Yeah I enjoyed Strange Horticulture; it has a very engaging core gameplay loop of botanical deduction, and there are some fun add-on geegaws like a map and… other spoilery things… that mix things up. It gets a little unwieldy towards the end, but it’s not a super long game so that’s not a big deal.
Cultist Simulator I bounced off of the first time I tried it – a little too mechanical and fiddly – and then all the stuff Zarf alludes to came out about the developer (here’s one piece laying out the context) so I happily wrote it off.
What Remains of Edith Finch definitely has roots in exploratory text games. Though the storytelling is via audio narration and environmental design, the concept that Edith’s journal writings are incorporated as moving (and often physically interactive!) text in the scenery is really neat.
Such an awesome game - emotionally devastating in a unique way. A rare game that made me cry and continues to choke me up when I recall it. It’s structured like a horror game but is not really scary. It incorporates a sense of fatalistic dread and is often shocking in its magical realism but still manages to be uplifting and emotional through the stories of fleshed out and relatable characters in all the right ways.