The Garden Path Steam Charts & Stats

I was mislead, I bought this 2 minutes before the sale ended so wasn't paying close attention, the foggy artstyle and reviews talking about esoteric and confusing mechanics made me think this was going to be something twisty and strange. It's animal crossing without the crushing financial debt. It's real time, night irl means night in the game, stuff takes a few days to grow, the seasons change as they do where you live etc. It's not the same game as AC by any means, but it's the same bones, if you explained animal crossing to someone this is one of the things they might imagine. You forage for plants and tools, talk with weird fellas, explore, get tools, slowly fill out a few progression things, and it's made to be played in shorter sessions each day, rather then binged in huge chunks. Nothing seems esoteric or hard to understand, it all feels really intuitive actually. I very quickly understood the gameplay mechanics, and they feel really nice, the menu's are easy to navigate and make sense, nothing seems poorly conveyed, not knowing everything is the point of *exploring* I planted a seed and poked it, saw it asking for a plant I know and one I didn't, so now I want to try growing the one I know near it and explore till I find the one i don't... cause it's an exploring game. I'm not sure how in depth plants cohabiting will be but I am honestly eager to see how that progresses. If you wanted animal crossing to be a short break from stress to wander around collecting stuff and decorating things, doin a few activities and then stopping for a bit, seeing your island grow as you come back each day and chip away bit by bit, and got sick of the ever increasing debt, fruit farming, event fomo, and sudden stop of the gameplay each day, you'll probably really like this, ESPECIALLY if you are interesting in plants at all, cause I'm getting the impression this was made by light botany nerds who were excited to share their nerdy interest with us plant plebians. If you don't know what to do, there is an achievement progression thing (think nook miles) to guide you towards small goals, and I assume each day new travellers will be hanging around to talk to, with quests and trades. The local co-op is a nice touch btw I was just hoping I'd be able to play with my partner, appreciate ya devs <3