Ushi No Tane | Harvest Moon, Story of Seasons, and Legend of the River King Video Games

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: Home Sweet Home (August 2024) and Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life (June 2023)
Europe: Harvest Moon: Home Sweet Home (August 2024) 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

The Fogu Potato Harvest, A New My Time Game, BokuMono GMode, and Indie Game Updates | Posted at 09:56 AM 06 September 2024

photograph Happy Farm'n Friday! Last weekend, I harvested the potatoes from this year's grow experiment. We had planted two potato varieties using two potato planting techniques.

Potato #1 (pictured) are Masquerade potatoes. These potatoes were planted in the front yard garden box using the deep bury method, where you dig a deep hole, toss in the spud, and then cover the hole up to the soil line. I also spent weeks burying table scraps deep in the boxes before the potatoes were planted in April.
Potato #2 are Austrian Crescent fingerling potatoes. These were planted in fabric bags in the backyard using the trench-fill method, where you dig a hole, add enough soil to cover the potato, and then continue to fill the hole as the potato sprouts. About once a week, I added more soil/compost to the fabric bags as the plants grew taller until the soil level reached the top of the grow bags.

As for the results, we got about 4 pounds (~1.8 kg) from Potato #1 and about 3 pounds (~1.3 kg) from Potato #2. That's not a lot of potatoes, but this was a grow experiment. I wasn't looking to produce enough spuds to feed a small army of Harvest Sprites.

For Potato #1, I started with 2 pounds of seedling potatoes to plant and got about 4 pounds in return. So, while we got more volume from Potato #1, burying them deep didn't result in an impressive harvest in contrast to what I started with.
For Potato #2, these buried spuds were the scraps of potatoes that I had saved from growing the same variety in 2023. I kept about 16 small nickel-sized potatoes from last year's disappointing harvest, where I had used the deep bury method and harvested about 1 pathetic pound of potatoes. So I knew deep bury didn't work with this variety, which is why I tried the trench-fill method instead.

The 16 tiny Austrian Crescent potato seedlings weighed maybe 5 ounces (14 grams) at most, and that's being generous. So, planting the Potato #2 tiny spuds using the trench-fill method netted a greater yield (~1:10 when rounded to 50 ounces) than the deep bury method (1:2) used with Potato #1, at least in my home environment. I'll be trench-fill planting with the leftover tiny spuds saved from both varieties next year since potatoes are the one crop I can grow without it being eaten by those dang tree-rat squirrels.

Though, I noticed my beekeeping uncle was using straw to grow his potatoes... hmm...

My Time Game #3

Pathea Games formally announced today the next entry in the My Time series is called My Time at Evershine.

The character design for this game, according to Pathea's information, is different from My Time at Portia and My Time at Sandrock. The developer has moved to proportionally realistic body shapes compared to the larger-head character models of the previous games.

As with the prior games, Pathea will launch a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter later this month to help pay for the development of the new game, citing that Sandrock had an overall budget of $12 million, of which about $525,000 came from the initial crowdfunding campaign. Every little bit helps!

My Time at Evershine - the Next My Time Tale | Kickstarter

BokuMono: Life and Love

The PC port of the old GMode mobile phone game, Bokujou Monogatari: Life & Love was released on Steam this week. A Switch version is also available on the Nintendo eShop in Japan. The game is in Japanese, but at a skill level that anyone with some experience shouldn't have a problem. For others, the game is navigable when using a translation app on your mobile phone.

This game is a simple farming game using the graphic style of the Gameboy Advanced Friends of Mineral Town series, sized to display like a mobile phone screen. You choose your gender and farm name, and then off you go! Traversing the world is by selecting the destination from the game. Some places you can walk around, while others (like the town) are just menu interactions. There is the farm space, the town, and the mine.

The farm space is the main area where you can plant crops and raise animals. Seeds are 9 seeds per bag and can be grown in multiple seasons (depending on the seed). Crop seeds are planted in the field, while flower seeds are planted in the plaza. Sometimes, you can find seeds by pushing against the large boulders in the crop field. You switch between tools using the rucksack menu, the pickaxe for mining must be purchased at the store, and the watering can is always full.

If you run out of stamina, you can nap in the house once daily. Then you can return to work until you run out of stamina again, in which case you can go to bed for the day. You can only travel to the town if you've stamina, or you'll be told to rest first.

You can buy seeds, tool upgrades, farm animals (cow, chicken, sheep, and pig), accessories for gifts, etc., in the town, as long as you have space in your rucksack for the items. The only downer is the library, which no longer connects to the special BokuMobile service.

The shopkeepers are the marriage candidates; a set of girls for the male protagonist and a set of guys for the female protagonist. Back home, your mom keeps track of the relationship status with the candidates and explains how you can give gifts once you're past the black heart color, go on a date at a blue heart color, and propose marriage at a red heart color. She's pretty handy to have around the farm. Mom can cook, too!

Overall, it is a cute game for being so old. The game has an ending once you marry, as I understand it, but it is a fun bit of BokuMono history that wasn't available outside of Japan until now. Thanks GMode!

Bokujou Monogatari: Life & Love | Steam Store

Indie Farm'n Game Updates

A free demo is now available for the plague-tale farming game Grimshire. In this game, players revitalize an old farm to help the new mountain village they recently settled in because of a plague that wiped out their hometown. Take on the responsibility of filling the town's root cellar and feeding the residents, preserving food to prevent rot, romancing one of ten available candidates, decorating your farm, exploring the mine, and more. Your efforts will determine how well the town survives through the plague.

Grimshire | Steam Store

The one-person developer of the procedurally-generated farming and action game Cloudscape recently posted an update about Limbo, the game center where players will go if they run out of health. Instead of the typical respawn with low HP or a money deduction penalty, farmers will end up in Limbo, where they can play games and exchange Spirit Tokens for prizes. Some of the in-development games are card-matching games, roulette games, crane games, and high-card games. Death isn't the only way to access Limbo, though; there's said to be a weird potion that will take you there, too. Konitama has also worked on the protagonist's skill tree, fossils for players to excavate, and various decor items.

Cloudscape | Steam Store

The game update patch for the home console versions of SunnySide is now available for PlayStation players (yay!), with the XBox patch expected to drop next week. This patch includes corrections for saving within caves, in-game photographs working properly, and a size increase to the cursor and associated tooltips.

PlayStation Dealmania

The PlayStation version of Doraemon Story of Seasons: Friends of the Great Kingdom is currently 70% off as part of the Dealmania sale, going on now until September 11. The game's season pass (DLC) and the game+DLC bundle are not discounted.

Until next time!

-Cher
(The delivery guy dropped off a package labeled "Christmas" and chuckled at how I was already starting with this year's decor.)

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