A.J. ▸ As you progress through , you unlock shortcuts and new areas while the game world eventually opens up in impressive ways. Can you describe how you balanced everything while designing the manor and its surroundings to create a consistently rewarding experience?

Laure ▸ The process of building the manor and gardens took a long time, and we iterated on the grounds continuously throughout development. We started out by basing the manor on a mixture of real manors to make it feel as authentic as possible. Once the overall layout felt good and exciting, we started focussing on sightlines, moving some bits closer together if it improved the view or reduced the walking distance for players. Once the puzzles and chapters were more or less locked into place, we added doors and tunnels to allow players to get back to the central area of the house. Sometimes, it would be the other way around and we'd shuffle the puzzle around so we could contain the player to a certain area. The concept of the gatehouse deliveries came quite late into the game when we needed a way to make sure a player could not enter a certain area until they had completed enough plants.

A.J. ▸ The clues obviously help players with solving puzzles but there's a lot of detail that players can dig into as well such as the history of the manor which I found fascinating. I'm curious: are there any details such as references that will make you happy to see players notice?

Laure ▸ The family tree contained some subtle details about 's family, which was very satisfying to see people work out. We also loved when scientists reached out, saying how they appreciated that we'd attempted to do things properly, especially concerning the Latin naming of the plants.

Other than that, there were some details we put in that we hope people pick up on, such as working-class characters struggling to pay for medicine or any other narrative we added to help build out the world beyond the manor at the time. Anyone who recognized or researched that the quote from was real gets a gold star! Lastly, we hid surnames from famous women scientists in a few clues; we're not sure if anyone has spotted those!

A.J. ▸ Considering growing plants is a unique premise for a puzzle game, are there any other subjects that you'd love to design a game around and have players explore in order to gain a new appreciation of it?

Laure ▸ It would be so cool to design a painting restoration game!

A.J. ▸ Finally, the silly question of the day: if you had to eat 1 plant from in real-life, which one do you think would taste the best?

Laure ▸ I think I would go for the because I imagine it would taste of sweet apples! 🍎