Botanicula Message Board

Just as night follows day, just as dog follows rabbit, just Shia LeBeouf follows Daniel Clowes from a safe distance, a nomination for the latest game from Amanita will, it seems, always follow the announcement of another Independent Games Festival. This year, the makers of Botanicula and Machinarium are taking their charmingly odd, experimental puzzle-adventure Samorost3 to the show, where it’s nominated for Excellence In Visual Art and Excellence in Audio. This is their fourth game to bag a nomination – will it join its three predecessors in winning a prize?

We shall see. In the meantime, let’s have a chat with Amanita’s lead Jakub Dvorský about how Samorost 3 is and isn’t like its much-loved forerunners, the role sound plays in their games, and their status as veterans of the much-changed indie landscape.

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2015! That’s an insane release date for a videogame! There won’t even be PCs by then. We’ll all have Google Glass injected into our eyeballs and iPhones surgically implanted up our bums and Microsoft Surfaces built into our toilet seats. That’s definitely the future. Everyone will want closed, locked, tyrannical software ecosytems by then. Why, PC gaming has died 42 times this year alone, so God only knows how bad it’ll be in 18 months’ time.

Hopefully Machinarium and Botanicula developer Amanita Design will be able to port their long-awaited second sequel to lovely, gently psychedelic pointer-clicker Samorost to Smartwatches and curved televisions BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE. Meantime, I’m going to watch Samorost 3′s first-ever trailer just before I take my PC to the dump.(more…)

Welp, I guess that’s it, then. We can’t escape it. The Steam Summer Sale’s returned, but honestly, can you remember a single moment before it began? Was there ever a moment before it began? Maybe we’re trapped in some infinite, Groundhog-Day-style loop of spending, obligation, and guilt. Maybe we’ll never escape. Maybe this is the least threatening eternal hell loop ever conceived. But oh well, because look at all of the savings!

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You can try a browser-based demo of Amanita Design's beautiful environmental adventure game Botanicula now! Then you can feel bad that you missed out on the chance to get the game in a Humble Bundle. Then you can find out it only costs $10 from the website anyway.

These are all new experiences you can have, just by clicking this link.

The power of the demo! It’s not that I didn’t notice John’s joyous effusions about Botanicula, heck, I had to fetch the mop and bucket from the cellar and clean up afterwards, but despite all of that I didn’t actually play the game. Today Amanita have made a demo available, played directly in your browser at the website, and now I have played it. I played until the demo was over and then I started playing the full game and now I don’t want to carry on writing things for people to read because that means I’m not playing Botanicula. It’s absolutely lovely. Try the demo and maybe you’ll agree.

Playing Botanicula reminds me of being a child and seeing epic fireworks displays. Despite knowing explosions were coming, and repeatedly thinking I'd seen the coolest setup yet, I still found myself regularly awed. Likewise Botanicula, despite inundating me with cute characters, adorable visuals an...

We venture deep into the disturbing, yet adorable, world of living plants and homemade sound effects.

The decision by Amanita to put out the stunning Botanicula as part of a Humble Bundle on the day of release sounds, at first, like a lovely idea. A brand new game in a pay what you want bundle? Amazing! Except of course for those who pre-ordered it at full price. Personally, I think the $10 it would have cost anyone is a bargain for a game as utterly lovely as this, and people who pre-ordered clearly believed it to be worth that much to them at the time. But I do understand the frustration of learning that others could be getting the game, along with two other Amanita classics, for as little as one cent. That’s galling. I caught up with Amanita’s main man, Jakub Dvorský, to ask him about the reaction, and he informs me that it was their mistake, and to make up for it everybody who pre-ordered the game will be receiving the fantastic soundtrack, an art book, and a copy of Machinarium, for free, tomorrow.

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Amanita’s Botanicula is out in one hour, and you’re going to like it very, very much. But, er, we recommend your hold off on purchasing it until 6pm. All the pics in this review can be clicked on for full-size versions, which if you’ve any sense will be gracing your desktop immediately. I’ve played it through and fallen in love, and you can find out why via the magical process of my saying Wot I Think:

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Playing the preview code of Botanicula made me so happy one of my legs fell off. So I’m delighted to report that everyone’s going to have a chance to shit off their limbs with excitement on the 19th April, when the full game comes out. To commemorate, a new trailer has appeared, which you can see below. You’ll likely lose a toe.

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Next up in our series of chats with (almost) all the PC/Mac-based finalists, it’s the near-legendary Jakub Dvorský from Amanita Design, creators of Machinarium, Samorost and, soon, Botanicula – which is up for the Excellence In Visual Art and Excellence In Audio awards. Here, Jakub talks indie, experimentation and his answer to the most important question of all.

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Coming later today, we’ll be posting a chat with Amanita Design (Samorost, Machinarium) mastermind Jakub Dvorsky about new game Botanicula, the IGF et al, but as part of it he passed along a couple of mega-charming (I do like using the word ‘mega’; it reminds me of being young and over-excited about new issues of Look-In) and never-before-seen new trailers that entirely deserve their own post.

If anything ails you today, a glimpse of this beautiful, strange and funny point’n'click exploration game will almost certainly help.(more…)

When pestering Amanita for our preview of Botanicula, they also sent over a collection of new hi-res screenshots for the game. And they are far too beautiful not to pass onto you. So below they are, clickonable for growth. Do so, because their reduced forms don’t do them justice. I apologise for the forthcoming angst over which ones should be your desktop backgrounds.

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I’ve had my hands on a preview build of Amanita Design’s Botanicula, a return to their origins of organic exploration, rather than Machinarium’s more rigid adventure style. And I’m pleased to say it seems to be working so far.

A broad, beaming smile is not a facial expression games frequently paint over my face. Botanicula’s endless inventiveness, delight in intricate throwaway details, and ludicrous levels of joie de vivre, make it impossible not to sit staring at the screen grinning like a loon.

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You likely know Amanita Design for its work on semi-sweet, semi-sad robot adventure Machinarium. The Czech team's upcoming Botanicula, billed as a "point and click exploration game," has more ... organic roots.