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.

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.

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 brings a new system, and another piece of who she was.

And 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.

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.

Crooked Stone Studios is a one-person studio making small, quiet games about the natural world. Under the Elm is the first of four planned - each takes a real corner of nature seriously enough to get the details right, then builds something gentle on top of it.

There is no team, no publisher, and no funding behind any of it. Just one person, a lot of evenings, and a genuine love of the woods.

The mycology came first. The field guide entries are written to be accurate, the lookalikes are dangerous for the reasons the real ones are, and the preparation methods reflect how these mushrooms are actually handled.

Three more games follow it - a coastal game about stones and memory, one about bees and an English village, and one about tide pools.

You have blanket permission to record, stream, and monetize any video of Under the Elm, including the demo and every future update. No revenue share, no takedowns, no need to ask first.

The soundtrack isn't registered with YouTube Content ID, so your videos shouldn't pick up music claims. If you'd like zero risk anyway, you can mute Music in Settings.

Review keys are available on request to press, streamers, and video creators of any audience size. Email below and mention where you'll be covering it - that's the whole process.

Every asset in Under the Elm is hand-made. The pixel art, the painted key art, the writing, the design, and the code are all human work - no generative AI was used to produce any art, text, audio, or design in the game.