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“Yes!” I sit up so fast the beanbag shifts beneath me.

My avatar walks to the first row, and I start harvesting. Purple eggplants vanish into my inventory, each with the quiet pop I spent twenty minutes finding in the accessibility menu. The default was a grating crunch that made my teeth ache. This is better. Cleaner.

Pop. Pop. Pop.

I work through the rows, the sound a steady, satisfying rhythm.

Twenty-seven.

Twenty-eight.

Twenty-nine.

Thirty.

The final eggplant disappears.

+150 Gardening XP

I open my inventory and check the estimated sale value. More than enough.

“Fuck yes!” I pump my fist and check the clock.

Shit.

I have eleven in-game minutes until dusk.

My avatar strolls from the farm at a scream-inducing pace. Not for the first time, I curse the programmers who didn’t add teleportation or, at minimum, speed walking to the game.

A direct path leads to Twilight Woods, but it cuts past the pond, risking a fifty percent chance of a cutscene if the fisherman is there, which jumps the time to the next morning after a long night of night fishing.

I go south instead.

As my avatar walks down the path, a cow waddles toward me.

“Move.”

I go around it, only for an NPC to wander into the path.

“No. No, no, no. Why are you outside?”

Mrs. Weller stops in front of me, and a dialogue bubble appears.

MRS. WELLER: What a lovely evening! Have you noticed how beautiful the sky⁠—

I hammer the skip button. “I don’t care about the sky.”

She continues walking at the speed of continental drift.

I squeeze around her.

Six minutes.

I cross into Twilight Woods, and the screen washes purple.

The woods transform at dusk. By day, sunlight filters through the trees, lighting up patches of mushrooms and sending squirrels chattering up the trunks.

At night, the paths shift and the shadow creatures come out. But for four in-game minutes between the two, blue flowers bloom beside the western ruins.