Story of Seasons

Harvest Moon
The Harvest Moon series logo.
Genre(s)	Life simulation, Management simulation, Role-playing game
Developer(s)	Marvelous Interactive (formerly Victor Interactive Software)
Creator(s)	Yasuhiro Wada
Platform(s)	Game Boy Advance, Nintendo 3DS, Nintendo DS, Nintendo GameCube, PlayStation, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, PlayStation Portable, Super Nintendo Entertainment System, Wii
First release	Harvest Moon August 9, 1996
Latest release	The Tale of Two Towns
Spin-offs	Rune Factory series

Harvest Moon (牧場物語, Bokujō Monogatari, lit. "The Farm Story") is a series of life simulation / farm simulation / role-playing video games produced by Victor Interactive Software (acquired by Marvelous Entertainment in 2003) and was originally created by Yasuhiro Wada in 1996. English translation and distribution of the game is done by Natsume (and Rising Star Games in Europe). The object of the game is to maintain a farm over a period of time, tending the crops and livestock through the seasons, while befriending the nearby townsfolk and getting married in some games. The first game was Harvest Moon, released for the SNES in 1996. Games in the series have also been produced for Game Boy and GBA, Nintendo 64, PlayStation, PlayStation 2, GameCube and Nintendo DS; with new titles for PSP, Nintendo DS, and for the Wii and PlayStation 3.

Gameplay

Most gameplay in the Harvest Moon games consists of planting seeds to grow fruits, vegetables, flowers and herbs, and collecting items, making home improvements, and building personal relationships. A successful farmer must weigh in the cost, sell price, number of harvests, and growth times of the various types of produce in order to pick the best product for each of the seasons. One can also go fishing and mining for extra profit.

The ultimate challenge is for the player to manage their time. There is only a short amount of time in each game day, and the player only has a set amount of energy. They must balance their time and strength by working on the farm and making friends with the people in town.

The player's character has mostly been male, but some of the newer games offer the option to play as a female character. A common theme throughout the series follows the storyline wherein the player inherits a relative's or an old friend's farm, and is then taken through the various aspects of farming such as growing crops, raising livestock, making friends and ultimately finding a partner. Each game provides objects to collect or goals to complete, whether it be befriending villagers, collecting musical notes, finding sprites, making rainbows, or ringing bells.

Growing crops

This is the central aspect to all the games. The player must find optimal planting, watering, and harvesting patterns. Finding the most profitable plants, clearing space for planting, and harvesting the crops before the next season rolls around are key to gaining money. In the games, each season has different crops available for planting, except for winter (and fall in the first Harvest Moon), when crops cannot grow and the player must rely on fishing, foraging, mining and livestock for income, though in some versions, a greenhouse can be used during the winter to protect crops. Crops can be grown year round in "A Wonderful Life," "Another Wonderful Life" and "Hero of Leaf Valley."

Turnips, potatoes, tomatoes and corn are staple crops of the series, introduced in the first game. Since then, other games have introduced new crops, such as cabbage, carrots, onions, strawberries, sweet potatoes, pumpkins, rice, pineapples, cucumbers and more.

Ranching livestock

An increasingly large part of the games is purchasing, caring for, and raising your own livestock. Livestock can bring about profits on a daily basis. Giving one's animals attention will increase their affection towards the player and over time, will begin producing higher quality products. On the other hand, neglecting the animals' needs can lead to sickness and even death.

The first Harvest Moon only allowed cows and chickens and provided a barn and chicken coop to house them. Milk and eggs could both be sold, as well as the animals themselves. Later titles introduced sheep and a separate feed for chickens, as well as machines that could change milk into cheese, eggs into mayonnaise, and wool into yarn. The more recent games allow the player to also raise ducks, goats, and differently-colored cows. In Harvest Moon: Tree of Tranquility silkworms and ostriches were introduced to the series, and the new game also enabled players to befriend wild animals and persuade them to live on their farm.

Animals are also able to reproduce. Eggs can be placed in an incubator to hatch a chick in a few days, while giving a cow or sheep a miracle potion will impregnate them. Buying and breeding multiple horses was introduced in Harvest Moon 3 for Game Boy Color and continued in Harvest Moon: Magical Melody,Harvest Moon: Tree of Tranquility and Harvest Moon: Animal Parade

Pets and other animals

In many Harvest Moon games a player is given the opportunity to receive a dog and horse as a pet. Increasing variety of animals can be kept as pets in the newer titles, from pigs and cats to pandas and turtles. In some games, the pets attend competitions (e.g. horse races and dog races) to win prizes. In Harvest Moon: Back to Nature the player can raise fish.

Pest animals are also found in Harvest Moon including wild dogs, and gophers. Wild dogs visit the farm at night and harass any livestock not kept in a barn or fenced area. Gophers in some older titles would consume crops.

Gathering materials

Many Harvest Moon games require the player to gather materials for home improvement, tool improvement, cooking, or simply selling. The most common resource at earlier stages of the game (in older games) is wood; the player is able to chop up tree stumps to gather wood to add buildings to his or her farm, or add fencing to keep wild dogs out of the farm. Mining has also become an important feature, and most of the minerals found while mining in caves are required to upgrade tools to better, more manageable forms, as well as craft gifts for people in town. Cooking has also become a side activity in some games, and foraged foods, crops, milk and eggs can all be used to create different dishes.

Festivals

Most games in the series feature annual festivals which the player can attend. Some of these may just be simple social events, while others may be contests with prizes available to the player. Sometimes festivals are akin to real life holidays, such as Thanksgiving and the Starry Night Festival, which seems to be reminiscent of Christmas Eve. Livestock-themed festivals often take place, where the player can submit their animals to compete against other farms. Animals who win these contests often receive benefits; for example, a cow that wins might gain the ability to produce gold milk.

Getting married

The Harvest Moon games offer many choices for potential love interests. As the player spends time with the various potential love interests, he or she learns their likes and dislikes, showers them with gifts to get hearts up,and eventually proposes with the "Blue Feather". If a player fails to marry a character, then there are usually rival characters who will marry the other potential spouses. Developers of the series have taken to producing both male and female versions of Harvest Moon games in recent years, allowing for different lineups of potential spouses. More recent games have begun offering a gender choice when starting a game. Only one Harvest Moon game has yet allowed players to pursue the possibility of living with someone of the same sex (termed the "Best Friends" system), the Japanese version of Harvest Moon DS Cute. The feature is removed from the US version and Natsume refuses to comment on the matter.

Children

In many versions, it is possible to have children, but usually only a boy. Harvest Moon, Harvest Moon 3, Harvest Moon: Animal Parade, and Rune Factory 3 are the only versions where the player can have multiple children. Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life, Harvest Moon: Another Wonderful Life, Harvest Moon DS and Harvest Moon DS Cute are the only games in the series where the player can experience a child's growth from toddler to full-grown adult. Harvest Moon: Tree of Tranquility expands on this by letting the player restart the game as their child after the completion of an end game event. Harvest Moon: Save the Homeland and Harvest Moon: Innocent Life are the only Harvest Moon titles that do not have marriage and children in them. Rune Factory 2 is the only Harvest Moon where the player can personify two characters, the father and his son or daughter. Harvest Moon: Animal Parade is the only game where you can have a husband/wife and two children either male/female and Rune Factory 3 is the only game where you have three children either male/female

List of games

Main article: List of Harvest Moon video games

Social network games

In recent years, Harvest Moon has inspired a large number of social network games centred around farming, most notably Happy Farm (2008) and FarmVille (2009); Happy Farm is considered one of the most influential games of the 2000s, while FarmVille has an audience of 70 million active users. In 2009, Harvest Moon developers Marvellous Entertainment released a version of Harvest Moon, as Bokujo Monogatari, for the Japanese site Mixi, where it attracted 2.3 million users. Other similar farming social network games released in 2009 and 2010 include Sunshine Farm, Happy Farmer, Happy Fishpond, Happy Pig Farm, Farm Town, Country Story, Barn Buddy, Sunshine Ranch, and Happy Harvest, as well as parodies such as Jungle Extreme and Farm Villain.

See also

• Animal Crossing
• Farm Town
• FarmVille
• Happy Farm

External links

• Natsume official site
• Harvest Moon series at Curlie
• Harvest Moon Wiki