Hello gardeners,
Happy New Year everyone, and let me begin by saying thank you again to everyone who has supported The Garden Path and the team over the last year. As we inch closer to release each month, I am so grateful to be able to share this exciting and tumultuous experience with you all.
December was a month of work and rest, but we’re now back in full force working on localisation, coding, and more. Without further ado, let’s hop into the update proper.
A Look Back
While we thought 2021 had been a busy year for The Garden Path, 2022 managed to surpass our expectations! Some pivotal additions, improvements, and revamps happened behind the scenes to make the game more stable and more enjoyable, while elsewhere the team were busy taking The Garden Path to festivals and streams alike.
Here’s a not-quite-extensive list of what happened in the garden over 2022:
- We started small by adding new flora, including marigolds, pansies, daffodils, and chrysanthemum.
- Bunk’s new design was introduced alongside a refresh to the tea-pouring visualizer.
- We introduced treasure into the game, allowing you to unlock the old gardener’s journal and learn more about the old garden.
- We made an Anatomical-Tabbal for April Fools’ Day (who still loves some rain).
- We sold 100 early access copies of The Garden Path on Itch.io ahead of its full launch later this year!
- The character customiser had a revamp, increasing the combination of hair colour and skin tone from 22 to almost 2,000.
- We added (and played) conkers with our villagers!
- Tabbal was featured on the charity shirt for Wholesome Direct 2022, while The Garden Path returned to the cosy showcase.
- The ‘Garden Designer’ was added to the game, allowing you to quickly plot out how you want your garden to look.
- The Community Centre opened its door in-game, with the brand new toad Worm in tow.
- We smashed past 10k followers on TikTok (with a couple viral videos too)!
- We went live on stream 26 times!
- A revisited tutorial system went live for our early access Itch players.
- Local multiplayer work took place, thanks to our wonderful backers getting us to our co-op stretch goal.
- We went to Steam Next Fest (again)!
- The Garden Path went all the way to San Francisco for Day of the Devs.
- Our release window trailer was published, announcing that The Garden Path will be blooming in Spring 2023!
- We launched the beta version of the game on Steam!
- Weyley and Terracotta’s caravan of gardening furnishings, planters, and paraphernalia rolled into the garden.
As I said, this list is not exhaustive and plenty of other work went on both in-front of and behind the curtains. None of this would have been possible without you, of course, and the generous support extended to The Garden Path.
And now we’re in the final stretch. It’s hard to believe how far the game has come, so here is to the next few months of tweaking and polishing ~ we’ll be sure to bring you along as usual.
Game Updates
Work on the game before the new year was focused on polishing the 0.6 update that had been a long-time in the works, and released early December.
The Garden is now almost twice the size, expanding from 8 acres (2x4) to 15 acres (3x5), providing more room to explore and build on. This was based on feedback from testers as a good happy-medium between the originally planned 8 and 24 acre Gardens.
Load times have been greatly improved with further content streaming introduced, making it easier to load in and start seeing what’s new in the Garden, especially with a much larger Garden now under your feet. This will be part of general performance tweaking between now and the game’s release.
Campfire’s can now be found across the Garden, providing spaces for certain characters to hang out and rest, and for certain events to centre around. And, as part of the tea overhaul, you’ll also be able to use the fires to brew teas yourself on-the-go.
Shovels can now be used across the Garden using the focus system, much like your axe and secateurs. You can collect soil, and dig up treasure.
Character’s time-tables have been simplified, no longer coming and going across the day. Instead, any visiting character will come for the day and stay for the day. This means that won't matter when you decide to come to the Garden, you won't miss out on visitors.
Lastly (and maybe most excitingly) work for The Garden Path on Switch started earlier this month and we're already seeing some great results. There's only so much I can say at this point, but I'm happy to report there haven't been any nasty surprises (touch wood)!
0.7 is in the works and will be focusing on stats and stars - the things you’ll want to start focusing on once you’ve gotten to grips with the basics. I'm eager to show off what I've had in the works - more on that to come, so stay tuned.
Your usual reminder!
And as always, here is your reminder that you can join our official Discord Community server, which you can join here. Here you can chat with the team, meet fellow backers, and help me shape The Garden Path. And of course, we encourage you to share your real-life gardening with your fellow gardening gamers.
Until next time…
Louis, carrotcake
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