Flowers and survival horror might seem like a weird combination, but there’s a surprisingly strong tradition of blending flora with scares in video games. The original Resident Evil had players fight a giant plant monster, and the whole premise of The Last of Us is basically “what if mushrooms were hostile?”
The Florist takes things to another level, however. The debut title from Unclear Games looks like something you might get if Jeff VanderMeer gave up the whole ‘writing acclaimed novels’ business and took a sudden and powerful interest in fixed-cameras and deliberately awkward combat. The debut title from Unclear Games puts plants at the front of centre of its survival horror experience, and the results look pretty darn interesting, at least going by its latest trailer.
The Florist puts you in the role of Jessica Park, who starts the game delivering a flower arrangement to a town called Joycliffe (which is not exactly Silent Hill in the order of great fictional town names).
Shortly after arriving, however, Jessica discovers that Joycliffe is suffering from a mysterious affliction that causes explosive floral growth. Which on its own sounds like a good thing, except these flowers can infect and kill humans before transforming them into the world’s prettiest zombies.
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The game itself looks like it’ll play as a trad survival horror, going all in fixed camera angles, implausible environmental puzzles, and methodical, slow-burn combat. There’s a whiff of tank controls to the available footage too, though it doesn’t show enough of Jessica moving freely to call it one way or another.
While the mechanics may be traditional, in appearance The Florist is distinctly modern. Not just in all the hyper-detailed plan life scattered about—the trailer also shows off some quite nuanced scripted sequences, like a zombie-type enemy with a sackcloth hood smashing a big sack through a plank floor.
It’s a shame that the trailer is so short, as I would have liked to have seen more of the game as it plays moment-to-moment. Nonetheless, it’s more than enough to get me intrigued. There’s no release date for The Florist as yet, but Unclear Games plans to launch sometime in 2026.
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