Under the Elm

About the Game

Your grandmother left her cabin to you.

She left a basket by the door, a field guide to document what you'd find, and eleven villagers who still expect her tinctures on a regular basis. She left a hearth grown cold, her cat - Gabriel - still curled in front of it, a library behind the wall, and an attic full of thoughts she never got to share. Most importantly, she left you the woods.

Forage the forest she walked.

Seven biomes each with its own season-by-season cast of 64 mushroom and 63 botanical species drawn from real foraging traditions: Spring chanterelles and wild garlic, summer chicken of the woods and lavender, autumn porcini and hawthorn, and winter velvet shanks and snowdrops. Twenty-three of them are hiding in plain sight as dangerous lookalikes, mimicking the safe varieties. Identify what you can with the Field Guide, and have Fern help you with the ones you can't. As you explore the world she left behind, you'll catalog everything in Grandma's Field Guide, the pages filling in - one species at a time.

Brew the recipes she perfected.

126 remedies built from six preparation techniques: paste, powder, cold infusion, alcohol distillation, fermentation, and hot water decoction. Each method draws out different properties of the same mushroom, and every recipe was hers first, written in margin notes and half-remembered conversations. You'll find them all in time.

Restore what she loved.

The hearth, the cellar, the library, the attic, the greenhouse: all hers, and all closed up the day she stopped being able to manage them alone. Restoring each one brings a new system, and another piece of who she was.

Tend who she took care of.

Eleven villagers, each with their own stories, their own requests, and their own memories of your grandmother. Bram at the inn carries a grief he speaks of sideways. Aldric needs help with his fields. Elara studies the stars and asks for things grandma would have known to bring. Bring what they need, and listen when they're ready to tell you why.

... including Gabriel.

Twenty-five years at her hearth, and he knows this cabin better than you ever will. He is waiting by the fire on your first morning and he is in no hurry to explain himself. He'll warm to you at his own pace, the way cats do, and one day you may realize he is more than what he seems. 

Hear what she heard.

The Wood Wide Web is real. Seven Mother Trees scattered across the woods remember her, and remember things she never wrote down. Bring them tribute and they'll speak. Bring them enough and they'll grant you a Golden Mushroom: six in all, scattered across the biomes she walked. Find all six and who knows where you'll end up.

What this game is.

Somewhere to go on an evening when you need one, and a grandmother you never meet, only learn slowly; the way you'd learn anyone you'd just missed: from the recipes she perfected, the field guide she left in your hands, and a village that remembers her a little differently in every house.

All until the last page is full, and she isn't a stranger anymore.

---

Under the Elm is a solo project from Crooked Stone Studios made with care, slowness, and a deep love for the woods.

While this game draws on real mycology, and its Field Guide is written to be accurate, it is a game, and not a foraging guide - please don't use it to identify or prepare wild mushrooms!