izigame.me

Going in, I expected either clever puzzles or an engaging mystery that ties into the puzzling aspect. Instead I got a tedious match the pair game with an impressively unoriginal story on the side. The game's greatest strength lies in its strong sense of atmosphere and commitment to the "plant shopkeeper" in an occult town setting. Unfortunately, it doesn't really take this concept anywhere interesting with its plot and is already running on fumes in the 5 hours it takes to finish the game. The praise this game receives generally revolves around solving the town's mystery while enjoying the experience of working out what plant matches what description which is shocking to me because these were the weakest aspects of the game.
Spoilers from this point.
The town's mystery more or less solves itself, with you making about 3 decisions in the game to either help or hinder people deciding whether you get an evil or good ending. There is no point where the game requires you to actually figure out what is going on but rather it is extremely clear with what is happening, and simply presents you options to be evil or good. So in this regard, the "mystery" aspect is extremely underwhelming and fails to deliver the impression that you have solved anything. Rather, the townspeople tell you what is happening and you watch. Considering none of the townspeople ever move beyond being painfully tropey and the plot refuses to be unique in any way, its hard to care about anything that happens.
In terms of puzzles, the game is also severely underwhelming. The majority of gameplay will revolve around flipping through the pages of an awkward to navigate plant-book and seeing if the description matches the plant you inspect. In my opinion, this isn't puzzling, this is busywork that doesn't require any sort of lateral thinking. For instance, There is a plant in the book that is described as being able to draw light into itself and make its surroundings dark. Would it not make sense to place the plant next to a light source and see if the lights dimmed to check if the plant matches the description? After all you can move plants in your shop, and you have a plant that produces light. Instead, the game requires you to inspect the plant and see that it matches the description in some other way. This was the moment it became clear to me this game was not going to do anything to surprise or impress me. There are moments where the game genuinely does have some puzzle elements but they are always underwhelming. Whether its the directions given by the daily cards to find new plants, or the occasional use of the magic eye glass to check something, it always feels I'm crossing things off a list rather than actually discovering something.
All in all, the game is a frustrating experience. It doesn't feel like it lives up to the mini cult status it's attained as a unique and engaging mystery/puzzler. Instead it feels like its has the skeleton of a good game: An interesting setting, a concept for a gameplay loop that could be engaging. But rather than push in any of these areas to be a unique experience, it simply settles for being a mediocre collectathon with nothing much going on under the hood.