Strange Horticulture as an RPG?

After watching Vicorva stream Strange Horticulture, I bought the game and then finished it in a weekend (it’s not a long game).

It’s fun: I liked the little puzzles that were often pretty easy, and that the game had a “hint” option so if I didn’t find the puzzle easy I could just keep asking for hints until it gave me the answer. XD

I still wanted to play after I got an ending, so I played some more to identify all the plants. And then started a new game. But I remember all the answers so it’s not as much fun as the first time.

So now I’m thinking about running it as a play-by-post RPG.

One reason I like the concept of Strange Horticulture as an RPG is that the mechanics (identifying plants and solving puzzles) are nonviolent.

I don't usually like puzzles as a game mechanic because I get frustrated easily. But Strange Horticulture's "hints" option solved that, which is why I want to incorporate that explicitly into the RPG.

The video game has some off-camera violence. I'll let the players decide if they want violence in the RPG or strictly non-violent.

Game premise:

All the PCs play people who have recently started to run a shop of mysterious and mystical plants. None of the plants are properly labeled. You have a book about plants but it’s bad at describing them. (You get to decide how you got the shop/plants/book).

Game play:

• General roleplay: interacting with customers and deciding how you want to handle them
• Identifying plants: I’ll provide a bunch of plant pictures and some poor descriptions of them and you get to try to figure out what goes with what.
• Solving small puzzles/riddles: you’ll get clues and solving them will give you more things. Sometimes the clues will be Extremely Obvious. I do not promise challenging puzzles.

Each PC has a talking animal companion that can give them hints, but There’s a Cost. (Maybe parts of your soul! Or your memories! Or kitty treats! I will let the players as a whole decide this one.)

Likewise, I’ll let the players decide how serious they want the game to be -- do you want Lives To Depend on your correct identification of plants/solving puzzles, or more like “the most dire consequence is that some customer is angry at you because the wrong plant attracted ants and ruined their picnic”?

There will be an overall plot of some kind, but also small stories about helping customers (or failing to help customers by providing the wrong plant, whether on purpose or not) and how they react.

I’m thinking 3-4 players, and players get many of the same puzzles to solve and can collaborate to solve them in various ways. And one of the mysteries is “why did we all start running our shops at the same time in different places?”

In the event of players who join the game but later have to leave for whatever reason: I'd like to have their PC retire and/or mysteriously depart and hand over their shops to a new player or NPC, so that their departure needn't impact the other PCs. n_n

I will not use any of the plot points or specific puzzles from the video game, so there'll be no spoilers for the video game and no advantage to having played it or not.

Would anyone be interested in playing?

Possible players so far:

• Ciel
• Alex
• Anke