Collecting map: Simone's letter and a magnifier over Undermere

About this game

Developer: Bad Viking · Publisher: Iceberg Interactive · Platform: PC (Steam) · Art style: Painterly illustration · Screen type: Campaign / World Map

More Strange Horticulture screens in the Gallery

What to study

Leaving the shop is also done on paper. The map is a gridded sheet (1–33 by a–q) of the country around Undermere, and play on it consists of reading documents against geography: Simone's letter, laid directly over the map, sends the player to the library in Ambleside for an excerpt on the Wandering Bue and a lead on the Gilded Dendrew, and the magnifying glass parked over Undermere is the exploration cursor, you inspect a place by literally magnifying it. Because clues in this game are phrases ('deep in Grizedale Forest, a mile from the lake shore'), the map's drawn forests, named peaks with heights, rivers and mile scale are not decoration but the searchable database the deduction runs on. Frame at about 0:20 in the Announcement Trailer (Steam; manual extraction from the 1 fps fine pass over the window 9–22s; the same map appears clean, without the letter, a few seconds earlier).

Patterns

How the screen is arranged.

world-map route-map diegetic-document

Components

Parts on screen.

Document Grid Map Compass Marker Gauge

Screen inventory

• the collecting map fills the frame as a folded paper sheet with a printed coordinate grid, numbers 1 to 33 across the top, letters a to q down the left, so a clue can point at a square and the player can find the same square again exactly
• a magnifying glass rests over the town of Undermere and Lake Undemere at centre, enlarging the buildings and shoreline under its lens: exploring a site is done with a physical lens on a paper map, not a zoom button
• a handwritten letter from Simone is pinned over the map's left half: 'I've found it! An excerpt on the elusive Wandering Bue. Come to the library in Ambleside and I'll tell you all about it. I even found something on the Gilded Dendrew that might be of interest.' with a postscript 'Send my regards (and hugs) to Hellebore.', correspondence becomes a map overlay that names the destination (Ambleside's library) and the plant it concerns
• named places, peaks with heights (Fairfield Peak 873m, Tarn Crag 551m), forests, lakes and a compass rose with a 0–4 miles scale bar are all drawn on the map itself; at the right edge sit two round dials and the spine of the 'Strange Book of Plants'

Top 3 colors

#775936 23%#3d2517 21%#8b6b44 17%

Top three palette colors by share. The remaining colors make up the rest.

Source and credit

© Bad Viking / Iceberg Interactive, Strange Horticulture screenshot: Steam trailers (Announcement Trailer / Release Date Reveal Trailer), Bad Viking, shown for design study and commentary. PlayCraft is an unofficial fan project, not affiliated with or endorsed by Iceberg Interactive.

Source tier 2 (publisher-released) · screenshot: Steam store page · Steam page

Source details

Fetched 2026-10-25. verified 2026-10-25: manual extraction manual-map-letter-20.png @ ~20s in the Announcement Trailer, MD5 033ebd7c8f05c0002e9f67b2a0f0dc36, from the verified-clean curl-shim download (51,208,099 B, MD5 68dbb709ef13c823a8fbd12f36adbf89; full decode to null exit 0, zero error lines, decode-steam-1574580-Announcement-Trailer.mp4.err), inspected visually at full resolution (1920x1080 native); the 1–33 / a–q coordinate grid, Simone's letter (Wandering Bue, Ambleside library, Gilded Dendrew, the Hellebore postscript), the magnifier over Undermere and Lake Undemere, the compass rose and miles scale all legible; no trailer text or marketing overlay in frame

no published policy found (checked 2026-10-25); fair-use study use, takedown honored within 48h

Rights holders: see Copyright & takedown.