Hello gardeners,

Its time to sign off on April another busy month thats kept time feeling as short as ever. With characters being finished up, localisation entering its final stages, and 0.7 update preparation, it feels like theres more and more to talk about each month that goes by. I hope youll enjoy this look at what Ive been working on in the welcome warmer weather.

Meeting Frederick, Sal, and Olen

For April Fools this year our Community Manager, Alex, decided to give character design a go and created the unique fox accountant Frederick. Hes a bookkeeper, hes a little wonky, and he was made entirely via Paint - but he has a certain charm about him. Who knows, maybe Frederick will make an appearance (he wont unless?)
A handful of residents will soon be added to the game in the upcoming patch - this month we also introduced a new character to the garden: the peas Sal and Olen! As one of the rare (only?) two headed residents, Sal and Olen... Always agree on which way to go Don't always have the same song stuck in their heads Are just two peas in a pod
What do you think of this pair of peas? Are you excited to meet them in your garden?

Game Updates

It's been a long time in the works, but I'm excited to introduce the long awaited replacement to the game's stat system. Welcome in: tones.
A mood, a season, an outlook - 'tones' are named as such to represent what your character is experiencing and how they approach their work in the Garden. Tones are like a currency you use to harvest new items in the Garden. Not dissimilar to an energy system, tones are collected and spent to get what you want from the Garden. Unlike 'energy', tones are divided by the seasons. The Garden is seasonal, and so are the things that grow in it, so players paying attention to the change in weather and seasonality of different plants will be rewarded.
Tones are designed to help guide your actions throughout the Garden and hopefully make gathering and collecting more meaningful, without being something to micro-manage. Equipment in the game no longer has stats, but instead holds different ways to generate tones. Your coat might generate you a tone after catching a fish, or your hat might generate a tone as you walk through the rain.
To keep things balanced, once an item has generated a tone, it will take a little bit of time before a new one can be generated. Generated tones are reliable, but can be slow. The best way to get more tones? Tea! Tea will help provide 'temporary' tones - they won't last forever, but a big teapot holds many cups of tea to keep you topped up throughout the day. Or, maybe you'd opt for a smaller teapot - less cups, but a stronger flavour. Bunks duties have been delegated to selling ready-prepared teas, but now youll be able to brew up your own tea at any time from one of the campfires dotted around the map.
Anything that can be brewed into a tea will affect the tones each tea provides. Some items might enhance the tones another provides, or might change the tone entirely. Clothing now has a warmth rating. Dress too warm or too cold, and your equipment will take a little longer to recharge. Nothing to stress about, just something that makes wrapping up in the cold weather worthwhile. While temperature in the Garden changes throughout the day, your character's temperature is taken from an average of the day's temperature. You won't need to worry about the time of day you're playing, but should notice the warmth of late Spring, or the cooling in late Autumn. Your harvesting tools (axe and secateurs) now have a yield rating. Tools with a higher rating will make for quick work, whereas lower ratings will afford greater care to the plant being harvested. Youll want to make sure youre picking the right tool for the job. NPCs now carry a lot more stuff on the daily, and their shops now have tabs to keep things more organised. Certain, more crucial items will now always be in stock, so less is left to the roll of the dice. Shop tabs are organised by what the character stocks most of, so you can get a better feel for what each merchant is all about.
Inventory overflowing? One of the most common bits of feedback is that there's just too much in the inventory sometimes, especially after a harvesting session. There's a new way of managing items to help with that - your Collection! Harvestables are now automatically sorted into this new section of your inventory. The best part? Your Collection is infinite, so you don't need to worry about carrying too many acorns or bracken.
The second best part - in multiplayer your collection will be shared between both players, helping to pool your hard work together. This helps give more weight and focus to your more valuable pieces of furniture, trinkets or equipment, which remain in your inventory without diluting them with more common harvestables. To help keep things balanced, player inventories and bags are a little bit smaller across the board. With the brunt of 0.7 now behind me, its just finishing touches and balances before it makes its way to the beta. Until next time Louis, carrotcake * Join our Discord server Follow us on Twitter: @fromcarrotcake Check out our TikTok: @fromcarrotcake Find us on Instagram: @fromcarrotcake Keep up via Mastodon: @ldurrant https://store.steampowered.com/app/1638500/The_Garden_Path/

[ 2023-05-02 18:20:08 CET ] [ Original post ]