- The Abbess Garden's Devlog 12: 20% Off, updates & new game in the making 👀 - 25 June 2026
Dear players,Firstly, a huge thank you to all of you who bought the game 💖 We sold more than 2000 copies on Steam alone, and that's a great result for a small studio's first game, only available in English! If you didn't get it yet, you might be interested in learning The Abbess Garden is 20% off in the Steam Summer Sale, from June 25 to July 9 🌿I keep updating the game, using the results from our survey, which you can still fill! The last update was for players' comfort: zooming in and out (it was the most requested small feature that was not addressed yet).You can also check out other great indie games on sale published by our partner indie.io on the Summer Sale to add to your collection.Also, it's the last days of the Cozy game jobs simulators! It has a great curated selection of cozy games :)Reviews still matter a lot to us :) So if you played the game, we would appreciate it a lo…
- Small update 1.1.7: zoom in and out! - 24 June 2026
Hi, You can now zoom in and out in the game, using the mouse wheel :) It was the most requested small feature in our survey, so I hope you'll find that useful! Have a nice day, Edwige
- The Abbess Garden's Devlog 11: Updates & spy festival! - 15 May 2026
The release is now behind us, so I finally have the time to write this news :) I want to say a big thank you to every player who supported and bought the game!!! It means a lot to us :) Spy rendez-vous!The Spy Video Game Rendezvous is starting today on Steam for its second edition!!! https://store.steampowered.com/curator/45263338/sale/SpyVideoGameRendezvous2026 I have made a special trailer for the showcase! Although The Abbess Garden looks like an outlier there, I'm happy as it allows us to talk about our spy plot 🕵️♀️ If you are curious about real spies, I interview the curator of Port-Royal des Champs, Nathalie Genet-Rouffiac, about real spies of the 17th century:She did her PhD on spies in British islands in the 17th century and worked for a while as head researcher for WWII spy archives, so she really is a specialist of real spies (and Port-Royal, where the game takes place ;) )…
- Small update 1.1.6: action cursors! - 5 May 2026
Hi, The cursors update is here :) Now, you'll have a different cursor when watering, planting a seed, walking, etc. or when no action is selected! This was often requested, so I hope this quality of life update will offer players a better experience! Have a nice day, Edwige
- Small update 1.1.5: small UI/UX improvements - 23 April 2026
Hi, While working on the cursors update, I noticed a few issues I wanted to address quickly. Issues with the arrow keys (now the down key effectively goes down) The seeds submenu is now properly centred The maximum speed has been reduced to prevent players from going out of the garden ;) I am running a survey to know what updates the players would be the most interested in: The Abbess Garden: **What's next** survey! I'll be happy to know what you think :) Have a nice day, Edwige
- Small update 1.1.4: plants table of content in the book & seeds UI - 20 March 2026
Dear players, I am running a survey to know what updates players are most interested in.The most requested small improvement was a table of contents for the plants in the book! It has now be added! Seeds UI Making the seed list have a maximum width and being scrollable, so it's never hard to select seeds, even when you have a lot of them! Have a nice day! Edwige
- Small update 1.1.3: fixes and small additions - 13 March 2026
Dear players, Here is a small update, made especially to correct a bug reported by 2 players that occurred when moving marigolds in October 1643, preventing them from becoming mature and providing seeds. Each plant has data about how long it has been on each step (ie: flowering), and how long it should be in that step before moving on to the next one (ie: 2 months). It was resetted on replant, which is now fixed. Bugfix: plants harvested data & months spent in step Fixed: plants harvested data and months spent in step no longer reset on replant Dialog UI Fixed a UI issue with long character names, hiding a part of the following sentence. Proofreading Integrated small corrections to dialogues. Setting Added a new resolution requested by a player: 2560x1440 Have a nice day! Edwige
- Mac Os compatibility for version 1.1.2 - 9 March 2026
I just built the game for MacOs (same version as the PC one)
- The Abbess Garden's Devlog 10: Release, Port-Royal & what's next! - 5 March 2026
Dear players, That's it! The game is out in the wild Many thanks to the team, everyone who supported us in the journey, and to the players who bought the game already! 💖 If you played, we would particularly appreciate it if you could spend a few mins reviewing the game, it's very important to indie devs! And to those who already review, please know you have our eternal gratitude!!! Team meeting at Port-Royal des Champs As you might know, the game takes place at Port-Royal des Champs Abbey, which was destroyed several centuries ago, and is now a national museum. It's possible to visit both the ruins of the abbey and the museum, which has a lot of great paintings that inspired us to design our characters. As a team party, we met there with the team, all together in person for the first time! (We were working remotely on the game from Italy and 4 different regions of France ;) ) It's some…
- Small update 1.1.2 - 3 March 2026
Dear players, Here is the first small update after launch! Achievements Fixed Achievements Solomon's Seal and Rose of Provins, which were preventing players to get to 100%. Proofreading Integrated a lot of corrections to both dialogues and UI. Have a nice day! Edwige
- The Abbess Garden's Devlog 09: Steam Deck & polish - 23 February 2026
Dear players,We are in the final week before the game release! We recently had the good news that the game was reviewed as Playable on Steam Deck :) It's not verified as some text are a bit small, but every one who tested it said it was actually fine :) (Steam is rather strict ;) ). To get to that result we added a bunch of settings including key rebinding which might be helpful also for other people. As the demo was not updated, it doesn't reflect the final game and will be withdrawn before launch, so if you want to give it a try, now is a good time! Please note that all the UI changes and the Steam Deck compatibility are not in the demo. Sorry about that!The game is content complete (which means it's possible to finish the game) since January 15th. Since that, we are fixing bugs and polishing the game a lot. As an example, we just added Steam Achievements! We hope you'll like them!We…
- Announcements: release date & new partnership with indie.io!!! - 17 December 2025
New partnership with indie.ioI have been interested in games for natural & cultural heritage for a while. When I created MD Studio in 2024, I decided that my first game would be a gardening game with real plants set in Port-Royal des Champs in the 17th century. I knew this abbey very well, as my friend and colleague Sylvain Hilaire had done his PhD on the history of its landscape.As The Abbess Garden is our first game and this is a self-funded project, I decided to gather a tiny team and stay focused on the game, without trying to apply for grants or publisher funding.Two months ago, I was contacted by indie.io, a company specialising in helping indie games with marketing and distribution. It was very unexpected, so we looked at who they are and what they do (also took a very close look at the contract ;) ). indie.io is based in USA, with team members working remotely from all around th…
- The Abbess Garden's Devlog 08: livestream, public playtest and more flowers! - 5 December 2025
Dear players,I was invited to the Utopiales festival recently. It was initially mostly about sci-fi, but it has become more open to fiction in general. There is a video game area, and the professional gamedev association my studio is part of (Atlangames) helps with organising it.The Utopiales are held in Nantes, the biggest city of my region, which is very pleasant and which I hadn't visited in a while! The weather was nice, so I took a few pictures of the Château des Ducs de Bretagne :) I participated in a Twitch livestream on the Utopiales channel (hosted by Moustique and Le_Technicien 💖), it was my first and a very good experience! Then I presented The Abbess Garden in a workshop where visitors playtested the game (organised by Chloe, a fellow indie developer of Eode). It was organized in the historical buildings of LU (a brand well known here for their "petit beurre"). Cultural her…
- The Abbess Garden's Devlog 07: New demo & soil system - 13 October 2025
Dear players! The new demo is out!!! Yay!!! It includes a lot of improvements, new content, and a new gardening system, which I want to introduce to you today!To make the gardening complexity progressive, there are only very easy plants at the beginning of the game. They need an appropriate quantity of water. The more you progress into the game, the more you will be given fussy plants ;) From chapter 3 onwards, in addition to water, you will need to verify that the plants are in an area with the right soil, too. You can now examine the soil to plant them in the area with appropriate soil, or plant them anywhere and add the specific soil they want. There are 4 types of soil (humus, gravel, sand, clay). Some areas will have some of it already, and there are several "surfacing soil" areas that you use to dig up some soil to add to another place. Beware, you cannot remove soil from the grou…
- The Abbess Garden's Devlog 06: Back to school festival! - 25 August 2025
Hi! The last devlog was about the demo release! It went pretty well and we are happy :)359 players tried it so far, and 29 answered our demo survey (very useful, thank you!!!)There weren't too many bugs, but I still had to fix some collision and saving issues. I also added a small quality-of-life improvement feature: you can now change the music and sound effects volume in the settings :) I was on holiday most of the month (rest is important too!!!) and I'm getting back to working on The Abbess Garden today, with a fun event: Back To School 2025!https://store.steampowered.com/curator/44695353/sale/BacktoSchoolGamesCelebration2025It's a festival with games for learning and productivity tools! 📖🖊️ There are several themes in the fest. The Abbess Garden is in "Environment and Nature" as it is about gardening real plants in a real setting, with some elements of simulation (water, soil and…
- The Abbess Garden's Devlog 05: The demo is here! - 30 July 2025
This morning, I clicked on the "Released Demo" button, it was a scary and exciting moment! :) And now, the demo is here!It has improved UI, new character animations, new music and sounds effects... (+ a lot of bugfixes ;) ) So July had been a very busy month, trying to improve the game as much as possible based on the beta tests feedback :)We hope you'll enjoy it!!!Several content creators picked it up already! We are so excited!If you want to stay informed, you can still wishlist and follow our Steam page, or subscribe to our newsletter :) https://theabbessgarden.eo.page/newsletter We also have a Discord server now (very fresh, opened a week ago) https://discord.gg/zbsHNuAFHave a nice day! Edwige
- The Abbess Garden's Devlog 04: Closed beta results and last day to try! - 7 July 2025
Many thanks to the playtesters who registered for our beta test! (more than 400!!!). The feedback allowed us to understand what the most pressure issues were patch the game 5 times :)They were all related to what playtesters reported during the alpha and closed beta:better character movement: Agnès is not looking away anymore from what she is examining, and she doesn't walk too far. Also, she is not weirdly leaning backwards anymore! ( picture of the lean backwards bug 😱 )fix the saving bugs (as there was only 1 chapter previously available to test, players didn't test it much before the closed beta, where it's longer).popup to let players know what's missing to complete a chapter (objectives, dialogues or replanting)adjustable walking speed! This one really annoyed the testers ;) particles to highlight collections (some people didn't realise there was stuff to pick in the grass beside…
- The Abbess Garden's Devlog 03: The closed beta has begun! - 20 June 2025
Recently, we have been busy adding content to the game and fixing bugs to get the closed beta ready! To apply, click on the big green “Request Access” button on our Steam page! Then I’ll be adding playtesters regularly in the days to come.If you are in the closed playtest, you can invite 3 of your Steam friends, and they will be accepted immediately :) In the Closed Beta, you can play the first three chapters, right from the start, in March 1643 :) There are new plants and characters to discover too!For instance, you can meet the Musketeers! The closed beta is less polished than the demo will be: it's still testing! We have a huge todo list of things to improve before the demo is ready. If you do test, please fill out the survey, it helps a lot! Also, we now have a few social accounts you can follow us on if you like 🙂Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@mossy.dragon.sInstagram: https://www…
- The Abbess Garden's Dev log 02: spies and marigold! - 24 May 2025
Hi! This week's news is that The Abbess Garden is part of the Steam festival called "Spy Video Game Rendezvous". As you can expect, it's the only gardening game on that fest, but there are still other cozy games, and I am super happy to be able to show our game to players interested in spies :) Our game's plot is based on a little-known real story about a very important British spy called John Cecil. Our story is partly fictional too, and it's Agnès (our main character) mission to help decipher his journal! In the meantime, I'm working on integrating chapter 3 intro the game (the alpha test only shows chapter 2), adding the required plants too. I am for instance working on marigold, and it's rather convenient that I have some in my garden as well! Marigold work in progress in Blender Marigold and other plants in my garden Marigold flower in my garden Also, I am super happy that our stud…
- The Abbess Garden's Dev log 01 - 28 April 2025
Hi! Recently, I've been working on the "examine" panel, which used to be very rough and unclear. This panel opens when you use the magnifying glass on a plant to see if it's happy and what it needs. It's still not perfect, but playtesters seem to understand it way better. The camera zooms in, there are particles to highlight the selected plant and a new UI! This panel matters, as taking care of the plants is the core of the gameplay loop. At the beginning of the game, you'll just have to deal with the watering, then with the soil quality, and a few turns later, you will have more complex plants which also require to take care of their surroundings (some like being alone, some like being surrounded, some like specific neighbours, etc.) I have also been importing SFX! (so important for immersion) You can see a first test video here: Please let me know what you think in comments or by emai…
