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

Happy Farm'n Friday! It's been a wet week here at Fogu HQ. The lawn grass has grown exceptionally tall, and yet it can't be mowed because it's too wet outside. On a positive note, being indoors all last weekend has given me time to work on filling in missing pages on various HM guides.

The next batch of Shawo Radish sprouts appear to enjoy the rain. I need to get these guys into the ground soon! I've an idea rolling around in my head to protect them from those pesky tree rats, who apparently are not appreciative of the stale Cheerios I left them as a peace offering (at least the crows enjoyed the breakfast cereal). Now they've targeted their attacks towards the round "squirrel proof" bird feeder. The tree rats are too large to fit through the protective cage that holds the bird seed, so instead they jump onto the cage and then jump off when they hear me walking down the hall towards the backyard, causing the globe to spin and dislodge the sunflower seeds via centrifugal force. And since they are technically eating the seeds off the ground, where they belong, I won't go into frenzy-raaar mode to chase them off. Clever little buggers...

SoS: FoMT Hidden Candidates

This week Marvelous revealed that the secret marriage candidates from Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town and Harvest Moon: More Friends of Mineral Town will also be available as challenge candidates in Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town. The candidates are the Goddess, Kappa, Won, and Gourmet. All of these candidates will require the base requirements of the upgraded farm house, a big bed inside the farm house, and a red-level friendship heart color. The challenge that these candidates don't have visible hearts on their character portrait that would indicate their current friendship level.

• Goddess is the ultimate completionist's candidate. Her marriage requirements in the original GBA game were to catch every type of fish, collect all 9 Goddess Jewels, ship at least one of every item that could be sold via the shipping box, discover all of the items in both mines, be in year 5 or later, and confess to Carter the player's interest in marrying the Goddess.
• Kappa generally has the challenge requirements as the Goddess, though players will collect the Kappa Jewels and confess to Carter about their desire to marry the green fellow. This candidate does have an additional requirement of telling the Goddess about their interest in marrying him. In the GBA game, after tossing in 20 gifts into her pond, the Goddess will appear and ask the player if there is a special someone they are interested in. The player has to choose Kappa from the available list to start their courtship of him.
• Won is the easiest of the four secret marriage candidates. The player has to buy the Flower Vase from him as well as raise his friendship to trigger special apple-themed love events.
• Gourmet is a long-game candidate because he only appears once per year in the game, on the day of the springtime cooking festival. After the contest is over, Gourmet can be found in Rose Square for a couple of hours; during this time he can be given gifts to raise his friendship level. Once the clock reaches 8pm, he leaves Mineral Town until the next springtime cooking festival takes place. Besides his rare appearance in town, players also have to complete the recipe book in the kitchen and win each of the five cooking festival judging categories. It will take at least 5 years to complete Gourmet's marriage criteria.

The quality improvements made to the rucksack in the Nintendo Switch version will help with completing these candidate requirements. Now that items can stack in the rucksack, instead of taking up one space in the rucksack with the GBA version, it will be possible to bring stacks of stamina-recovering food while spelunking to reach the bottom floors of the mines to complete Goddess/Kappa criteria. Likewise the stacking element also makes it easier to flood Gourmet with gifts while he's available in the plaza, without having to run back to the farm house to grab another group of eight gifts like in the GBA game; though having the Teleport Stone makes this a little easier.

SoS: FoMT will be released in Japan (both retail and digital) in less than a month!

(Is that a tree rat emblem on Gourmet's armor? Naaaah that can't be what it is...)

New SoS:FoMT Comic

The long-time series character designer, Igusa Matsuyama, recently penned a new story comic for the Official Japanese Website. In it he tells a short story about "Yuuto", the yellow-hoodie protagonist from the upcoming game. It's a cute tale about Yuuto's first crop, the people he meets, and the other activities he participates in while waiting for his turnips to harvest.

• Special Short Story

LoH Complete in EU

Rising Star Games has announced that the "Complete" edition of Harvest Moon: Light of Hope will be released in the EU region on October 25. This version of LoH contains the special edition and the four DLC bundles on a single cartridge (Nintendo Switch) or disc (Playstation 4). The "Complete" edition was released by Natsume on July 30 in North America.

Portia Sale

The farming/construction game My Time at Portia is on sale. The game is 30% off in the North American Nintendo eShop, and 40% off in the North American Playstation 4 Store. The game had a new patch released yesterday for all three consoles (Switch, Ps4, and XBox) to improve load times, add voiceovers, and correct bugs. The Nintendo sale ends on October 7, and the Playstation sale ends on October 1.

Weekly JP Sales

Doraemon: Story of Seasons is still in the Famitsu's Top 30 Sales for last week, clinging onto spot #30 with about 1200 additional copies sold. That brings the total at 93,390 sales since the game was released in Japan on June 13.