooms & have an herbal business, and use tarot cards etc so we identify with the strange horticulturist. We hope we can find more games like this, we dont want it to end.
This game is extremely fun and engaging. It has enough of a mystery to keep us playing and it really makes us feel like we have our own strange horticulture shop. Some of the puzzles are hard yet the game overall is very fun to play.
We have nothing at all negative to say about the game itself, but the awkward inventory management on iPad and tendency of the game to reset itself to the Unity splash screen when switching windows even momentarily really interfere with the flow of gameplay.
We love the game, but a couple things First, the orientation is locked. We had the charging cable on our left, and the game opened upside down. We were surprised it wouldnt flip around. Second, we cant use the Apple Pencil to play. Third, given the choice of scrolling the inventory or using buttons, why not both? We hope there will be an update to address these. Thanks.
We were super excited to play this game on the iPad but after downloading, realized this does not support Apple Pencil usage.
We love this game! No extra costs once you buy. Almost a dark academia vibe. The perfect rainy day cozy game, we just wish we could use our Apple Pencil. That is literally the only downside.
Im loving the game so far but as we progress further the game keeps crashing. Im currently on Day 14 and we dont want to get further into it for fear of the same thing happening as we keep having to redo our current task.
This was a very cozy puzzle game. Loved figuring out the plants and solving the puzzles, especially on the map. It was so short of a game, though. It feels like there should have been several more chapters or storylines.
Its cute and kinda of fun but a lot of the clues are super vague and dont make sense.
Paid for and downloaded this game. It looks so fun and cute, however, why is this not compatible with the Apple Pencil? All our other games like this are. Is there a special setting we need to use.
Print is too small for us to see, though the view can be expanded. That makes it playable, but too much moving back and forth to see the game play and read is awkward and annoying. Lots of plants, vague descriptions, and vague hints dont make the game more challenging. Just more confusing.
Its fun and cute, and we enjoyed playing it.. But after the second day of playing it.. We just got so bored because it was repetitive and low-engaging with no new interaction! But for a game you want to do before bed to get you bored and sleepy it works.
Very fun, easy to play game. The story was well written and interesting, the puzzles were clever, and the sounds were incredible. We really enjoed playing this, and hope to see more from the developers in the future.
Im really enjoying this game! Challenging enough to be fun, without being stressful. Graphics are lovely and the UI is easy to navigate. Im only a few hours into this game, but we can tell Ill be sad when Ive finished it.
Probably the coziest games Ive seen since SDV. Gab Smders did bring us here and blessings upon her for playing it. Glad we can finally see the different endings.
This is exactly the kind of game we were looking for! We love puzzle games like the Room series, and while this isnt as tactile as the 3D puzzles in those games, it does somehow scratch the same itch. :).
We dont remember where we heard about this game but was so intrigued by the description that we knew we wanted to try it, and its everything we hoped for! First, a low price that meant we could just buy it outright and not deal with annoying ads! Then, fascinating and interesting gameplay that we love just as much as we thought we would. Lovely artwork, moody music and sound effects just love it.
We love this game. We hope they come out with additional content, we will buy it immediately.
We love this game. We watched Gab Smolders play for about 30 minutes before trying to find it to play ourselves. It can be very fun to hear the stories of people and play doctor or help solve some puzzles using the plants you can discover. If youre looking for a game with good story in between puzzles, this is it.
We bought this game yesterday and have really been enjoying it. However, there is a glitch when we zoom in on the screen that prevents us from being able to zoom all the way out after. Because of this, we cant read the plant descriptions and the game is essentially unplayable when that happens. We believe it happens when we are looking at the map with a clue/letter overlayed and we zoom in. If we delete the app and redownload it, it fixes the issue. But Ive had to delete it probably 5 times now and its very annoying. Without this glitch the game would get 5/5 starts. If it gets fixed we will update our review.
Cute idea, but very repetitive and very boring. There is no real storyline here.
Short story, compelling storyline. There are definitely a lot of plants so keep in mind that youll likely only play this game once.
Such a lovely, novel game. We never want it to end. The main mechanic is captivating, the puzzles along the way just the right kind of intriguing, and the plot line satisfying. We do so hope there will be more. Pet the cat.
Storyline, plant ID, figuring out cryptic messages, the art. Loved it. Wish there was a second one so we could keep playing.
This is a fun game but. We had to replay the first nine days to get rid of the pixelated viewing device. Now the device doesnt let us tap on the X and even when we travel to the correct square (had to look it up), it tells us theres nothing there. So Im stuck. Please fix this.
Im only on day 2, but Im getting a glitch where we cannot pick up the plant pots! Thank you.
Nice art style but the puzzles are oblique and very hard to figure out. Just google lemon dandy plus this game, and youll see the numerous questions from many people stuck in the first part of the game. Promising but wish we could get a refund.
From what we can tell all you do over and over is guess a plant from some small amount of clues. When you guess correctly you get new unidentified plants in your shop. There doesnt seem to be any compelling overarching story, or reward system aside from gaining more plants. It seems to be a pointless cycle of get clue, guess which plant, receive new plant, get clue, guess plant and on and on . If there ends up being more to it Ill change our review, but we think Ive been playing at least an hour or so at this point. The clues and plants arent even particularly interesting. Like find a red plant, find a waxy plantzzzzzzz.
On Monday day 4 and cannot move the plants to customers or to the microscope. Plants will not move at all.
Great little game, better than we expected. Need to fix the periodic crashes though.
We understand this game is a port, but this should be addressed. Im looking up the correct areas to travel to in order to progress, but its a drag that we have to do that. Otherwise, a fun and imaginative game.
So far, Im loving the game! We do have a small issue, we have a plant stuck to the clear right of the plant section. We cant move it or do anything with it and its needed for the next part.
The viewing device is entirely pixelated and scrambled while in use, which we thought was part of the game until we realized we couldnt read anything no matter what we tried. This must be fixed, as it is integral to the game.
But our darn strange device isnt working! When we add the Red Abony to it the window/lens turns black and is no longer transparent and able to be seen through! What gives?! This is kind of important to progress yeah? Im at a standstill.
Great game, played on steam, now want to play it again on iPad, but it is not compatible with Apple Pencil. Greatly reduced gameplay. Please fix it! Thank you.
User feedback from Apple App Store
App Details
- Version: 1.0.14
- Size: 521.83 MB
- iOS: 15.6 or later
- Languages: CS, NL, EN, FR, DE, IT, JA, KO, PL, PT, RU, ZH, ES, ZH, TR
- Content Advisory: Infrequent/Mild Horror/Fear Themes, Infrequent/Mild Alcohol, Tobacco, or Drug Use or References, Infrequent/Mild Medical/Treatment Information
- Developer: [Plug In Digital]()
Last updated: 4th August 2025 | Genre: Puzzle, Adventure | Developer: Plug In Digital