It seems there's a dark force of corruption spreading across this natural paradise, and after a few lavishly pretty and endearingly skippable cut-scenes, you're off to save the day, in the form of a tiny rabble of unlikely heroes.

I think that's what happens, anyway it's all a bit vague. One of those spiders is responsible for what little narrative the game possesses, after it pinches a crucial seed from the huge home tree that provides Botanicula's setting. Here, the previous game's rusting scrap metal landscape is replaced with its exact opposite - a muddle of moss and twigs and creaking bioluminescent branches - while the cast of malfunctioning droids has been swapped out in favour of a gloopy selection of grubs, beetles, snails and spiders. Machinarium was a lovely, lonely adventure starring the world's most huggable robots (second-most huggable if you've seen Silent Running, obv.), and while Botanicula's not a sequel by any means, it feels like a sort of companion piece. Turn up with a bit of a rambly micro-safari in mind, however, and you'll probably be in a state of complete rapture from the word go.īotanicula's the latest game from Amanita Design, the Czech studio that previously gave us Machinarium, amongst other treats. Come here looking for the puzzles, for instance, and you may find yourself feeling quietly disappointed.

What kind of difference can that single word make? Plenty, actually. Read the small print carefully, OK? Botanicula sells itself as a point-and-click exploration game as opposed to a point and click adventure game.

Botanicula level 7