A Dungeoneer of Chance and Charm
One of the most commonly enjoyed activities in video games might be surprising. Funnily enough, in stark contrast to reality, people just love doing chores in video games. Enter one of the most popular of these games in the history: Harvest Moon. I got a chance to see a very early build of the latest entry in the series, Harvest Moon: Seeds of Memories, and Natsume has promised that they have taken many of the promising features from Harvest Moon: The Lost Valley and incorporated them into what makes the series special for this new title.
Admittedly, there was not a whole lot of the game to show at the booth. Mainly, what the demo was illustrating, was the basic movement and getting to meet all of the colorful characters around town. These characters were the main focus of the demo and are an important part of the new game. The ability to marry characters will be returning, so you’ll be getting to know a lot of these folks quite a bit. Every character in town had a very distinct personality or quirk, from an intelligent bumpkin to a brooklyn-esque character, and some are even returning DLC characters from The Lost Valley.
The main game will involve you doing tasks for the various townspeople that will unlock seeds of memory as you complete them. You see, the townspeople have all but forgotten the farm outside of the village and these seeds are the only way to help them remember. As you move forward, you can fix up the farm as well to help restore it to its previous resplendence.
The controls are going to be pretty simple and they’ve made some improvements to help you move through tasks faster. Moving around, you can simply tap where you’d like to go or if you drag, they will follow along. On the various platforms it will be releasing, the game will also fully utilize the features of each platform according to Natsume. They’ve also streamlined the need for selecting tools while playing. For instance, instead of having to pull out a pick to destroy a rock, you can simply tap on the rock and it will assume you want to use the pick on it.
It’s a bit early to form a concrete opinion on Harvest Moon: Seeds of Memories because of how little there was to see. As such, I will be excited to see more of the game as it gets released. You can check it out when it comes out this winter on smart phones, Wii U and PC.
