Pressgrove

Pressgrove is a cider orchard where taste is a place. A taste map runs from sweet to sharp and from light to rich, and every tree draws its own path across it: as its apples ripen, in real time, their dot slides from hard and tart toward mellow and sweet, past ripe to overripe, until the last apples fall as windfalls. A basket keeps the taste its tree had at the moment you picked it, and the press only takes a blend of two or more baskets: the cider lands at the juice-weighted middle of what you put in. Villagers at the stall each ask for a taste, a ring on the map, so you fill them by timing each tree and mixing the right baskets, never by setting a price. The centre of a ring pays half as much again, quick service earns a tip, and a villager whose patience runs out walks away. Six market days make a season: weather speeds or slows the ripening, market days, a harvest fair barrel and a travelling taster with an exact taste change the street, and in the evening you buy a bigger press, a cool crate, bees, a lantern or a new tree with a path no blend could reach before. Medals, harder seasons, a Daily Market, a ledger of marks, autosave and three save slots. Keyboard, mouse, touch and gamepad.