Hello gardeners,

Long time no see! Weve been working hard these past months, and have an update for our gardeners! Before jumping into the updates on features were working on, we want to answer your most frequently asked question:

When is the release date?

Finishing touches are still working their way into the game, so that time spent in the Garden is as enjoyable and as accessible as possible. But, while we're still polishing the game, you can expect more concrete news in the coming weeks! Growth can take time, and we really appreciate all of your support and patience during this process. I have been hard at work on new features to help make The Garden Path a richer experience, like lost spirits who visit the Garden in need of help, and the highly-requested input remapping on keyboard. While we wait for the news later on this month, I thought I would take some time to go over a handful of these upcoming features to look forward to. Let's take a look!

Game Updates

As mentioned, there's a new kind of visitor now in the Garden. Spirits who have lost their way might be looking for harborage, but their worried thoughts will keep the Garden around them from growing, casting a dark shadow that surrounds them. By spending tones you can reassure the spirit and help send them on their way. You'll almost certainly want to head into the Garden and find the right herbs and botanicals to prepare for the encounter.
If you're having trouble finding the right plant, you can now track families of flora in your encyclopaedia, if you've recorded enough of that family. This way, when opening the map, you can see where hotspots of that plant are growing, and you'll know where to go when foraging.
The map itself has seen some love too, with new smaller pins that expand when highlighted, helping to make the map easier to read when objects are cluttered. The old information panel has been updated with new animations, and better groupings and explanations of what's going on in the Garden, to keep you in-the-know.
* A long-requested feature, input remapping, is now available for players playing with a keyboard. This is an early addition that will need more testing and ironing out, but I hope this sets things on the right track for control customization, especially for those who feel the default controls aren't intuitive or comfortable.
* A new algorithm determines what tasks a resident of the Garden might ask of you. By keeping a closer tally of what's growing in the Garden, and what you have on-hand, tasks that are delivered are no longer random. Instead, they are picked when the game believes the requirements of that task are within arms reach. Resident errands are also no longer daily. Before, a random number of residents would opt to have an errand available, now available errands will come and go as you play in the Garden. If a new errand becomes available, it will appear in your Overview overlay, along with the character and where you can find them in the Garden to begin the task. Available errands will last a good while, but ignore them for too long and the resident might change their mind.
* A while ago I took the guesswork out from constellations by showing how the stars are connected from the beginning - as early player feedback suggested it wasn't fun guessing from all the stars which may or may not be connected. But, more recently, playtesters felt they were missing the reveal of the constellation. Now, constellations will slowly form as you learn more about the stars. After observing a star, you'll also reveal what stars that star is connected to, hopefully piquing your interest for what you might unlock next.
And there's a bunch of new stars to unlock now too! A new type of star that glows green will help guide you through the content of the game when starting out. These stars are automatically tracked in your task tracker, filling up as you complete them, so you shouldn't miss out. * Before, a large number of control options were either hidden, or dotted around inconsistent places of the UI, but a new global input guide will now follow the player and contextually list the actions you have available, whether you're running around the world, using your inventory, or whatever else. The guide will also reposition and scale depending on what's open on screen, UI scaling for readability, and whos playing, hopefully making the best use of screen real-estate.
* Finally, a push for optimization has been underway to help the game run and load faster on different systems. Thanks to a new way of grouping objects in the world, the game loads into the Garden twice as fast in testing, making The Garden Path even easier to hop-in for a minute or two, or maybe longer. Hundreds of the game's textures have also been optimised to stream faster and be easier on RAM and GPU usage, which should be most notable on lower end systems. * I really feel as though The Garden Path is maturing as a project and, from my time playing, these additions go a long way to make the game feel more consistent and readable, and that the Garden itself is more alive and wants to be explored. Im excited to hear what new players think once they get their hands on it.

Usual reminders!

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 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 Join our Discord server Follow us on Twitter: @fromcarrotcake Check out our TikTok: @fromcarrotcake Find us on Instagram: @fromcarrotcake Keep up via Mastodon: @ldurrant

[ 2023-11-09 21:00:59 CET ] [ Original post ]