I’ve waited years for this game. I don’t remember when I first heard of it, but I was immediately entranced by the absolutely delightful art style. Look, I live in London. I don’t have a garden. Gosh, do I wish I did – sure, I can go look at some trees in the local park, but it’s not the same as my own haven, which is why The Garden Path absolutely spoke to me.
Developed by Carrotcake, The Garden Path is a ‘humble gardening slice-of-life sim’ that runs in real-time and gives you a small to-do list for each day – if you would like. Think of it as a little sweet treat that you get to have a couple of times a day. If I were to liken it to anything, I’d say it’s similar to Cozy Grove, but with aesthetics more like Snufkin: Melody of Moominvalley.
As the game starts, you wander forward, following a strange voice. Then, you find yourself in the garden. Turns out it’s been abandoned and left to its own devices for a while, but you can step up and become the owner, and decorate it as you see fit. You can plant flowers, invite visitors, meet friends, and fish in the streams. Over time, you build up your own house and the garden and uncover secrets about what really happened.
This is a slow game. Like Cozy Grove, it’s meant to be played in small bursts over days and weeks, with you popping in at different times. If you enjoy this in games like Animal Crossing, this will be for you – if not, it might drive you nuts. The Garden Path works in real-time, though you can adjust the time in-game forward or backward by a few hours, so if you play after work or early in the morning, you can still catch the midday goings-on. Note that this does mean anything you plant will take literal days to grow. Like I said, it’s a slow game.
Leading on from that, I’ve only scratched the surface of this game. I’ve been able to play just over a week of spring – now, mind you, I could probably change the time on my Switch and travel à la Animal Crossing but admittedly I haven’t tried that for fear of messing up my seedlings. This is a game meant to be played over the year so you can experience all seasons, weather, and types of plants that grow across the months. Therefore, while I can recommend the game, I don’t know too much about what happens in it beyond spring.
So, what do you actually do in the game? Well, you wander the woods as much as you like, while recording the flora around you. Press ‘Y’ to focus on any plant, tree, or miscellaneous growing thing in the garden, and then you can record information about it and harvest items from it. This includes anything from twigs to flower buds, to flowers that you can brew into tea. You can also get cuttings to grow in a wide variety of pots, planters, and basins. Then, you trade the bits and bobs you have with the garden’s visitors like Caoimhe the bird, Larto the buffalo, and Augustus the bear to get decorations, seeds, and tools.
Each vendor asks for different things in return for their products – which can be tricky to figure out as they’re marked with symbols, but your inventory highlights which items you can use. I bought seeds by trading some twigs. Imagine if it was that easy in real life.
It’s not just the sellers that are wandering our lands. There’s a cast of vibrant and friendly characters including one who is an apple, one who looks like a lemon, and one who is a pumpkin. You can talk to them every day, and they’ll sometimes have requests for you, or you can kick back and play a game of conkers with them. Sorry to Hubert the apple, I destroyed their conker.
To keep you coming back, the list of visitors does seem a little random. Sometimes, you’ll get the same visitors for a couple of days in a row, other times you find new faces. Not every character you need to speak to will show up, so if you have a quest for Larto, you need to keep popping in to see when he wanders back. This hasn’t become an issue just get, but I can see how it could be irritating down the line.
I must highlight the fishing mechanic here. We all know what it’s like getting into a new farm-y, outdoors-y, life-sim – if there’s a fishing game there’s a 50/50 chance whether it’ll be annoying or easy (I’m looking at you, Stardew). The good news is, The Garden Path makes it easy to fish and has a very unique take on how to do it. Simply cast your line out, and then move your cursor around until a fish appears with a bullseye-like target. Hover around in there and you’ll catch it! But the key here is that you attract fish by… whistling. How intriguing is that? The better you whistle, by hovering in the colored circles, the quicker the fish comes to you. Then, just reel it in and bang, new fish.
Oh, by the way, you can actually play with another person in local co-op if you wish. I didn’t try this as when I let my partner live on my Animal Crossing island, he sold my decorations thinking they were naturally spawned items – so much for my rustic vibe. Therefore, he isn’t allowed near my tiny seedlings and stone plant basin. But if you do have someone you wish to play with, you can go right ahead and walk the garden together.
I feel that a lot of things will make sense over time as the seasons change and different people arrive, along with new flora. As you wander, you sometimes collect ‘notes’ which appear to go by the season you’re in. I think you may need them to fill the requirements of certain characters appearing, but again – only time will tell.
So far, I’ve not encountered anything particularly bad about the Switch version of the game. It crashed once and froze on start-up at a different time so I had to reload, but nothing was lost due to the autosave feature. The load times are quite long, not the worst I’ve ever experienced, but hopefully, a post-release update will shorten them a bit.
My only real issue is that the explanation of the game’s many mechanics, symbols, and items is a bit vague. There are a lot of tabs in the menu with symbols that pop up at the side of the screen, and while they may make sense the longer you play, I am admittedly a little baffled for now. I’m mainly talking about what happens when you ‘listen’ to your plants. A tiny bubble comes up with a couple of items in it – do the plants need these, or is it just a whim? I’m not too sure.
The controls that go along with all these menus are also a bit picky. To access the map, you click in the right stick, which for some reason I can never seem to remember so end up opening every tab before I find it. To use tools in The Garden Path you need to click Y to focus, then press X to use whichever tool is right for the job – though digging things up with the shovel seems to sometimes require a different button which I haven’t quite worked out.
Carrotcake’s game is truly unique, to me at least. I’ve never seen art as quaint as this. The entire setting from grass to tree-top to every veggie-shaped villager is hand-drawn by Louis Durrant, who worked tirelessly on the Garden Path for close to seven years. The art reminds me of children’s books I used to have, especially the Moomins.
I do absolutely recommend this game if you’re a fan of whimsy, gardening, and slower-paced adventures. Not everyone has the time to spend hours gaming at once, nor do they want to, so for those who want a quick little getaway to a lovely land, The Garden Path is right up your alley.