Under the Elm

Your grandmother left her cabin to you.

She left a basket by the door, a field guide to document what you'd find, and ten villagers who still expect her tinctures on a regular basis. She left a hearth grown cold, 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.

Eight biomes each with its own season-by-season cast of 38 mushroom species drawn from real foraging traditions (and a handful that aren't quite real). Spring chanterelles. Summer chicken of the woods. Autumn porcini. Winter velvet shanks. Even dangerous lookalikes mimicking the safe varieties. Find them all. Identify what you can with the Field Guide and have Fern help you with the ones you can't. Catalog everything in Grandma's Field Guide: the pages that fill in, one species at a time, as you explore the world she left behind.

Brew the recipes she perfected.

96 tinctures built from four preparation techniques: cold infusion, alcohol distillation, fermentation, and hot water decoction. Each method draws out different properties of the same mushroom. Every recipe was hers first, written in margin notes and half-remembered conversations. You'll find them all in time: some by reading, some by listening

to villagers who knew her.

Restore what she loved.

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

Tend who she took care of.

Ten 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. Build relationships with each of them one heart at a time. Bring what they need. Listen when they're ready to tell you why.

Hear what she heard.

The Wood Wide Web is real. Eight 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:

A game you can play for an evening or for a season. A cabin you'll come home to. Letters that arrive at the right time. A grandmother who shows up everywhere: in the recipes, the mushrooms, even the way the villagers say your name.

Slow days. Quiet evenings. Nothing chasing you.

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