Story of Seasons

This article is about the video game series. For Harvest moon (disambiguation), see Story of Seasons (disambiguation).

Harvest Moon's logo

Harvest Moon (牧場物語, Bokujō Monogatari, lit. "Farm Story") is a series of 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 1997. 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 1997. 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 Virtual Console for the Wii. Natsume released Harvest Moon: Tree of Tranquility on September 30, 2008 for the Nintendo Wii in celebration of the series' 10th anniversary.

Most Harvest Moon games are permutations of a central formula. The game generally takes place over a period of time in which the player is charged with the task of running a successful farm, getting married, sometimes having a child, and becoming friends with the townsfolk.

Most gameplay in the Harvest Moon games consists of planting seeds to grow fruits, vegetables, flowers and herbs in the spring, summer, and autumn, and collecting items, making home improvements, and building personal relationships. A successful farmer must weigh the cost, selling 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 his time. There is only a short amount of time in each game day, and the player only has a set amount of energy. He must balance his time and strength by working on the farm and making friends with the people in town. If the player over-exerts himself, he will lose the rest of the day, become sick, and sleep in late the next morning.

Game aspects

Storylines

Although there are several unique games in the series, the traditional storylines revolve around the player taking over his late grandfather's farm. While having to balance his/her time between the farms animals and crops, the player must also befriend the local villagers, find a spouse, have a child, expand buildings, attend festivals, and play through the due amount of years to view their grade on the farm. However, this storyline does not stay true to all the games. For example, in Harvest Moon: Save the Homeland the player must save the village with the farm and a part time job, and is not eligible to marry any of the local girls. In other cases, such as Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life and its girl remake, Harvest Moon: Another Wonderful Life the player must quickly find a spouse, have a child, and raise him/her to an adult with a career based on their interests. In more recent adaptations to the series, such as Harvest Moon DS and Harvest Moon DS Cute the player must find and unlock 60 of the 101 missing Harvest Sprites in order to bring back to Harvest Goddess who turned to stone. This also stays true to Harvest Moon: Magical Melody in which the player partakes in the "Exciting Ranch Plan" and must find Musical Notes by completing various tasks in the game (i.e cooking, livestock, finding a spouse, etc) to bring back the stone Harvest Goddess, while completing against the rival of the opposite gender in day to day challenges. In Harvest Moon: Tree of Tranquility, a similar storyline takes place in which the Goddess tree has withered away and the player must help the Harvest Sprites create baumkuchens (lit. tree cakes, a German confectionary very popular in Japan) to revive the tree. In Rune Factory: A Fantasy Harvest Moon, it gives a more RPG like feel and contains a more complicated plot and action filled gameplay which includes fighting monsters (which you can then tame and have on your farm) and going through dungeons.

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 winter rolls around are key to gaining money. In the games, each season has different crops available for planting, except for winter, when crops cannot grow and the player must rely on 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" and "Another Wonderful Life." Some crops, such as turnips and onions, only grow once, while other crops, such as corn and sweet potatoes, can be harvested several times, until the season ends.

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.

The Summer and Autumn crops can be planted the day before that season stars, e.g: Tomatoes (Summer crop) you can plant this on the last day of Spring and so forth, but you cannot plant Spring crops on the last day of winter as the ground is too hard to plant anything, also no crops grow in the Winter month.

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 after a certain amount of 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. Planting grass is also required before you purchase an animal in the old series. The more recent games allow the player to also raise ducks (which lay eggs every two days), goats (which have more profitable milk), and the ability to have different 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. Also in this new game, you can have different colored animals, like a brown or white horse.

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 Multiple Horses was introduced to Magical Melody although you could not breed them, but in recent games, such as Tree of Tranquility, You are able to breed horses.

Pets and other animals

In many Harvest Moon games a player is given a dog and horse as a pet. Later in the series, the two animals are able to attend competitions (e.g. Horse race and Dog race) to win prizes. In GBC 3 a player was allowed to choose a pet from a list of animals, all of which had different abilities (e.g. the Pig increases the money a player will earn). In the newer titles, cats are given as pets. In some games, dogs and horses can be fed, and the horse is able to be ridden in town. The player is also able to keep wild animals as pets. In Harvest Moon: Back to Nature the player can raise fish and bees.

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 girls or, in later versions, boys in town. Cooking has also become a side activity in some games and foraged foods, crops and livestock products 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.

Players can always choose to not attend these events, but all stores also close on these days and shipped items are not picked up either, leaving few choices available outside of attendance.

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 his or her likes and dislikes, showers him or her with gifts, and eventually proposes. If a player fails to marry a character, then there are usually rival characters who will marry whoever the character didn't. 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 Friend" 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. A special friendship ceremony can be performed between the main character and another of the special girls instead of marriage with one of the men in the game.

In newer games, such as Harvest Moon DS Cute the player must also go through a set of heart events with their love interest. The player is challenged with a question, and if answered correctly, they will gain a big boost to the persons love points. If they fail to answer correctly, the love points take a big drop which interferes with the marriage requirements. If the player does not see all the heart events, or answers them incorrectly, they cannot successfully propose to the love interest.

In the Rune Factory series, love points are increased slightly by gifts, as well as by performing errands, completing quests, and exploring the world; a more realistic system than other games.

When a potential spouse is ready to be married, it is visible to the player either by a beating heart next to the persons chest, or by a set amount of hearts in the persons diary. This differs in most Harvest Moon games, but usually when the player continues to befriend the potential spouse, their heart color next to their picture changes with a spectrum from black, to purple, to red. In many Harvest Moon games, the love interest must be raised to 10 hearts in order to qualify for marriage. The hearts can be viewed via their diary or the player's start menu. Other requirements traditionally needed for marriage are completing 2-3 house upgrades, viewing heart events, and buying or finding the Blue Feather to propose.

Children

In many versions, it is possible to have children, but usually only a boy, with the exceptions being Harvest Moon, Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life Special Edition, Harvest Moon 3, Harvest Moon DS Cute, and Harvest Moon: Island of Happiness. In Harvest Moon: More Friends of Mineral Town, when a girl is played, a baby girl can be born. This event occurs usually about a month after marriage. Harvest Moon,Harvest Moon 3 and Bokujō Monogatari: Waku Waku Animal March are the only versions where the player can have multiple children. Harvest Moon DS, Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life and its spinoffs are the only games in the series where the player can experience a child's growth from toddler to full-grown adult. They are also the only games where your child takes over when you die. (Note; in Harvest Moon: DS, there is a rock behind the where the circus will come to stay that will have your characters name from Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town or More friends of mineral Town, if you have put the cartridge in while playing the DS version). 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.

Features

Many Harvest Moon games include fanciful content as well, such as Fairies, Harvest Sprites, a Harvest Goddess, a Kappa, a Witch, a Mermaid and various forest guardians. In some games, special events such as a solar eclipse and legends about a red lake were included. In the older series players increased their stamina by eating Power Berries which are around the valley, this feature is replaced in later games by using various jewelry and clothing to reduce stamina loss.

Defeating monsters

In Harvest Moon DS, "dark" versions of the farm animals lurk in the mines which the player can defeat using farming tools. In Rune Factory, monsters serve a more important role in the game. The player can use different weapons as well as the regular farm tools in order to defeat monsters in caves and other areas, and relies on captured monsters for commodities such as milk and eggs, as well as to perform farming work and assist the player in battle. Monsters are not referred to as killed, but sent to the "Forest of Beginnings." The player can befriend monsters, raising their quality of work, health and attack power. In several installments such as Back to Nature, wild dogs will attack livestock left outside, forcing the player to drive them away with their tools and their dog.

List of Games

Main article: List of Harvest Moon titles

References

The latest release in North America was Harvest Moon: Tree of Tranquility. It is about that the weather starts messing up and you need to grow the tree of tranquility and unlock harvest sprites. Tip: choose the city area it is close to almost everything.

See also

• SimFarm, a PC farm sim

External links

• Natsume official site
• Harvest Moon series at Curlie