Echoes of the Plum Grove News

Season's Greetings from Honeywood & Kickstarter Update

As the snow blankets Honeywood, and villagers decorate their homes with festive wreaths, it's time to welcome the awaited Winter Gala! The island is abuzz with excitement, and all the villagers are excited to to bring this festive celebration to life!
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Throughout the day of the Winter Gala, the Cranberry Collection Contest begins, scattered across the island are 40 cranberries, waiting to be discovered. Depending on how many you collect, rewards range from a modest sum of money to significant social boosts with the villagers. It's a delightful way to explore the island, and who knows what secrets you might uncover along the way!

As evening falls, the Town Hall becomes the center of festivities. Don't miss the punch bowl at the event - it's not just a drink station, but also an indicator of your success in the Cranberry Collection Contest. The more cranberries you gather, the more full the punch bowl is!
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We're incredibly excited for you to experience these winter festivities in Echoes of the Plum Grove. Remember, the Gala is just a glimpse of the myriad of events and surprises that await you in Honeywood.

Speaking of a myriad of events, our Kickstarter was fully funded!
We ended with 757 backers, and a total of $29,909 pledged. So many exciting stretch goals were reached and we can't wait to begin implementing them before our 1.0 launch!
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Stay tuned for more updates, and don't forget to wishlist us on Steam. Join our vibrant community on Discord and follow us on our socials for the latest news and sneak peeks.

We'll be posting in game footage and updates on our socials! Follow us here:

Super cute colony farm sim Echoes of the Plum Grove is inspired as much by Oregon Trail as Stardew Valley

Gather round, cozy farm sim players, we've got a mashup I've not seen yet. Echoes of the Plum Grove is a colony farm sim that its publisher Freedom Games is calling part Paper Mario, Stardew Valley, The Sims, and even Oregon Trail. And yeah, I do actually see all the ingredients in there. Plum Grove turned up to the PC Gaming Show: Most Wanted in a montage of other upcoming Freedom Games releases scheduled for next year, and it has a demo on at the moment too...
Read more.

Echoes of the Plum Grove is 🟢 LIVE 🟢 on Kickstarter!

Thanks to the help of our AMAZING backers, Echoes of Plum Grove is already 100% funded!!!

Thanks to all of your help, we have fully funded our project!!! (In less than 90 minutes, at that!) We cannot tell you how excited and touched we are by all of your support. From the bottoms of our cozy little hearts, thank you all so much!!!

Our Kickstarter launched on October 31st and our community got it funded so quickly we completely forgot to ensure our Steam post was out in all the excitement! The Kickstarter will be live through December 4th so you haven't missed much. Make sure to check it out!

Because it was funded so quickly, we we're already offering stretch goals! Below are our current goals with the first one - Thunderstorms - already having been met! The second stretch goal is really close to being reached as well. 🤯

We were far from ready for the overwhelming support that we've received, so we'll be adding more to our stretch goals list over the next several weeks. Once again, thank you all so much! ❤️❤️❤️

And last but not least, we have a demo live on Steam! This demo gives you roughly 2-3 hours of play time and access to a special Character Creation mode where you can design your own tourist or ghost that could become part of the game if you back at one of those tiers or higher!

There are lots more updates to come so make sure to wishlist the game, join our Discord, and follow us on our socials to see even more!

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                                                            Click the buttons above and below to find us off Steam!

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Candy, Costumes, and More!

It’s almost here! Halloween! It’s my all-time favorite holiday as it also sits in my favorite season, autumn! We wanted to give people the best experience with adding in our own version of Halloween. My favorite part, when I was a kid, like so many others was walking around the neighborhood collecting candy from houses. So, we did just that! On our day of Halloween, Fall 13th, you can find kids wandering Thistlestone Island in hopes of landing the best candy.

You can make candy in preparation for this event by crafting the candymaker. Back in the day, to make candy came from two simple ingredients, sugar and fruit. As long as you have a steady supply of sugar and these specific fruits: apricot, apple, peach, lemon, pineapple, and cherry you can make candy easily. You also have the option of waiting for the bonfire event in the forest at 5pm to buy candy corn from the baker. Most kids after wandering between houses, make their way there.

The event itself is purely just a celebration of villagers bobbing for apples, carving pumpkins (though back in colonial period, they used to carve turnips) and dancing around a giant bonfire! You can find villagers mingling amongst themselves, eating food over at the tables, or drinking from the bubbling cauldron. It’s got the best atmosphere to emulate the perfect fall season.

Back during the colonial period, they did have gatherings similar to this to ward off evil spirits at the end of the fall season. They were bitterly superstitious about falling ill during the winter so this was a way for them to offer up parts of their bounty to appease the spirits. They would wear animal outfits (specifically bear costumes) and sacrifice animals / crops grown from the year in the bonfire. We kept our version much happier and lighthearted. Apple bobbing is one of my favorite things to do during the fall and so of course, I thought it fitting to add it to the game. I hope everyone gets to enjoy their own version of Halloween this year!

There are lots more updates to come so make sure to wishlist the game, join our Discord, and follow us on our socials to see even more!

We can also be found on Kickstarter! If you want to be among the first notified of it launching later this year make sure to follow the campaign!

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                                                            Click the buttons above and below to find us off Steam!

                                                                           Discord          Kickstarter

Ring Ring Ring! It’s officially school time!

While most of us are clambering back to the schoolhouse, the kids of Honeywood go to school every season, including summer. We wanted to add something unique to our game that I think few others do, having their parents / guardians walk them to school!

Of course not everyone has parents that can afford the time to walk them having jobs and all, but some lucky few get an escort. Of course, the school masters daughter, Madeline, helps her father out every morning by arriving a bit early and ringing the school bell to let everyone know school is about to begin.

School in our game isn’t just all aesthetics. We have kids go to school for a reason. Since eventually you as the player will die of old age, we know that the kid you raise will be important in skill building. Sending them to school allows them to learn all skills slowly, over time.

While apprenticing focuses on increasing a specific skill set, going to school improves all of them, though slower. The skills they learn are: farming, foraging, fishing, crafting, cooking, and social. All very important skills to learn when developing a future character to play.

Kids can be found in school taking notes and listening diligently to the instruction given on the blackboard. The schoolhouse is also one of the interiors you can access in the game, at any time. Also, don’t get attached to any other kid necessarily. Sometimes kids will opt out of school in favor of apprenticing or, once old enough, will simply age out of school and find a profession.

I absolutely love how much work we have put into developing a school system in our game. It truly is heartwarming to see little kids wandering their way to school in the morning, chaperoned or not!