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The Ushi No Tane websites specialize in information, FAQs, and guides about the Nintendo console versions of the Harvest Moon, Story of Seasons, and Legend of the River King video games. These game genres are created and published in Japan by Marvelous (JP). In other regions, you'll find Natsume, XSeed Games/Marvelous (USA), Marvelous (EU), and Rising Star involved in the series' release.
The latest version of the mainstream farming series that have been released in various regions of the world are:
The latest version of River King, in all regions of the world, is River King: Mystic Valley (JP 2007, NA 2008, EU 2009).
Since 2000, Ushi no Tane has been run by a grouchy old lady who happens to be fond of video game agriculture along with two feline helpers: Intern Captain Bootu and Intern Hondo Mewnaka. The website is not officially affiliated, sponsored, endorsed, or employed by the developers of Harvest Moon, Story of Seasons, or River King. This is simply a fan site.
You use a red-suited avatar to control the land area, water area, and temperature of cube worlds, which then respond to your changes by birthing life forms. Some life forms will thrive, some will evolve, and some will go extinct depending on the environmental factors you change. Basically, you set up your cube, then sit back and watch to see what happens, making little tweaks here-and-there to try to match the factors that make certain species appear (or disappear) in the cube world. You're not completely on your own though; the game does have a library of creatures and flora with hints on their unlocking criteria. As you discover new creatures, you "capture" their detailed information to add to the library.
A demo of the game is available for Ps4 users from the Playstation Store, with the full-version of game costing $39.99. At the moment Birthdays is 25% off until May 16th. The game is also available to download on Steam with the same 25% off first-week-release sale offer.
It is a cute game and is pretty easy (at least so far). My biggest issue is the font size on the Playstation version. I can't clearly read the update ticker text that scrolls across the bottom of the screen (so tiny!), so I have to sit unusually close to the TV. As you can probably tell from the above screen shot of my game, there's lots of visual space but the on-screen text can be tough to read. The Steam version of Birthdays is possibly more legible since oftentimes a computer monitor is closer to the viewer than a television.
Last farm'n Friday was spent outside, doing a bit of field preparation with a truck-load of compost to fix up the soil in the front of Fogu HQ. I guess most normal homeowners would landscape with boring plants after their front yards are fixed up, but this farmer plans on planting a plot of crops! It's a good spot for growing some produce, I think. The plan is to grow four varieties of a single summer-season crop in this happy little spot, although I don't anticipate any of them mutating or becoming gold varieties.
Until next time!
- Cher
(It feels like it takes forever for these seeds to sprout!)Feedback: Add | View (3)| << Previous page | Next page >> |