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! Now that the Christmas Light Extravaganza installation is complete, it's now onto other tasks like baking cookies and wrapping presents to give to others. And then cleaning up the mess I left behind! Cookie time is always fun though, as long as the cookies are simple to make. Not really interested in multi-step cookies that take all day to prepare and bake. I even get to play some farm'n while waiting for the cookies to bake in the oven!

My aunt likes home-made marshmallow, so I usually cook up some Marshmallow/Chocolate Fudge for her every year. It is a two-step recipe, but the steps are pretty easy and the resulting candies are ooh so tasty. I found a hand-written recipe for a cookie bar called Chenice Chew in grandma's box o' cookbooks she gave to me. The bar looks to have a brown sugar base with a coconut/sugar/nut middle and a citrus juice glaze. Seems kind of interesting.

This year I'll be heading over the river and through the wood to my mom's out-of-state Christmas party, so I'll be out on another adventure next week. Farm'n Friday will resume on the 27th!

SoS: FoMT 1.1.2

This week Marvelous released a patch to their latest farming game, Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town. The developers have gifted everyone with a free red-nosed reindeer outfit along with the bug fixes. No word yet if the retailer-specific player costumes (dog, sheep, chicken, and chick) will become available to everyone at some point in the future.

(I'm in the middle of a Kappa Jewel run through the Lake Mine, so that's why there's a lot of Curry Udon in my inventory. It restores 60 STA when eaten and is quite easy to make in large quantities: Udon [Flour + Seasoning Set + Pot + Knife] + Curry Powder + Pot.)

According to the Bokumono News, the new download patch updated the game in the following ways:

• New Mineral Town decoration for the Starry Night Festival, Cooking Contest, Cow Festival, Harvest Festival, and Fluffy Festival. Originally there were generic flag banners that would hang across the pathways around town, but the latest patch enhanced the flags by making them festival specific (e.g., the Harvest Festival now has veggie-themed banners) as well as improving the decor in Rose Plaza during the contest festivals.
• A story event was added to return a character who has left town. Assuming this is an event to return Cliff if he wasn't assigned the job at the Winery during Fall.
• Added an option to warp to specific floors in the mines once you've reached that level. For example, you can warp to floor 100 of the Lake Mine once you've reached that floor during your exploration of the mine.

• Sped up some of the low-stamina animations. The out-of-stamina animation is still about 8 second long though.
• Slowed down the text speed of the television shows and Mana conversation text.
• Fixed a bug where an Angora Rabbit pregnancy could still happen when there are 7 Chickens in the coop. Max size of the coop is 8, so the pregnancy would be animal #9.
• Fixed a bug that caused the game to crash when saving or loading after finding an Alexandrite in the Lake Mine.
• Fixed a bug that allowed players to discover more than one of each cursed tools in the mine (I've located a second Cursed Hoe in my game).
• Fixed a bug that allowed players to dig up the cursed tools when their original tools were NOT at Mithril level. Guess this wasn't an intentional improvement feature of the Nintendo Switch version of the game! Well drat!
• Fixed a bug with the Self-Made Gourmet cooking achievement not being earned once players cooked all of the recipe dishes.
• Fixed a bug where one of the 7 Rings wouldn't be awarded once players obtained 5 pets.
• Fixed another bug where when two achievements are earned at the same time, the second (and all others afterwards) weren't saving.
• The Nature Sprites can now care for Angora Rabbits. Previously they would not harvest the rabbits' fur.
• Fixed a display bug where if the Cliff Collapses event triggers and then a wedding ceremony takes place, Cliff would appear laying down during the ceremony. The same thing would happen if Cliff was invited to the Starry Night celebrations and then the Collapse event took place:

?????????????????????????????????????????????????? pic.twitter.com/V6nIQzOkzQ

— ??(m.m) (@matsumae9) October 30, 2019

• When powering up a remodeled fishing pole, the types of fish that could be caught with the powered-up pole weren't appearing.
• Various other unspecified bugs were corrected as well.

The game dropped off the Famitsu Top-30 Sales for last week. We do know it has sold over 100,000 physical copies.

Sakuna Delay

Edelweiss' action game with a bit of farming, Sakuna: of Rice and Ruin, was initially scheduled to be published this winter by XSeed Games, but has been moved to 2020. In this fantasy-setting game, players control goddess Sakuna who was banished to a remote island inhabited by nasty demons. Sakuna will explore the island to defeat mythical demons using her trusty farm hoe. Besides fighting off baddies, she harvests rice with the local humans to help make their lives better.