Story of Seasons, also called Bokujō Monogatari in Japan and originally named Harvest Moon in English, is a Japanese video game series about farming life. It was created by Yasuhiro Wada and developed by Victor Interactive Software, which was later bought by Marvelous Entertainment in 2003 (now known as Marvelous Inc.). Story of Seasons was the first game in the series to use this new international title.
From 1996 to 2013, Natsume Inc. handled translating and selling the Bokujo Monogatari series in North America, where the games were called Harvest Moon. In 2014, Marvelous Inc. announced that the newest game in the series would be translated and released by its American publishing brand, Xseed Games, under the new title Story of Seasons. In 2015, Nintendo released the first game with this title in Europe.
The main goal of the series is to restore an old, run-down farm and make it successful. Players grow crops, care for animals, build relationships with nearby townspeople, and eventually marry and start a family. The first game in the series, Harvest Moon, was released for the SNES in 1996.
Naming
In 2012, Marvelous stopped allowing Natsume Inc. to license the Harvest Moon series. Natsume Inc. used this chance to create its own version of Harvest Moon for North America and Europe, starting with the game Harvest Moon: The Lost Valley. This new series caused some confusion among fans and game news sources. Natsume Inc. continued using the name Harvest Moon for its games until 2014. At that time, Natsume Inc. still had the rights to the Harvest Moon name, even after Marvelous announced that its subsidiary, Xseed Games, would handle North American distribution. Because of this, Xseed Games began releasing the series in North America under the name Story of Seasons, starting with the game of the same name.
In September 2015, Nintendo of Europe confirmed it would publish the latest game in the series for Europe under the Story of Seasons name. Earlier games in the Harvest Moon series were released in Europe by Rising Star Games.
Common elements
The player's character in the games has mostly been male, but some games let players choose to play as a female character. The main story in the series usually involves the player taking over a farm that no longer has someone to care for it. The player grows crops, raises animals, makes friends with the town's people, and builds a family while managing a successful farm. Each game includes tasks to complete, such as befriending villagers, collecting musical notes, finding sprites, making rainbows, or ringing bells.
Money is earned by growing crops, raising animals, fishing, mining, and gathering items from nature. Because the player has limited time and energy, they must balance these activities to finish their daily tasks.
Crops are the main way to earn money in Story of Seasons. To grow crops, the player first clears the field of weeds, rocks, boulders, branches, and stumps. Then, they use a hoe to till the soil. Next, they choose seeds to plant in the tilled soil. The player must water the crops daily, unless it rains. Over time, the crops grow and are ready to harvest. The player must find the best times to plant, water, and harvest crops. They also need to think about the cost, sell price, number of harvests, and how long each crop takes to grow. Different seasons offer different crops to plant, though most games do not allow planting in winter. In Harvest Moon, crops could not be planted in fall. Some games allow players to grow crops in a greenhouse or basement during winter.
Turnips, potatoes, tomatoes, and corn are common crops introduced in the first game. Later games added new crops like cabbage, carrots, onions, strawberries, sweet potatoes, pumpkins, rice, pineapples, and cucumbers. Grass can also be grown and used as animal feed.
Raising animals is another way to earn money. Animals produce items that can be sold daily. Giving animals care increases their affection for the player and improves the quality of their products. If the player neglects the animals, they may get sick or die.
The first Harvest Moon game included cows and chickens, kept in a barn and chicken coop and fed the same food. Milk and eggs could be sold, as well as the animals themselves. Later games added sheep and separate feed for chickens, along with machines to turn milk into cheese, eggs into mayonnaise, and wool into yarn. More recent games let players raise ducks, goats, alpacas, and differently colored cows. In Harvest Moon: Tree of Tranquility, silkworms and ostriches were added, and players could befriend wild animals to live on their farm.
Animals can reproduce. Eggs can be placed in an incubator to hatch chicks in a few days, and giving a cow or sheep a Miracle Potion can make them pregnant. Buying and breeding horses was introduced in Harvest Moon 3 GBC and continued in later games.
In many Story of Seasons games, players can get a dog and horse as pets. Newer games allow players to keep various animals as pets, such as pigs, cats, pandas, and turtles. In some games, pets can compete in events like horse races or dog races to win prizes. In Harvest Moon: Back to Nature, players can raise fish.
Older Story of Seasons games, like Friends of Mineral Town, included wild animals like dogs and gophers. Wild dogs visit farms at night and bother livestock not kept in barns or fenced areas. Gophers in older games eat crops.
Many Story of Seasons games require players to gather materials for building, improving tools, cooking, or selling. The most common building material is wood, but other resources like stone and golden lumber are also used. Players can gather wood by cutting tree stumps and branches and use it to build structures or fencing. Mines in many games let players collect minerals to upgrade tools or make gifts. Wild plants like herbs and flowers can also be collected.
Most games in the series include annual festivals that players can attend. Some festivals are contests with prizes, while others are social events or holidays like Thanksgiving, New Year’s Day, and Christmas Eve. Livestock festivals let players compete with other farms, and winning animals may gain special abilities, like a cow producing gold milk.
Most Story of Seasons games allow players to marry. Giving gifts and interacting with a love interest increases their affection, and if their affection is high enough, they may propose marriage. Proposals often use a Blue Feather. In some games, love interests have rivals who may marry them if the player does not act. In the Japanese version of Harvest Moon DS Cute, players could marry someone of the same sex (called the "Best Friends" system), but this feature was removed in the North American version due to concerns about the game’s rating.
In the remake Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town, players can marry someone of the same sex. In the Western version, same-sex marriage is treated the same as opposite-sex marriage. However, in the Japanese version, it is not called marriage and instead uses the "Best Friends" title.
In many versions, players can have children. Only certain games, like Harvest Moon, Harvest Moon 3, Harvest Moon: Animal Parade, Rune Factory 3, Story of Seasons, and Rune Factory 5, allow players to have multiple children. In Story of Seasons, the player has twins after one pregnancy. Harvest Moon: Animal Parade is the first game to let players have two children of either gender, and Rune Factory 3 allows three children of either gender. Only a few games, like Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life and Harvest Moon DS, let players watch a child grow from a toddler to an adult. Harvest Moon: Tree of Tranquility lets players restart the game as their child after completing an event. Some games, like Harvest Moon: Save the Homeland, do not allow marriage. Rune Factory 2 is the only game where players can control two characters, a father and his child.
Reception
In September 2011, Rising Star Games said they sold more than a million copies of the series in PAL regions. In Japan, the DS games in the series sold more than 948,000 copies by April 2011, and the PSP games sold over 81,000 copies during the same time. The Tale of Two Towns ranked number 4 on the Japan Software and Hardware Weekly Chart, selling 63,610 copies in its first week. In March 2014, Story of Seasons was the top-selling game in Japan, with 131,000 copies sold. In July 2015, Xseed Games said it had become the fastest-selling game ever, with more than 100,000 copies sold in North America.
Legacy
Over the years, Story of Seasons has been called a pioneer in its genre. It has inspired many social network games based on farming, including Happy Farm (2008) and FarmVille (2009). Happy Farm is considered one of the most influential games of the 2000s. In early 2010, FarmVille had the most users, with 84 million monthly active users. In 2009, Marvelous Entertainment released a version of Harvest Moon called Let's All Harvest Moon (Minna de Bokujō Monogatari) for the Japanese social network 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 like Farm Villain.
The developer of Stardew Valley, Eric Barone, has said he was inspired by Story of Seasons when creating his game. Because farming and life simulation games have become more popular recently, especially in the indie game scene, Story of Seasons and Stardew Valley, along with the Animal Crossing series, are seen as the foundation of a new golden era for the genre.