izigame.me

This review is written from the perspective of someone who loves challenging deductive puzzles like Lucas Pope's work or The Case Of The Golden Idol and bought this game after seeing it compared to Pope's brilliant Paper's, Please. After taking the effort to beat this game once and identifying every single plant, I can confidently say I would not recommend it for players like me.
While I enjoy the general theme of the game, the creative and varied designs of the plants and some of the map puzzles, I found the actual core deduction mechanics frustratingly slight and simplistic. Most of them follow one of the following two set-ups:
1. A character names the plant they want. You go to the plant's page in your book, read up on its one or two defining characteristics, then search through the plants you own for the one single plant that has that characteristic. Sometimes you compare the illustration in the book to the plant's appearance.
2. A character doesn't know the name of the plant, but describes a defining characteristic. You page through your book, looking for the single plant with that characteristic, then cross-reference with the plants on your shelves for the only plant with that characteristic. For example: A customer is looking for a plant that smells like strawberries. You look through your book and find a plant that is described as smelling like strawberries. You then examine all of the plants on your shelves until you find the only one that smells like strawberries.
I feel like this game needed a few more iterations in development to become an actual deductive puzzle game and not a "looking up the answers" simulator. As it is, you don't really do any deductive work with maybe a handful of very basic exceptions, you just slog through a book looking for the correct option to pick.
I understand the intent of the game is to not be challenging and give the player more of a chill, laid-back experience, but that vibe seems weirdly at odds with the game's narrative, which has a ticking clock element and involves high-stakes subject matter like murder, brainwashing, evil cults and defeating a summoned demon that regularly kills and mutilates people. Said narrative is also very straightforward and simple, with the small handful of choices you make boiling down to either doing the obviously morally correct thing or being evil for no discernable reason. There are no in-story motivations for your character to make these choices, you suffer no consequences either way, so you make decisions based on just wanting to see what happens if you, for example, condemn an innocent man to certain doom. Furthermore, although the game entirely revolves around owning an exotic plant store, there are no game mechanics for actually running the store; Your character seemingly just gives plants away for free and requires no money to live or keep the shop open.
Also, I don't understand the arbitrary limitations placed on the exploration mechanic, where you either have to wait until the "Will to Explore" meter is filled up or water your plants to speed it up (how does watering your plants, narratively, increase your will to explore anyway?). This feels like an artificial and tedious way to limit the player from exploring too much.
I'm frustrated I disliked this game so much, because I can easily envision a good version of it involving actual deduction mechanics, more in-depth exploration, a compelling narrative and maybe a store managing system. As it stands, I can only recommend this to very casual puzzle gamers.