Thank you very much for playing, and I'm pleased that the mood was tranquil.
The stepping are supposed to be paths but we... missed that oops.
The plan was to have potion requests from villagers to then fulfil, filling up a little book of recipes as you go, but we decided to start with the core gameplay loop and build on it from there. By the end it was easier to add more ingredients and potion recipes than to add a whole new mechanic. Thank you for being curious, it's nice to explain some of our design process.