![]() ![]() If you’re questioning why an igloo has ended up in a tree, then this is certainly your sort of game. This extends from something as subtle as the leaves following your mouse pointer as if its acting like a light breeze, to clicking repeatedly on an igloo and trying to discover how many penguins you can fit on a screen. Every little movement, every click, every interaction is a joy to behold, because even if it has nothing to do with a puzzle, Amanita Design have still made it do something. You can touch and interact with just about everything, so despite the repetitiveness of the actual gameplay, not only will you likely not care, there is a good chance that you won’t even notice. This tree, whose inhabitants are fleeing for their lives, feels like a living, breathing place. While that may sound disappointing, fear not, because while the core gameplay feels a little lacklustre, the level of interactivity more than makes up for it. ![]() The opening few hours has you collecting various items, and while they, and the other objects that you collect, all feel like they make sense and are required for the given situation, it is just a series of fetch quests. It sounds a little mundane and, for the experienced adventurer, it might very well be. ![]() Most of it revolves around fetch quests or trying to find a particular item or collection of items with which to overcome an obstacle or gain access to a new part of the tree. The gameplay is relatively straightforward but is, ultimately, light-hearted and fulfilling. It’s a minor quibble at best and really doesn’t take anything away from the story itself. You’re not really given much more to go on than that and even the creatures you control – a selection of five different species – aren’t given names, nor are you given any sort of indication as to why they are being brave enough to get involved and help. On the face of it, however, a group of botanical creatures have banded together to try and save the last seed from their home tree, as it, and everyone else, faces total annihilation from some evil parasitic creatures. Much like Machinarium (and the odd, but strangely charming, Coloropus), there is no spoken or written dialogue – not in a traditional sense anyway – so while the story may seem obvious there could well be undertones that we’re not picking up on. Instead, the band’s resourcefulness resulted in a one-of-a-kind game with a soundtrack worth paying for.Botanicula is a a point and click adventure, developed by Amanita Design, whose previous work include the delightful 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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