The Garden Path is a new game about the joys of gardening, making friends along the way, fishing while relaxing by a lake, and more. The garden in this indie game is a place where wonderful things happen, like magic fish singing songs that make the crops and the trees grow. Game Rant spoke to Louis Durrant, the sole developer behind The Garden Path, about this and many other things that are included in his upcoming title.

There are many characters in The Garden Path, with 10 travelers that come and go depending on the players' choices as well as 40 vegetable residents, each with their own name and personality traits. Durrant said he went out of his way to ensure that there would be achievements in the game, which are determined by the star system, in which players can form constellations that unlock specific benefits. Durrant also spoke about future plans for The Garden Path, or what could be future projects to follow. Interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

RELATED: Sable Developers Discuss Focus and Inspirations for Open World Game

Q: Was the current art style for this game what you always had in mind?

A: All those years ago when I started working on the game, in my head I could see the game and how I wanted it to look. When I started on the game, the art style was very different; it was much more colorful, much more abstract, much brasher. Then there was a point a couple of years ago when, with everything I had learned being an illustrator, I decided to be more true to how I originally wanted it to be.

I know there are some people that definitely prefer that older art style, but to me, I think it's very close to how I wanted the game to look, I really like this set of muted tones that I've gone for and the way the garden, the forest trees, and the foliage kind of sit back a little bit. The fact that certain flowers and things can pop up and grab your attention, whereas before everything grabbed your attention. I wouldn't be able to do the art style I'm doing now a few years ago, but, with everything that I have, I'm proud of where it's come. I think it's looking great.

Q: Was your work influenced by the parks and greenery of Bristol, UK?

A: I have had people come to Bristol, where I am now, and they tell me, "The greenery here is so lovely!," but I guess I've never felt the benefit because it's the only city I've ever lived in. Maybe there are other places that don't have that luxury, but, to answer your question, not so much. If anything, I was influenced by the lack of greenery that I experienced in Bristol because I spent my time as a student living pretty much in the center, by the harborside. Then when eventually I stopped being a student, I graduated, and I got a place also in the center, but I had no garden. I really wanted that kind of thing, to be able to grow something, to be able to store some soil, to really live that experience of plants coming to life in the summer and then, you know, resting in the winter. But recently I've moved just out of the center, next to this really lovely park, which during the pandemic I've walked through maybe a couple of times a week.

I've seen it over the seasons now, and I've picked up on some things. It's a great place to sort of escape the digital world, I guess. For sure, a lot of what is in that park I'm near now has influenced me, the way it moves, those natural elements have influenced what I've decided to include or not include in the game. I would say, I think my primary focus for the game is that when I was a kid I was a scout, a beaver, and we would do walks in parks. People always make fun of me when I tell them this because I spent a lot of my childhood just locked indoors, but I've always loved camping, and everybody knew I loved camping, it was one of my favorite things. I think just that experience of waking up and early in the morning walk through the woods, with the bracken and the birch trees, if I can capture that in the game then that would be a success.

With Bristol I think there's this sense of people moving through, people creating things, there's usually something going on, which connected to those more outdoors places, like Castle Park and the green outside the castle building. There's always a spirit to it.

Q: What freedom do players have when it comes to customizing their Garden?

A: In the game, I think I've tried to find a balance between giving the players the freedom to create their own experience, and then also delivering an experience to them, if that makes sense. On the surface level, their decisions will be the furniture, plant pots and things, being able to change clothes, but I wanted something that felt a little bit deeper than that, something that felt reactive.

The game is actually a little like Viva Pinata in a way, depending on how much tall grass you grew in that game you attracted this thing that looked like a donut, or one of those foxes. I always liked that I had this concrete system as to what works and what changes the garden so that players could have that path. They could say, "If I grow this many carrot flowers, this person will come and visit." I like the way that works, instead of something like people on forums going there to learn how many carrot flowers they need to do something. I want to try and avoid that and give people a clear pathway, but also clear goals because sometimes you don't know with a more abstract approach what you're running into, you don't know if something was actually caused by you, if something you worked towards actually paid off, you may be not so sure.

At a different level, I kind of wanted to do the fundamentals of the garden as those smaller decisions you've made can really shift the way the garden works, in theory. Something like time is usually just a feature that linear, but I like the idea that just like a tree, time can be this thing that you shape and move to change how you want the garden to look. Eventually, you'll have a pathway to have a nighttime garden if you really like the aesthetic or the feeling of nighttime, or a garden where maybe it is autumn for longer if you really like autumnal colors and everything. Maybe you want autumn all the time or maybe autumn less of the time, but you have the control to shift time in a way that suits what you like to enjoy while you're in that space.

RELATED: Tunic is Much More Than a Legend of Zelda Clone

Q: What is the origin story behind The Garden Path?

A: This is a funny one because my philosophy with the game is to have you enter the game as quick as possible and be in that space. I've always wanted the origin story to be more show don't tell, so in lieu of that I wouldn't give too much away, but there are people who are interested in something like it. There's a story I've been developing and it kind of drips through in various ways, but it is going to be quite abstract, and there are going to be contradictions, characters telling you things they recall incorrectly. It's something you will have to get the spirit of and piece together if that's something you want to do, but a lot of people just want to get in there and experience the game. The only backstory that's essential is that you've been walking through these woods and now you've arrived here in the garden. That's all you need to know to get playing.

Q: What are the challenges of developing a game all by yourself? How long have you been working on it?

A: I had the idea maybe in late 2017 or mid-2017, and then I started building actually an engine in around April or May 2018. I had worked on websites before and I had been working on Visionaire Studio, which is this sort of video game engine that's very much visual, and there's not much coding if you don't want to. But I made a commitment, I was going to try and learn more objects and coding, and just see how far I get. It's been a long journey, but I think I've learned a lot, and then you go back to your old code and it's familiar, and it's fun, but there are things you can do to work on it.

There are definitely ups and downs, but I wanted to keep my expectations in check, so I was probably going to come to a point where I really can't do this by myself. I haven't quite hit that block yet and I'm hoping I won't because everything is pretty much in place now. At the end of the day it is really quite simple under the hood, there aren't these crazy physics engines or bullet-tracing, something like that, where I wouldn't know where to begin. It's mostly ifs and elses, you know, 'if this then that.' The most complex system is p0robably what I'm most proud of and what I've spent the most time on, and you are moving through the world, which has a fairly big map, I want to make sure things load in and out as smoothly as possible. The engine does have a degree of that.

I have so many sets of weeds, and bracken, and small trees and things, that loading them all at the same time would bring performance down. Having that as mostly a seamless experience lets you move through the garden and not notice that the world is kind of constructing and deconstructing as you walk through it. That was really important to me. In theory, almost everything in the game you can interact with to some degree. If there's a weed or something you can go up to that and harvest it, or something. I think it's got a weight to the world, I didn't want it to be just backdrop.

Q: You mentioned the pandemic earlier. Has it impacted you or your work considering you're the only developer of the game?

A: I think like I said earlier, going on those walks I maybe wouldn't have done if the pandemic hadn't hit. Broadly speaking, my day-to-day work has been mostly the same.

When I studied graphic design, one of my tutors told me "Don't go to your room and never come out because designers don't do that, animators do," which I thought was funny because when I was a kid I was very much an animator. I spent all my time there in my attic and just made Flash animations. That's how I've always worked, I've always been perfectly happy to go on these stints and be alone in a room just to work on these things for a month, which is essentially how Cold Valley came out. It's just how I've always been, and I know that some people find to be in the same room for long really gets into your head, and it does eventually for me, but for the most part it's been the same workflow. It hasn't affected me too much, except having to go to the supermarket, which is the least I could do. I think there are a lot of people that it affected more than others, but if you're a more introverted person I guess it's not so much of a shift.

Q: I wanted to talk about the fan art your mother did. I saw it on your Twitter, and I thought it was lovely. What's the story behind this, and why do you think she cared to be the first?

A: The story behind it is that she's been doing ceramics every Friday for a few years now, and she's been getting really good, and I think that's a creative outlet. When she doesn't come and visit, which she hasn't done for a while, she sends things through the mail. My house is slowly filling up with plates and these trinkets and things that are sort of sitting around my house. I really like them, I like that hand-made feel to it. It was just a theory of mine she wanted to be the first person the make the first fan-art, I don't know if those were her own words.

I'm surprised she went for Augustus as well because he's quite a detailed character, and he's got lots of features with his backpack. When you hold it in 3D that's quite surreal because I've seen him in 2D this whole time, but he's not weighted, and he's quite top-heavy, you know. He doesn't really stand up, in the game we can imagine he would, but in the real world he probably falls flat on his back, but he's doing alright.

RELATED: The 15 Best Indie Games of E3 2021

Q: How many characters are there in the garden, and which ones are your favorite? Were characters in the game inspired by real people?

A: In terms of how many characters, there are 10 travelers, the people who'll come and go on different days. Maybe there will be a couple more on release in addition to those who are planned, but we'll see how it goes. Then for the vegetable residents, they are the people who'll come and stay, or come and go depending on who you decide to invite. There are 40 of them at the moment, but I'm hoping for at least 50 at launch. I have them all planned with names, what heads they have of the various vegetables.

They're all my children so I love them all, couldn't pick a favorite. But there's the deer merchant, Chashka, probably a character I really warmed to. For a long time, I just had the visuals of her, and I really hadn't assigned her a personality. Then one day I knew exactly, "This is who she is," and I think she's really fun to write. Because I had that with a lot of the other characters maybe is obvious when you draw them you know this is how they would talk, this is how they would sound, this is how they would behave. With her, I think there's a bit more nuance and I think because I went through that and I had to figure something out I think she's a lot more fun to write.

She is inspired by real people, I think they all are to some degree, but maybe to the disappointment of family and friends more so they are inspired by people I've known in passing. You know, people at work or uni that have these big or small personalities, if I need to think about what they might say there's usually a person or maybe two, and I'll go to them and I think I would write them.

Q: The Garden Path does feel similar in a way to games like Stardew Valley, Terraria, and maybe Don't Starve. Were they an influence on your work?

A: Definitely an influence, yeah. Don't Starve is the exception, actually, but with Stardew Valley and Terraria, I never got too far in them, even if they have definitely been inspirations. I think kind of understanding why I never got that urge to play more because I know that these are games people pour hours into, but for me, I would lose interest and I wondered why that was. At what point and what game mechanics could change to make someone like me keep wanting to play because I'm sure I'm not the only one.

I suppose in a way I wanted to make a game where these games are very much item management and there's a certain amount of pressure; in Don't Starve you need to stay alive, in Stardew Valley you need to water your plants every day, and Terraria you're fending off from zombies, but I like something where there are not greater pressures.

It's not a survival game, but maybe in Stardew Valley and Terraria you'll build these systems, you are designing systems, and it's less about that and more about being in the space collecting things, having things that you've worked for be proud of, and your little set of objects. I didn't want a game that felt too bogged down in crafting, either. I wanted something that was much more live all things through, talking with characters, you would stumble upon things, and eventually, you would have these interesting items that you can maybe trade with other characters; where every item felt somewhat precious, it didn't need like 500 copper tubes to build this ax, this ax should feel like it's existed for quite some time.

I wish games were more like that, which I guess has maybe an RPG element to it. I've always found myself admiring games like Stardew Valley, but kind of being able to put hours into RPGs. I guess in a way it's sort of anti-Stardew Valley and anti-Terraria, but there's certainly nothing wrong, they're brilliant games, and I've loved every moment I've spent with them. But I wanted to build something I would play, hopefully, for a very long time. I don't want a game where you lose progress, I want to log back in and you can see everything that you've done and everything up to that point. There's no pressure to carry on or fall behind. Everything is there, and what you can do from that point is to make more progress. That's what I hope for.

Q: How does daytime versus nighttime work in the game?

A: The main reason I wanted to tie the game to the real world is time, as opposed to a game where you can sit down and churn every single day. I like with Animal Crossing that you can go to sleep and in the morning, hopefully, something's changed and it's different. I think there's a little bit of excitement with a bit of patience, which some people struggle with, but hopefully you get that reward the next day. From that, when you tie something to daytime or nighttime you are having that shift in visuals and that shift in tone.

It's ultimately aesthetics; I wanted it so that someone who likes to play at night or someone who likes to play at day is a decision that's down to them, they're not going to be locked out of different content, they're not going to have a wildly different experience. If there's something like a fish that can only be caught during the day, there are fish they can catch and then bring daytime in the garden for an hour or something to explore that content if they want to. I wanted that in that aesthetic sense, you could choose if you prefer day or night because they look so different, there's also a very different soundtrack for the daytime and the nighttime.

Some people might like the quiet sound of the crickets and the much more low-key soundtrack of the nighttime, you know, nighttime walks and lanterns and things. I prefer the daytime around dusk, that much brighter fall soundtrack and much clearer colors, but I hope it's a decision that will come down to the player at the end of the day, not something like, "Oh, I wish I played at 3:00 a.m. and talk to this guy who only comes at 3:00 a.m."

RELATED: Stardew Valley: How To Romance Every Character

Q: Can you tell me more about the star system?

A: You can look up to the stars anytime, doesn't matter if it's day or night. The stars are essentially achievements. They're like a talent tree because as you do certain things you'll unlock different stars. You might brew ten teas and get the star for a new tea. Many of the stars come with the name of a fictional gardener, and they'll come with a little quote as well.

What you'll be able to do with those stars is connect them and form constellations, these sort of preset constellations, and like I said earlier this is the way you can get a nighttime garden, for instance. You'll unlock a constellation and then activate it, and as that constellation is all over the garden, your garden will always be a nighttime garden. There will be ways for you to see stars before unlocking them. You can say, "Ah, I need to complete this many more errands to get this next, and that's my next goal." Maybe you can go, "Ah, this is what I need to do to get a purely daytime garden or a pure autumnal garden." So yeah, that's how they work.

I wanted that sort of horizontal and then also vertical progress. I'm more of a numbers person so I love that sense of numbers increasing and unlock more things; I'm sure there are some people who'll have no interest in that at all, but certainly, for me, I wanted to include something that felt like that.

Q: What about the puzzle pieces that compose the Garden? Are there secret pieces you can unlock with the achievements, or biomes, secret characters?

A: You don't really unlock puzzle pieces, acres, pieces of land as much, that's how the garden is put together by the game before you play. I was thinking of having a way that some of the garden is locked behind this kind of haze that you can't move through, and you unlock the garden as you work, but there's a part of me that just thought it's nice to be able to start the game and totally ignore everything and just walk around the garden at full capacity, so I thought that was really important. You know, that sense of being lost and being unsure where you are, memorizing your garden, that kind of thing.

The way it builds the world, there will be this set number of acres so if you play a lot of time and create a lot of worlds you can definitely land in the same acre the road will lead in a different place, if you know what I mean. In theory, there's this balance between this more interesting space you can curate and something that feels fresh and new. There will definitely be acres, pieces of land that are rarer than others, but they're not going to lock you out of any content. It might have a little bit of visual interest, it might have a bench or something with a little inscription as to someone might want to learn more about.

My hope is that you're not spending the time regenerating your garden 50 times hoping to land on that special acre. That's the hope at least. It shouldn't feel like your garden is inferior because you got a bad roll or something. All the acres are pretty similarly interesting. There will be a few, just because I can't fill everything with something interesting that will be nice to have, points of interest around the garden, so I think there will be one or two in every garden. A lot of acres I've created to let players think, "Oh, this is a good spot, let's set up camp," and there are these areas of no interest, but that's up to you to shape in a way that you want.

Q: Did your previous work with Crossing to the Cold Valley and Kingdom Ka have an impact on The Garden Path?

A: It's a really good question. I think people who go to my old games, which were these uni projects that I worked on and eventually polished up and put out there, and I'm glad that I did because people like them, but they're very different from The Garden Path. They're short linear stories, but they're much more existential than The Garden Path, they're much more heavy.

Cold Valley definitely shares a visual element because you have these rich foliage-filled environments, but Cold Valley is a game about having a choice in life being bound to your environment, that's kind of the experience I wanted. Kingdom Ka is very much about life and death, and for both of them, I wanted them to pull you out of this state of comfort - not discomfort, but uncertainty.

Having come from that, my goal for The Garden Path, because Cold Valley and Kingdom Ka were kind of artsy and hard to go through, I wanted to make a game that people want to play. Something that just feels playable, that's my number one goal for The Garden Path. There's a lot of writing in the game, and that uncertainty is not the main ingredient, but as a pinch of salt, I like when games and movies catch you off-guard. They don't upset you, but they make you think in a sort of way or reflect on an idea that you not have expected as you go into it. I like the idea for The Garden Path to explore similar ideas to Cold Valley and Kingdom Ka but in a much more approachable, friendly way. I think that's where it's come from, that's my path as a game dev. You know, sometimes you're feeling like you're having a grand old time, but something just drops this sad hammer on you. I hope for the game to have this general upbeat but wistful tone, that's my objective.

Q: Apart from the mechanics we talked about, are there any plans for you to introduce new things?

A: I'll be careful here because I think I've announced everything I feel confident I can deliver, and I want to make sure that the first release is a good, neat package where everything is connected and it's nicely designed. That's my aim. If I can have fewer mechanics that feel very nicely considered that's definitely my priority. But I've had these ideas for the game and never say never, I mean, interior space was not something I was originally going to have in the game, but I thought it would be nice to have your own tent. Maybe just fleshing it out a little bit, having different tents and things, just have interior spaces be more of a mechanic. Maybe I like also the idea of a companion system as well, it has been rocking around in my mind, but they could be a long, long way off.

I need to get my head down and work on what I've already said I would do. As I worked on the game I pulled these pillars of gameplay, and I wanted to make each of them feel very much connected and part of one big system. There are definitely smaller things aside from that. If I can make sure those pillars are connected, then I've done my job, and everything will come after.

RELATED: Tribes of Midgard Proves that It Takes a Village (To Kill a Giant)

Q: What are your plans for Carrotcake for when The Garden Path launches, and maybe after that?

A: I've been working on The Garden Path for a number of years now, and for some projects, it's your passion project, but you want to move to the next thing. That's definitely not the case with The Garden Path. If I can have the privilege to work on it for another three years, in my heart as long as people are interested and really excited about it I'll just keep working on it. I made the game for that; it's that sort of game that lands it softer on more content. You can never have too many hats or never too many types of trees and things. That's definitely what I'm looking to do. I've always had three or four games in my head, even as I'm working on The Garden Path. If The Garden Path is a success, but eventually the dust settles as everything does, I would love to tackle one of those very different kinds of games, and maybe with a small team instead of just me.

Q: Why the name Carrotcake?

A: I've been publishing work online since I was maybe 11, just under Carrotcake. I used to make sort of more wacky stuff online, I thought I was a really wacky kid. I thought, "Carrot and cake? That's crazy," and I guess it's become sentimental, but I think over time I appreciated the carrot cake is not all quirky. As a cake, I think it reflects the games I make quite well because you have a cake, which is something sweet, but carrot cakes tend not to be so sweet; they tend to be slightly more earthy, and there's something more unusual to them. Nobody really likes carrot cakes, but I've warmed into the name, and I'm quite attached to it right now, for sure.

Q: Is there anything you might want to add that I didn't tap into?

A: Fishing! It felt wrong making a game like I was making it and not have fishing. Like the pillars, I spent a lot of time trying to make fishing tie in with those mechanics. One of those mechanics is the gardening itself. I had to figure out how to bring your fishing into the garden because the garden is brought into fishing by catching things, having things, work into the fishing. But then I like to have the fish go back and affect the garden, and that's my central challenge.

I'm really proud of this system where the fish themselves aren't real fish. They're this kind of magical entities born out of the vibrations in the water made through song. When you cast your rod you whistle a little song and you are able to change the volume and the pitch, and if you get the pitch just right and then you hold it, then the fish will come to you. Each of the fish holds a different power, so you maybe don't like to go around finding seeds so you go and catch a fish that will sing a song and bring out a few birch trees or birch seedlings into the garden. It's another way you can play the game non-conventionally.

If you like fishing, but you want to keep up with your gardening, that's how it works. There's fish that, as I said earlier with the daytime and nighttime, keep the day going on for longer if you want a few more daylight hours if there's anything else you want to do before the night comes in. I just wanted to make sure I got it in there because it's a system I'm really proud of.

In some games, you go fishing, but it's all carps and herrings. It's this fish that exists in the real world. I thought, how many games you can go and pick oregano, and pick sage, rosemary, and I thought, wouldn't it be nice to have this sort of real world and have plants and foliage that are real, but then have fish like birch tree fish, something that exists only in the game. I thought that was a nice way to have it spinning on its head. Some people just want to kick back and fish, you know. I think giving people the power to make significant changes even just by fishing, I think more games need to embrace that.

[END]

MORE: Laxidaze Dev Talks Importance of Inclusivity in Character Creation Process