How do "campaign days" (and time in general) work? (Cozy Grove)

General info

• If you're going to mess with your clock/calendar trying to advance faster than intended, please see this FAQ on how to do it safely, and please *don't* email Support if your save gets goofed up. I'm sorry, but we're a small studio and don't have the manpower to fix it; you will have to get yourself unstuck or start over.
• In this game, a new day begin at 5am according to the device/computer running the game, not at midnight like in real life.

Campaign Days

The Campaign Day is the day number that is shown when your scout does the sleeping and waking animation (usually at the beginning of your first play session of a day, unless you happen to be in the middle of a play session when the clock strikes 5am). In version 1.8.0 and higher, you can also see the number in the Save Slots menu, next to the Calendar icon.

• The campaign day only advances in this manner on a day where you've actually played on the particular save slot in question. If you only access the main menu (or if you don't launch the game at all) or play on some other save slot but not this one, the campaign day won't advance.
  • E.g., if you begin a new game on your Save Slot 1 today and then don't play on Save Slot 1 again for weeks, you'll only be on Day 2 when you use Save Slot 1 again, even if you've been playing regularly on a different save slot.
• Campaign days matter because some things are governed by campaign day. For example (this list is not exhaustive):
  • You won't meet Pandam (a wandering merchant) until Campaign Day 7 or later.
  • There is a maximum number of shells you can gather on each campaign day. Thus, you may find yourself waiting for a new campaign day in order to collect more shells.
• Repeating the same campaign day over and over is one of the problems that can occur if the game thinks that you've time-traveled incorrectly. It may or may not be resolvable—please see this page for more info.

But some things are affected by the device clock/calendar, not by campaign days

As some examples (this list is not exhaustive):

• The day/night lighting in the game
• Pandam only appears on Wednesdays, and whether it's Wednesday is determined by your device's calendar, not by how many campaign days have elapsed.
• Certain types of fish and plants appear in certain months of the year as determined by your device calendar, although there are other factors as well. Please see the Seasons FAQ for more information.
• Trees that grow in the wild (as opposed to trees that you planted) respawn and move after 7 calendar days. If you don't play on the day this is supposed to happen, then it will happen on the next day that you do play.
• If you have a quest that needs to be completed in a certain number of hours, that will be calculated via the device's clock/calendar, not campaign days.
• The completion date of a story quest/conversation is recorded by the date of the device's calendar, not by the campaign day. Getting a new story quest/conversation from a bear is dependent on how many days (not campaign days) have passed according to the device's calendar since the last story quest/conversation completion for that bear.
  • If not enough days have passed, then the bear may give you a timed quest or have other conversations with you, but they won't be quests/conversations that advance that bear's story.
  • Going many days in a row without a new story quest/conversation is one of the problems that can occur if the game thinks that you've time-traveled incorrectly. It may or may not be resolvable—please see this page for more info.

Seasons

Please see this page for more information.