Be At Peace With The Garden Path, a Sim Game Like No Other

A bunch of hobbies really took off in popularity during this pandemic, and you bet that gardening is one of them (along with yoga, baking, and DIY-ing). This love for gardening is what brings us The Garden Path, a hand-illustrated slice-of-life sim game.

That is a mouthful, isn’t it?

But The Garden Path won’t stress you out. Quite the opposite, the game is meant to help you celebrate “the tranquil and the pensive, the quiet moments of a life well lived, where your garden will grow to reflect both the passing of time and your own design”.

In this very stressful period, those words — tranquil, pensive, a life well-lived — are so tantalizing. Especially when it comes to activities you already like — gaming in this instance.

The baby of indie illustrator Louis Durrant, The Garden Path has been in the works for a few years now. The Bristol-based artist isn’t new to the scene, having released two games before: Crossing to the Cold Valley and Kingdom Ka.

The game runs in real-time, so it can very well be the lovely counterpart of your daily life. It gives you a garden — albeit virtual — that you can nurture your own way:

Designed to be played as and when you wish, The Garden Path features a wealth of stories, activities, and distractions to be experienced at your own pace. Don’t have time to watch your flowers grow? Come back tomorrow: time in the garden passes alongside the real world, and you’ll find plants you nurtured one day may bloom the next.

It is somewhat reminiscent of Animal Crossing, in that it comes with neighbors and visitors.

Charming inhabitants will come and go, from Bunk, the tea-brewing macaque to Larto, a Greenlandic Musk Ox with a penchant for song-fish. You may even find some visitors willing to make their home alongside your own!

The game is delightfully drawn, and we can already imagine playing it to our heart’s content.

It is on Kickstarter, with only 3 days to go, so don’t miss out!!!

You can also check out the demo here.