Under Canopies

What Is Under Canopies?

Under Canopies is a cozy open-world simulation game from Novemtails, out now on Steam in Early Access as of October 23, 2026 for $11.24. The pitch on the store page says it plainly: forget the stress of survival. You do not fight nature here, you join it. There is no hunting, no combat, no hunger meter breathing down your neck. The store copy calls inefficiency your only enemy, and the whole game is built around that idea.

You play someone settling into a serene, vibrant forest full of small mysteries. The loop looks like this: wander the woods and discover unique resources, watch wildlife go about its day, record each find in your journal, then carry everything back to the cabin you are raising piece by piece. Between trips you water your garden, cook from a recipe book of more than thirty dishes, and tend to the animals living around you, from chickens and sheep to bees and the wild creatures of the canopy.

Three systems give the game its shape. Exploration rewards observation instead of violence, since every rare animal you photograph goes into a growing album. Building rewards patience, because you place and furnish your cabin rather than snapping together a blueprint. And cooking rewards planning, since complex meals come from crops you watered yourself several in-game days earlier.

Under Canopies Details

How to Play Under Canopies

Your First Day

Treat day one as a supply run, not a construction project. Walk the area around your build site and note where resources cluster. The forest layout matters later: a cabin placed near water, berry patches, and open clearings shortens every future trip. Grab loose materials as you go, but do not deep-mine any single spot on day one. The point is to learn the map.

Before night falls, get a basic shelter footprint down and a cooking setup working. Sleeping under a roof and eating a cooked meal instead of raw forage is the difference between a rough first week and a smooth one.

Building Your Cabin Piece by Piece

Construction here is granular. You raise the cabin from scratch, then customize it with furniture, decorations, and handmade items. Two habits make this satisfying instead of tedious:

Build the shell first, furnish second. Walls, roof, and door give you storage and sleep benefits immediately. Furniture and decor can wait until you have surplus materials, because every decoration you place is one you will rearrange anyway once your collection grows.

Keep a small stockpile of core materials. The store describes the game's only enemy as inefficiency, and nothing creates inefficiency like walking across the map mid-project because you are one plank short. A reserve of the basics near your build site keeps every building session continuous.

Gardening and Cooking

Crops you water yourself become ingredients for over thirty recipes. The pacing matters: watering is a daily chore with a payoff days later, so plant early and plant often. A wide spread of crop types beats a monoculture, since recipes combine ingredients and a diverse garden means you can cook whatever the day calls for.

Cooking complex meals does more than fill your hunger. A kitchen stocked with prepared dishes is your buffer for days when you spend the whole daylight window far from home exploring. Cook a few extra meals whenever your pantry is full rather than cooking reactively at low hunger.

Living With Animals

Animals are not livestock to harvest, they are neighbors. The Steam page lists chickens, sheep, and bees alongside wild creatures, and describes raising them, watching them, and living peacefully alongside them, with companionship and unexpected rewards as the return. In practice: check on your animals daily, keep their area tidy, and treat unexpected gifts as a signal that the relationship system is working.

Wild animals work differently. You observe rather than catch. Which brings us to the camera.

Photography and the Journal

Two record-keeping systems run in parallel and both reward thoroughness. Your journal logs resource finds and discoveries, which turns it into your personal map of the forest's economy over time. Your photo album fills with rare wildlife, and rare means rare: some creatures appear in specific places, at specific times, doing specific things.

The photography habit that pays off: carry the camera everywhere, even on boring supply runs. Rare sightings do not schedule themselves around your plans. The player who photographs a rare bird while walking home with a load of wood is the one who finishes the album first.

Tips and Tricks

Water before you explore, harvest after. Wrap garden chores around your outings. Crops get their water early, your day stays free, and you pick up whatever ripened on the way home.

Journal entries are a shopping list. When a recipe or build project needs something you have not located yet, log it. Next exploration trip, you are hunting specific targets instead of wandering.

Do not chase the roadmap systems before the basics. Under Canopies launched with a public roadmap, so more content is coming through Early Access. The core loop of garden, kitchen, cabin, camera is complete now. Master it and every update lands on prepared ground.

Cloud saves mean your progress follows you. Steam Cloud and Family Sharing are both enabled, so a laptop session picks up where your desktop left off. Useful for a game whose best sessions are the slow ones.

Early Access Status and Roadmap

The game released into Early Access on October 23, 2026, and the store page already displays a roadmap image laying out planned development. Novemtails has set expectations for an evolving experience, which is worth knowing before purchase: features will arrive over time, and early buyers are buying into the direction as much as the current build.

The launch build already includes the pillars described above: combat-free exploration, cabin building with full decoration, gardening, more than thirty cooking recipes, animal raising across multiple species, wildlife photography, and journal tracking. Eight languages are supported at launch, which is unusually wide for an Early Access title of this size.

System Requirements

Under Canopies runs on modest hardware, which fits its audience.

Any machine from the last decade plays this. Integrated graphics users should drop draw distance before resolution for the biggest performance win, since dense foliage is the main GPU cost.

FAQ

Is there combat or danger? No. The store page is explicit: no fighting nature, no violence, exploration is about discovery. The worst outcome in Under Canopies is an inefficient day.

Is it a survival game? It borrows survival-sim structure (hunger, crafting, building) but strips the pressure. You cook to eat well, not to avoid death.

How long is the game? It is an Early Access sandbox, so length depends on your goals. Filling the photo album with rare wildlife and finishing the recipe book are the current long-horizon targets.

Does it have achievements? Not at Early Access launch. Steam achievements, trading cards, and similar platform features typically arrive at or near full release.

Controller support? The Steam listing does not flag full controller support yet. Plan on mouse and keyboard for now and check patch notes as Early Access progresses.

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