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:

• Japan: Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life (January 2023)
• North America: Harvest Moon: The Winds of Anthos (September 2023) and Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life (June 2023)
• Europe: Harvest Moon: The Winds of Anthos (October 2023) and Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life (June 2023)

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.

Latest Farming Video Game News

An Overview of HM: Lil' Farmers | Posted at 11:03 AM 26 May 2017This week, Harvest Moon: Lil Farmers was released for Apple and Android mobile devices. The game costs about $3.99 and is geared towards small children (4 years old or so). It is not a full-sized Harvest Moon game with marriage, festivals, villagers, and so on, and was never meant to be one. For that, we have the upcoming Harvest Moon: Light of Hope. This game is for little kids who want to try out their first Harvest Moon style game. Basically you have a farm with mini games for animals and crop care. To interact with each option, you use your finger to drag the icon from the top of the screen to the activity you want to do: the milk bucket goes to the cow, the clippers to the sheep, and so on. The game doesn't have any words to read (since it is for little ones), so you just drag your finger around to play the games and collect products. The wool clipping and milking games are similar to the touch-screen games from Harvest Moon DS, where you rub off the wool and rub the cow's udder. The egg collecting game has you lifting the chickens into the air and you've to drag the nested eggs into the basket before the chicken flutters back down to its nest. A horse is available for washing and brushing, but it doesn't produce any goods. Since this is preschool level of difficulty, you can't technically fail a task; just keep at it until it has been completed. As for crops, there are eight varieties to grow: cabbage, carrot, corn, onion, potato, pumpkin, strawberry, and turnip. You just pick a soil plot, pick the seed, and then drag the watering can and fertilize onto the crop while it is grown. Since crops only take a real-time minute or two to mature, the kids can watch them grow until they're ready to harvest. Then just pick the trowel icon to harvest the plants. What do you do with the things you collect? They end up in your farm store, where customers appear to request them. Then you simply drag the goods that matches their talk bubble into the basket and hand it over. There's no money exchange (everything is free!) and once you run out of an item, you have to go back out to your farm and get more of them by playing the mini games again. The more friends you give your farm goods to, the more they'll ask for (up to 3 per person). On the downside, the game doesn't keep track of your progress if you fully exit the game, as there's no save feature (at least in the iPad version). If little Joey is in the middle of growing crops and has to exit the game to take a bath, he would find that all his growing crops and harvested items are gone once he reloads the app from the title screen. The progress does carry over if you just temporarily close/minimize the app. A toddler probably isn't going to mind so much though. Also this week, XSeed Games also shared a few more screen shots of their English localization progress of the combined download content for Story of Seasons: Trio of Towns. This time it is the red kimonos that were added in the fourth winter-themed DLC pack in Japan. You can see the screen shots on XSeed's Twitter feed:

• XSEED Games Twitter

Until next time! - Cher (3-day weekend?! Time to plant the front-yard army of seedlings to guard over back-yard Potatoland!)Feedback: Add | View (2)

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