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

Free SoS for PS+, Wholesome Games Direct Announced, Pacha Delisted from Steam, and Kickstarter Updates | Posted at 08:09 AM 19 May 2023

Happy Farm'n Friday! Now that the tulips have ended their floral pageantry, it's time for the bearded iris and alliums to show off their blooms. We started with about 5 iris rhizomes, which I divided about two years ago. Now there are a lot of pretty purple iris stalks along the street. There is one that is yellow/magenta colored, but most of them are various shades of purple-on-purple.

Only 1 watermelon seed sprouted, so those were replanted this week. I'm trying to grow the seeds collected from the fruit of a cross-pollinated watermelon collected two years ago, so the seeds may be a bit stubborn to sprout at this point. I also had to replant a tomatillo because a dang tree rat bit the seedling in two. Grrr squirrels...

I did collect the last of the 88 in-game achievements for Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life this week. Alas, there isn't anything that happens once they're all unlocked, though. The one that took the longest was completing 100 requests from the message board that now sits outside next to the inn, which was added to Marvelous' remake of AWL. Only a few requests are posted at the beginning of the season and a couple more in the middle, so it took a few seasons of post-story playing to complete 100 tasks and unlock the achievement.

Wholesome Games Direct

This summer's Wholesome Games Direct is scheduled for Saturday, June 10 at 9:00 am Pacific Daylight Time (-7 GMT). This 1-hour online-streamed broadcast will showcase over 70 warm-and-cozy upcoming games developed by independent game artists. In prior Wholesome Directs, we've seen several farming games showcased during the presentation, such as Snacko and Critter Crops.

Story of Seasons on PS+

Subscribers of Sony's PlayStation Plus Extra program can now play several SoS games for free as part of their paid premium service. Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town and Story of Seasons: Pioneers of Olive Town are included as free digital games. PoOT's expansion pass is part of the free offerings if players choose the game + expansion pass bundle when adding the game to their PS library. Otherwise, the expansion pass costs $14.99 when purchased separately. The extra PoOT costumes are free (Neil's jacket, fox outfit, and buffalo outfit), but the extra costumes for FoMT remain $1.99 purchases. Rune Factory 4 Special was also added to the PS+ digital game library.

Sony is having a Great Deals sale until May 24 and has several farming games discounted:

• My Time at Portia = $8.99 (70% off)
• Doraemon: Friends of the Great Kingdom = $29.99 (40% off)
• Professional Farmer 2017 = $4.99 (70% off)

The discount on Doraemon is only for the base game (i.e., not the DLC or game + DLC bundle) and only on the second Doramon:SoS game. MTaP is also a free game for subscribers of PlayStation Plus Extra.

Drama in Pacha Land

Last Friday night, the newly-released prehistoric farming and village-building game Roots of Pacha was delisted from the Steam Store. The next day, developer Soda Den explained that they were in the midst of a disagreement with the game's publisher, Crytivo, over the ownership rights to Pacha:

We are sad to report that we have been engaged in a dispute with Crytivo over the rights to Roots of Pacha. We worked hard to amicably resolve our issue with Crytivo internally. Instead of working with us to address the issue, Crytivo went to Valve and authorized them to remove Roots of Pacha from Steam without our knowledge or consent.

Three hours later, Crytivo responded with their own explanation for the delisting of the game on the Steam Store:

On April 27, just two days after the successful release, we received an unexpected message from the Soda Den team, informing us they were claiming to unilaterally rescind the contract we had worked under for three years, treating it as void. This disregarded all of our work and the agreed-upon revenue-sharing contract terms. Shortly after, they removed our access to the Steam page for our team.

The Crytivo announcement confirmed that the Steam Store page was indeed taken down, but the publisher explained it was because of Valve's policy for dealing with disputes between parties. Once the dispute has been settled, the store page will be reinstated.

Currently, nobody can buy Pacha directly from Steam. The game is still for sale on key retailers such as Humble Bundle and Fanatical. The game can then be added to your Steam Library by entering the code in the Activate A Product on Steam menu.

Soda Den noted that they intend to continue to work on bug fixes and translation improvements during the contractual disagreement. Hopefully, the legal conflict will be resolved soon.

New Kickstarter

A new indie-developed farming game seeks financial support on Kickstarter. Just Life takes a human-realistic visual approach to the farming game genre.

Just Life is a role-playing and life simulation game focused on narrative and human relationships. You take control of a young man who has just graduated from high school. Life hasn't been easy for him, as he can't afford college due to economic reasons, and he has been unable to find a job because everyone requires work experience. But fate gives him an opportunity, and he inherits an agricultural land. Your mission is to achieve success from scratch, starting with nothing.

Farming will have a realistic approach, with the protagonist positioning their moves to look like they're tilling the soil or swinging the watering can to sprinkle water onto seedlings. Eventually, utilizing sprinklers and greenhouses will make crop care more efficient.

Besides farming, cooking, fishing, metal-detector treasure hunting, and construction, this open-world game will have book-reading and chess-playing mechanics. Well, that's different! The developer aims to have deep relationships with the characters rather than villagers designed with flat personalities, tackling themes such as social justice, depression, social criticism, and abandonment among the more joyous, romantic, and happy life events.

You can learn more about this game on the Kickstarter campaign page:

• Just Life - Open-world life and farming RPG with deep narrative and social sim

Indie Farm'n Game Updates

Magically witchy farming game Critter Crops by Skyreach Studios is making progress. Next month the team plans to start polishing the game in preparation for its planned release later this year.

The alpha-build access for Puffpals: Island Skies is still on-track for later this summer. Fluffnest has recently been busy shipping Puffpal plushies to backers who funded the game at a stuffed-animal reward tier during its initial Kickstarter campaign.

The summer update for early access game Coral Island is now live on Steam. The new summer season animal festival will test players by riding a mechanical bull, seeing which of their chickens has the strongest stare, and finding the fastest bovine with a cow race. The villagers now have summertime outfits, insect houses and fish ponds can be added to the farm for breeding these creatures, pigs and quails can be raised, and a new fire gate is available for players to explore. The full patch notes can be found on the game's Steam News Update page.

Until next time!

Cher
(Huzzah, here come the snow pea sprouts!)

Feedback: Add | View (5)

<< Previous page

Next page >>

RSS