The Garden Path

Its a super peaceful garden game. Best played in small doses.

雰囲気ゲー？操作はし辛く、ゲーム内だけでは説明不足でよく分からず、タイトル画面から行ける公式wikiで情報を得て何とか進めます。しかしプレイしていると楽しさを感じるよりも先に眠くて仕方なくてほとんどプレイできません。二時間以内に返品するかどうかの判断ができず返品できなくなりましたが、もしも返品できるなら返品したいです。

This is a gorgeous, restful game. Hang out in this cool garden area, plan new plant layouts, and make tea for yourself and wanderers! It changes over real time (plants grow, people turn up), so it's usually interesting to log back in.

新手引导非常差，玩了四小时都很迷惑，而且互动按键跟平时的游戏都有区别，还有地图也是一个槽点，居然打开地图不是默认聚焦到当前位置的。可玩性也不强，不推荐

I've decided to completely rewrite my review as I've accumulated an additional 20-30h since my first attempt at this game. While the rating hasn't changed, my feelings towards the game have. It's very clear that The Garden Path was made with a lot of love and care. It follows the quintessential "cosy game" formula in its art direction, but also features surprisingly detailed gardening mechanics, charming characters, and a refreshing fishing mini-game. However, as lovely and cosy as TGP is, it's also painfully cryptic and at times, nearly impenetrable thanks to a seemingly deliberate attempt to be unclear and a non-existent community, which leads to a severe lack of documentation for its confusing systems. While there's a lot to love if you enjoy smelling the flowers and taking in the sights in video games, there's also a lot to be frustrated by if you're trying to engage with this game's mechanics. While there are tutorials, they cover the very basics such as controls and some menus, but there's next to no explanation on how to achieve a lot of things, such as unlocking the essential guidebook (it basically keeps track of everything you unlock in the garden along with a few other neat features like showing you where you can find specific plants if you've studied them thoroughly) or taming a dustfly, both of which I stumbled into accidentally. I just had a dustfly following me when I booted up my game after being away from it for weeks, but I have no idea how the requirements were met. Also, I still haven't managed to figure out how to transplant a plant, where to get pouches, or even how to give myself a name. The game also suffers from some balancing and technical issues, such as critters being ungodly rare (+30h into my latest save and I only got four of them and to make matters worse, they're required for a lot of trades), storage being extremely scarce (especially since the economy revolves around trading items, so you're encouraged to hoard), and an unholy amount of pop-in, which may lead to the game never even loading assets as you're either walking around or upon loading your save. This happened to me more than a few times and although it's fixable by just going back to the main menu, it's still frustrating. There's also no explanation whatsoever on how different soil might affect the cuttings you can place on pots and although there's a hint that cuttings may bloom collectable flowers, I have yet to see it happen. The anniversary update also introduced allotments, but there's no indication of how to get started on those. I'm sure I'm missing a lot more features considering how many stars I haven't yet unlocked. Speaking of which, there's a way to "observe" stars so you can get a hint on how to unlock them, but it takes an NPC appearing in the garden followed by some work to get that observation. And although I'm giving it a thumbs down and listing a bunch of issues, I still think this game is lovely and important for the industry at large for what it represents, even though it didn't manage to find an audience. I'm sure some people would love it for what it is, even how it keeps all its secrets to itself. But overall, I think there are better options for someone who wants to chill whilst fully understanding what they're playing, instead of having to decipher it.

One of the most beautiful games I've played.

Its just relaxing :)