Eden Labs | The Lost Botanist

A Crescendo of Ecstasy

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The Lost Botanist

Eden Labs x Tulips and Chimneys

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The Lost Botanist is a VR puzzle-adventure in which you, a young botanist, are tasked to research a spell-woven book of forgotten myths.

By reading it, you find yourself transported to realm between it’s pages, in the shrouded world of Under-Garden. By unraveling the puzzles of this strange enclave, its secrets slowly become untangled.

At once find yourself surrounded by the souls of those unremembered creatures of the Earth’s dead seas, extinct monsters and characters from forgotten legends.

Premiered 10 June 2019

An interactive VR experience, built for mobile devices

Virtual Reality meets traditional sculpture

Watch the official trailer

The marvellous world of The Lost Botanist as described by its makers

Together with animation studio Tulips & Chimneys, Eden Labs created a 2D Virtual Reality (VR) experience. Rick and Ree are siblings, and have been wanting to collaborate on a project since they were kids. They felt that virtual reality was a perfect new medium to explore Ree’s magical worlds and combine it with technology to create new ways of media, between a game, a film and a dream.

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This isn’t a game; it isn’t an animation. VR is creating a new media form. Because it’s all about the art, we wanted to make people really look at the art. We created a game mechanic where you had to look for things.”

- Rick Treweek, Director

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I’ve always wanted to create a world that people could step into, a visual world people could be immersed in and lost in, so for me The Lost Botanist is an absolute dream come true.”

- Ree Treweek, Director

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A 2D VR real-time experience in a traditionally 3D 360 environment

2D characters brought to life in a theatrical virtual environment

One of the more distinctive parts of the project was the decision to utilise 2D animation in a 360-degree VR environment; and the fact that it’s designed to run on the Oculus Go. Every piece of artwork is still traditionally hand drawn, pen on paper. It’s then scanned into Photoshop for colouring and detail, and animated.

Made with Unity

Instead of the standard three-dimensional landscape we created a two-dimensional world in which to navigate. The effect was achieved by combining the dynamic rendering of specifics elements alongside pre-rendered PNG images in the background in order to create a seamless, interactive world of wonder.

A version of the book is transported with you into this realm between pages. It contains beautiful illustrations and a long poem.

All of this drama unfolds before you, the reader, but where the book is damaged, you need to solve puzzles to complete the poetic verses.

You do this by solving rhymes and riddles. The book also serves as an appendix which contains your notes on the world that you are exploring.

“First the sea turned to acid, and we lost the names of the creatures that once lived there. Then the sky disappeared and the names of the stars were forgotten too.”