Garden Story is a part of the Indie Arena Booth this weekend, so from Thursday, August 27 - Sunday, August 30, you’ll be able to enjoy a cozy bevvy of events and activities to whet your appetite for grape-related content. ^_^ Here’s the scoop on everything you’ll get to enjoy in the coming days:


Throughout the weekend, you’ll be able to hang out and (digitally) meet us when you visit the Indie Arena Booth! There are TONS of incredible games to check out, and each booth has been lovingly crafted by hand. When you visit our IAB version of The Grove, you’ll find quite a few Concord-esque buddies ready to answer some of the questions you posited in our Discord a few weeks ago. ;) We hope you enjoy learning more about the game from them!

All you need is a browser (preferably Chrome) and a mouse to visit! We'll share the link (and update this post!) on Thursday!




While we’ll be looping fun content all throughout the weekend, like Pico’s pixel art process and Grahm’s Tiny Jams (mini concerts of Garden Story music!), we’ll also have some LIVE streams available for you to enjoy, all on our Steam page.

Friday, August 28 @ 10 AM PST -- LIVE AMA Hosted by Will + Jenny, with Picogram and members of the Garden Story team in chat!

• Jenny and Will will be providing a live tour of the Garden Story booth and playing the demo, and they -- along with Picogram and other members of the Garden Story/Rose City Games team -- will be in chat, hanging out, and answering questions. Ask about the game dev process, what Pico likes to listen to while working, or even what games we’re also excited to try out during the IAB event. We can’t wait to say hi!

Saturday, August 29 @ 10 AM PST - 12 PM PST -- Livestreams of the Demo w/ MerryKish and ZaxelZach!

• Watch as these two incredible streamers each play the Garden Story demo for the first time LIVE on our Steam page! MerryKish will be playing from 10 AM - 11 AM PST, and ZaxelZach will be jumping in from 11 AM PST - 12 PM PST. (Psst: both streamers have never witnessed the incredible girthy, monolithic form of Calabasa… wonder if they’ll going to discover where Calabasa’s hiding during the stream? ;) Better watch and see!)

Want a Concord of your very own? This weekend, that dream could be made into reality!
We’ll be hosting a giveaway (with MULTIPLE winners) for you to have a chance at winning an adorable Concord pin. Keep an eye out for the tweet that’ll tell you exactly what you need to do to enter (or just hang out in our Discord!)

It’ll go live on our Garden Story Twitter sometime Thursday. ;)




Is that it? I think that’s it! We hope you have a great time this weekend playing all the indie games/demos you can ~ we know in-between celebrating Garden Story, we’re going to be playing as many as we possibly can, too.

See you in the Indie Arena Booth!

🌱 Jenny + the Garden Story team

July is already done (whaaaa?), which means it’s time for a Garden Story update! A lot of time is being spent on larger systems, like how you’ll be working with other members of the Grove, as well as different objects and tasks for helping make your world a better place.

We’ll share more details when we are able, but until then, here are some additional smaller updates that will hopefully whet your appetite!

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What’s this? A new, dangerous rot has been spotted! Bigger than the average Rot, these Glomps are known to come out at night, and get a bit agitated if you get close, so be careful!




While the original jar was a grape idea (huhuu~), this new health bar will hopefully add more clarity to how much health Concord has while exploring, and when it’s time for a pit stop for more dew!




This Acorn Rot was getting a bit too rambunctious, so we had to tone its rot splashes down a bit ~ here’s how it looks now! Be sure to use that dodge roll to provide some quick distance between Concord and their clouds. Pico’s also exploring damage counters for when you’re wacking things with your pick.




Ever just want to walk through some soft grass? The lushness of The Grove has been intensified with the addition of more squishy foliage to walk through ~ ahhh, so refreshing!




Concord was invited to hang with a bunch of other wonderful indies during the Twitch Indie Discovery Show last week! Jenny (Communications Manager) got to share with the Twitch community the joys of fruit puns, as well as provide a reminder that the Garden Story demo IS available here on Steam if you’d like to try it out (or share with friends!)

Watch the VOD at this link (Garden Story is around the 2 hour 35 min mark): https://www.twitch.tv/videos/693490220




In just a few short weeks, the Indie Arena Booth will be open! This’ll be your chance to see more indie games, Garden Story included. We’ll be running a few live events for you all to participate in, and will be posting more about that in the coming weeks! For now? The best place you’ll be able to get the insider scoop for what’s going to happen is in our Discord, so be sure to join if you want to know more.



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We’ll keep you posted, so, again, please consider joining our Discord, subscribing to our newsletter, or following us on Twitter! Tomorrow, we’ll be releasing a newsletter that dives a bit more into the Library system (and sharing a taste of some Garden Story lore, so you don’t want to miss it! -- subscribe here).

Talk soon,

💜 Jenny + The Garden Story team

We’re so excited to announce a new partnership with Kowloon Nights, who are helping us bring Garden Story to fruition! If you haven’t heard, Kowloon Nights is a video game fund that focuses on backing independent developers. They’ve helped fund other cozy and wholesome titles you may be familiar with, and you can check them out here. Their support will allow us to expand the world, making the game bigger, better, and more delightful!



You can expect more fruity friends who’ll provide additional favors and requests to hone your skills and foster the Grove’s community; a wider variety of Rot types and bosses to combat; additional natural resources to collect and further unlock the history of The Grove… and a few more surprises to make Garden Story the very best it can be. Because the team is working hard to expand Garden Story, we will also need more time than originally planned. The game will no longer be launching in Spring 2020 - we are now planning on releasing in 2021, and will let you know more details as soon as possible. We appreciate your patience, and promise it will be worth it!

None of this would be possible without our amazing community. You uplift, inspire, and motivate us with your messages and comments as we continue to create Garden Story. So we wanted to say THANK YOU for supporting the team!

If you’re curious to see more, we’ve refreshed our Steam page where you can see some of the updates and new content we’ve been working on; we can’t wait to hear what you think. One of the new additions? This updated teaser trailer!



If you have any additional questions not answered here, please feel free to find us on Discord or email us at hello@rosecitygames.com!

Thanks, and talk soon!

Rose City Games + Picogram

We hope you've enjoyed your brief visit to this cozy corner of Garden Story!

We've loved hearing from everyone who's played the demo thus far. From those of you who immediately connected with the themes of community and stewardship, to those wondering which fruits and veggies will turn-up (ahem: turnip? Oh ho hooo) in the final version of the game: reading and listening to your comments has been such a joy!





To celebrate Garden Story being a part of the Steam Summer Games Festival, we'll be streaming the Autumn Town Demo on Saturday, June 20th, at 9 AM PST! During this stream, we'll be available to take your questions about the game, and perhaps share a secret or two about what's in store. 😉


Tune in by visiting the Garden Story Steam page ~ and feel free to bring questions (or just pop in to say hi!)

Talk soon,

🌱 Jenny + the Garden Story team

Happy Friday everyone! Time to end the week with your dose of Vitamin C...oncord! Eh? Ehh? ^_^ Okay, before I show myself out, let me first preview what Pico and the team have been hard at work with on Garden Story!

How do we know what’s in a jar? Why, by labeling it, of course! Visual indicators have been added to jars so you can identify what type of dew it stores!



Still getting your bearings? Not only does the map showcase the name and coordinates of each area, but there’s a handy Concord pin now to show you where they are!



The pick art has more detail and the animation packs a little bit more punch, so thwacking Rot feels more impactful!



You can know it’s time to read new posts on the request board when you see this handy bobbling sign above it. In addition to these, there are general indicators above areas of interest as well, so you have an idea of where to explore if you’re stuck!



In addition to visual tweaks and improvements, we’ve also been really dialing in the story and fixing bugs that have cropped up! It’s harder to show that type of progress, but we can say that we’re really proud of how it’s coming along, and can’t wait to reveal more of what this world is like (and what’s happening to it!) In the meantime? Here’s a gif of Concord hanging out with some fellow Spring Hamlet neighbors and enjoying a lovely rainy day!



Finally, we were featured as a part of the first ever Wholesome Direct! It was an incredible experience seeing all of these indie games come together in an event that celebrated cozy vibes and kindness. Missed it? Don’t worry! The full video is available here.



We’ll be participating in even more events in the coming months and have a few fun activities of our own up our sleeve, so be sure to pop into our Discord or follow us on Twitter to hear all about them as we share the announcements!

Talk soon!

Jenny and the Garden Story Team

LudoNarraCon has come and gone in a flash, and we can’t say how excited we were to be able to share the broadcast with you all, as well as hear from the folks who played the demo. Thank you! It’s really energizing and motivating for the team to hear folks talk about Garden Story as kindly as you all have.

If you missed out on the festivities, don’t worry! The Autumn Town Demo is still available on Steam, so you can play it at your leisure (and if you haven’t wishlisted the game, please consider doing so as well!)

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1062140/Garden_Story/




This week, Picogram worked on adding fences and additional buildings to Winter Glade ~ we’ll be able to show you all what it looks like soon. Wonder what all those glyphs on the purple stones mean though…?

Also, we’ll be slowly bringing livestreams into the mix! If you’d like to relax with Picogram as they work on pixel art, be sure to follow us on Twitch to get notifications when they go live.




Speaking of Winter Glade, in each area Concord visits, they’ll have a home away from home to stay in. Here’s a first look at the outside of Concord’s residence in the Glade. Concord’s especially excited to see inside their abode, and so are we! That little heater “poof” makes us feel like it’ll be warm and cozy.




We’ve got a growing Discord community for Garden Story, and we’d love you to be a part of it. Stay in touch with us on Twitter or sign up for newsletters straight from Elderberry and other inhabitants of Garden Story to your inbox, updating you every month on life in the Grove.



Talk soon ~

Jenny & the Garden Story Team 🌱

We’ve been recording, prepping, coding, testing, and gathering lots of behind-the-scenes and special content to stream all weekend for the second year of LudoNarraCon, a digital event hosted by the awesome folks of Fellow Traveler.



If you haven’t gotten to participate in LudoNarraCon before, you’re in for a treat. All weekend, there will be panels, streams, and demos to check out, all united by the fact that they celebrate games with a focus on narrative. We’re so happy that Garden Story gets to be a part of the festivities, and wanted to let you know what you can expect throughout the weekend!


Starting Friday at 10 AM PST, we’ll also be showcasing a wide variety of content on our main Steam page! Our broadcast will loop throughout the entire weekend (the event ends on Monday, April 27th at 11:50 PM PST), so please feel free to visit our page for:

• Pixel art with Picogram, lead developer and artist for Garden Story
  
• Tiny Jams: mini one-song shows performed by Grahm Nesbitt, composer for Garden Story
  
• Demo gameplay with Rose City Games co-founders, Will Lewis and Corey Warning, and community dev, Jenny Windom
  
• ...and more!

We’ve fixed the lift up to Autumn Town again...and this time, it’s indefinite! What was previously a limited-time demo will now be available to play even after LudoNarraCon has finished.

Folks who have tried the demo previously offered up lots of great feedback, and we’re happy to share an updated build with lots of tweaks and fixes. This means that while it’s still a standalone experience, it will more closely resemble what you can expect in the final version of the game. Some of these updates include:

• Making sure everything’s pixel-perfect by cleaning up animation frames, extra text in places it shouldn’t be, and setting fences in exactly the right spot!
  
• Created a toggle-able “Non-perish mode” so you can live life as a grape on the edge ~ or keep it cozy and not have to worry.
  
• Looking fancy and fresh: we’ve updated map and menu UI so you can better track your progress
  
• Stay organized: you can now drop items you don’t need and collected items won’t disappear if your inventory is already full!
  
• Touched up and clarified the main mission and requests
  
• Finessed button remapping
  
• Oh, and...the stump enemy has a surprise in store for you. 😎

If you’re as excited about Garden Story as we are, please join in the fun in our Discord or follow us on Twitter. We’d love to say hi, hear what you think of the game, and able to share some exciting news with you in the future. :)



Cheers, and we hope you enjoy LudoNarraCon and the Garden Story demo!

💚 Jenny and the Garden Story Team

The sun is shining here in Portland, and while we’ve been enjoying the newfound warm weather (all while practicing social distancing, of course), we’ve also been working on Garden Story! There are lots of game updates to share with you soon, but first, BIG news on the event front: Garden Story is a part of LudoNarraCon 2020!



If you don’t know about this event, hold onto your computer! LudoNarraCon is a chance for folks who love narrative games to get a peek into what’s new and on the way, all from the comfort of their homes: it's 100% digital.

From April 24th - 27th (next weekend!), you’ll be able to visit Garden Story’s Steam page and:

• Download and play the Autumn Town Demo!
  
• Watch behind-the-scenes footage of Picogram creating the pixel art and discussing narrative and design.
  
• Listen to performances by composer and sound designer, Grahm Nessbit.
  
• Hang out with the team as they play through Garden Story.

All of this will be looping throughout the weekend, so there’s plenty of chances to tune in, experience Garden Story, and enjoy the festivities at your leisure by stopping by the Garden Story Steam page. You can also follow us on Twitter to get updates on the schedule and what you can expect to see next!

LudoNarraCon will also be on Steam’s front page with panels all about narrative games, a huge sale to splurge on, and lots of demos to play - so be sure to check the rest of the event out! Check out their latest news update for ALL the details on exhibitors, panels, games on sale, and more.

There are TONS of demos we’re personally excited to jump into, like Boyfriend Dungeon (Kitfox Games), Welcome to Elk (Triple Topping), Solace State (Vivid Foundry Corp.), Yes Your Grace (No More Robots), She Dreams Elsewhere (Studio Zevere), and more. We’re pretty sure your weekend’ll be packed if you try to get to them all!



If you’re as excited about LudoNarraCon as we are, let us know! You can hop into our Discord to chat with other people excited about Garden Story, including us, the team behind its development. We’ll also likely be gushing about all the demos we’re trying out, and we’d love to hear what you’re playing too.

We’ll have more updates about the game coming soon, so stay tuned. And we hope to see you during LudoNarraCon!

💚 Jenny, Picogram, and the Garden Story Team

Hi everyone ~ It’s been about a week since we showed off Garden Story at PAX East, so we wanted to post a quick show recap!

While Picogram held down the fort at home in Portland, some of the Rose City Team headed over to Boston for the week to showcase the Garden Story demo for the first time with the Indie Megabooth!



Before diving into the details, we wanted to start by saying THANK YOU 🥰 to everyone who came to play the game at the booth and/or downloaded the demo last weekend! It made our hearts SO happy to see folks stop in their tracks when they saw Concord, squeal when they met Maraschino, and chuckle at Rana’s brash, yet lovable, nature. 🐸

PAX weekend actually kicked off mid-week for us: we arrived in Boston on Tuesday night to set-up on Wednesday. This was our second time at PAX East as a studio, so we felt pretty comfortable with what we needed to do:

Banner hung ✅
Stations set up ✅
Cards displayed ✅
Concord pins?.... Well, those hadn’t arrived quite yet, but we were hopeful!



...And we were right to keep our fingers crossed! We did one final check to see if the pins had arrived after dinner, and in the 11th hour, we had a box full of little Concords ready to be given away at PAX! Thus, our pin back party began, with the three of us pinning Concords to cards furiously to make sure we had enough to give away by the first day of the event. An eventful start to the weekend, to be sure!



Throughout PAX East, we saw so many smiling faces at our booth… HONK HONK! Even a goose or two we had to shush away! 😉 What stood out to us was the fact that cute, cozy, and wholesome games definitely had a strong presence on the show floor (not just in the Indie Megabooth). We are proud that Garden Story continues to be a part of this movement of games emphasizing that aesthetic and overall themes of kindness and community!



For the folks who weren’t at PAX East, we wanted to still provide a lil somethin’ somethin’ ~ so, we decided to re-release the Autumn Town Demo on Steam during the duration of PAX East! While there was a bit of a back-end hiccup the first day we had hoped to have the demo out, we got it fixed up and extended the demo period to finish Tuesday instead of Monday. For those of you who reached out to let us know that you were having trouble accessing the demo: thank you! It really helped us get everything straightened out. ^_^



We’re still catching up with the streams and videos folks have created, but if you did record something, please feel free to email us the link or tag us on Twitter! We really love seeing the game through your eyes ~


If you want to continue staying in the loop about Garden Story, wanna provide some feedback, or just want to say hello, there are a few ways to do so! Sign up for the newsletter, join the Garden Story channel in the Rose City Games Discord, or send us a message at hello@rosecitygames.com!

Talk soon! 🍇

Oi! First off, thanks so much for checking out the Autumn Town Demo! To address one of the biggest points of feedback, we're introducing keybinding options in the latest build! Now you can assign keyboard controls pretty much any way you want.



This latest patch also addresses a handful of minor bugs, improvements to the options menu UI, and auto-detection for controllers. A quick heads up: unless any new show-stopper issues arise, the demo will not be updated further. This will allow us to turn our focus back to the main game and stay on schedule. Please keep that good, good feedback coming our way so we can take it into consideration during the rest of Garden Story's development!

Remember, the Autumn Town Demo is only available until December 21st, 2019. If you haven't downloaded it yet, make sure to grab it before it's gone... and tell a friend or two if you get a chance. It super helps us out! ^_^

- Pico + Rose City Games


P.S. If you enjoyed the demo, don't forget to add Garden Story to your Wishlist!