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: Grand Bazaar (August 2025)
• North America: Harvest Moon: Home Sweet Home Special Edition (October 2025) and Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar (August 2025)
• Europe: Harvest Moon: Home Sweet Home Special Edition (October 2025) and Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar (August 2025)

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! We ventured out as a group to the countryside garden center + petting zoo last weekend to pick up a few pretty plants and eat apple-cider donuts. Mr. Fogu's sister picked up a lot of vegetable starts (primarily peppers, herbs, and tomatoes), whereas we grabbed celosia, angelonia, and spinach.

As we were browsing through the rest of the plants, she picked up a small white, bush-like plant and loudly proclaimed how it smelled "like curry." Huzzah, what? Sure enough, she had found baby curry! The garden center didn't have many, so we each grabbed one to take home. It now sits in a pot at the top of the steps. When the wind blows just right and the front windows are open, I can smell it from the kitchen. It's more of a warm, savory curry smell than a sweet curry smell, and I have to remember to wash my hands after touching it so Mr. Fogu doesn't have to smell me. As we all know, he is not a fan of curry, but he's being a good sport about it, as always.

On a separate note, Marvelous published an adjustment to its income for the company's fiscal year that ended in March 2026. Due to continued strong sales of RF: Azuma and SoS: Grand Bazaar, both in Japan and internationally, Marvelous increased its net sales forecast (i.e., how much money came in) from 35,000 million yen (3.5 billion yen) to 37,900 million yen; its operating income (i.e., net sales minus operating expenses) from 2,000 million yen to 2,200 million yen; and its net income by an additional 500 million yen. On the downside, the release of the mobile app version of their browser game, Sangokushi Ten, did not meet expectations, resulting in a loss.

HM: Echoes of Teradea Date

This week, Natsume announced that the release date for their new farming game, Harvest Moon: Echoes of Teradea, will be September 24, 2026, almost exactly 3 years after the release of Harvest Moon: The Winds of Anthos. The game will launch on Steam/PC, Nintendo Switch 1|2, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S. The physical Switch cartridge contains the Switch 1 version and the Switch 2 upgrade pack.

Physical preorders are now available from the Natsume Store and Amazon.com. Retail price is $49.99 for the PS5 and Switch 1 edition, and $59.99 for the Switch 2 edition. Preorders also include a plushie of the Bloomfield wolf guardian, Lupo, while supplies last. The Steam edition is not available to wishlist yet. There doesn't appear to be a physical edition for Xbox available for preorder, so I am assuming it is digital-only on Microsoft's platform.

In Teradea, players begin their adventure in Bloomfield Village, where the mist from the Forest of Echoes has enveloped the land, bringing frightening wild animals out at night. The protagonist begins a journey across Teradea to repel the mist and revitalize the world. Visiting places like the coastal port of Tidewind, the mining town of Quarrytop, and the cultural center Maplehill, players will meet friends, explore maze-like caves, and evade nighttime animals that can reclaim foraged items.

It's clear that EOT replicates a lot of features from Anthos and Harvest Moon: Home Sweet Home, the game released after WOA.

• First off, both Tiny (the floating Harvest Goddess) and Doc Jr. have returned from WOA. Also apparently coming back is the "best friend" character from HSH, who is the protagonist not chosen during character creation in that game. The big question is whether Doc Jr. will finally get to join the circle of marriage candidates - most likely not, but we'll have to wait and see. The press release notes that there are 10 marriage candidates, describing them as "five all-new bachelors and five all-new bachelorettes," which would rule out our neglected silver fox, as he isn't an "all-new" character. Though, technically, Doc Jr. becoming a marriage candidate would be new. Hmm...

• The helpful animal companions and camping function from the Great Outdoors DLC in WOA make a return as a core mechanic in EOT. Activating camping mode in WOA is handy for taking a nap without having to return home to the farm. The campsite had unique meal recipes that may grant food effects (such as bonuses to treasure hunting), plus it's kind of fun to see the animal companion hanging out around a campfire. In EOT, the ability to change the protagonist's outfit, change the background music, and open the Doc Pad are available while camping. In WOA, the animal companions were helpful for locating buried treasures, restoring stamina, and protecting against hot/cold weather. In EOT, animal companions will also be tasked with destroying obstacles and reaching secret areas while exploring.
• One highly requested function from WOA was the ability to simply jump to traverse the hilly terrain of the world, which is now a function in EOT. Expanded beyond jumping, players can now climb ladders and vines to explore higher spaces.
• It looks like the Happiness system from HSH is also similarly implemented in EOT, as the earlier press release notes that players will earn Happilia by helping villagers and contributing to the development of Teradea.
• A new feature in EOT is nautical maps, directing players to the locations of secret islands. In WOA, there were islands that were only accessible during specific seasons, but their locations were pretty obviously marked on the Doc Pad. Having to utilize special maps expands the exploration gameplay of EOT.
• Another function carried over from WOA is the golden Power Wisps. There are 160 of these floating boogers to locate and acquire special fruit to exchange at the Harvest Goddess' statue for bag inventory upgrades and additional stamina hearts. In EOT, these fellows now appear to be located at puzzle points called Power Statues. Clear the challenge to receive the special fruit. No idea whether EOT also has a bajillion Power Wisps to locate, but if so, I'm sure we can work together again to locate them all.

Overall, the game sounds like a title with features from previous versions that worked well with players. There is still a lot of info we don't know yet, such as whether we can move farms like in WOA or if we'll have to rotate/restore crop fields like in HSH, but it shouldn't be too long before we learn more.

Moonfrost Demo

Oxalis Games released a demo of their sci-fi farming game Moonfrost on the 7th. Previously a game built around offering NFTs to players, this now single-player game puts the player in the role of a Frost Hunter. These individuals intend to help rebuild the world after a mysterious event called the Moonfrost began bombarding the world with crystallized meteorites. Frost Hunters use the remnants of the calamity to benefit the world, turning trash into treasure, in a sense.

Growing crops is generally the same as in other farming games - till the soil, plant the seeds, water, and then wait. In this game, crops grow in real time and not in-game time. Turnips take 30 seconds to grow in the demo, carrots take about 2 minutes to mature, asparagus takes 5 minutes, and so on. After harvest, crops can be cooked into meals or used to complete Frost Hunter Association (FHA) requests, which are located inside the in-game mobile app. Crops don't wilt when left in the ground, so you can keep plants in place if you're experiencing inventory space issues.

Using better farm tools can result in higher-quality crops. The downside is that farm tools will eventually lose durability and break, meaning you will have to craft them again. Remaking the tools is an instant process at the Tool Bench, if you have the proper materials, but crafting other goods is based on real time. Many of the decoration options in the demo can be crafted in 90 seconds or less. I would assume that higher-level blueprints will take longer to craft. Crafting requires materials, such as crops or foraged items. Crafting also requires Moonfrost Shards and currency (Sil), which can be earned by completing FHA requests. Completed requests require a real-time refresh before new tasks can appear, a callback to the game's former format when FHA requests were daily chores.

Though the game has a day/night cycle, it seems more like a visual reference to time instead of a day progression like a typical farming game. You can stay awake all day and night if desired, as long as you have the energy/stamina for it, with the fatigue status icon indicating when to go to bed. The demo has an expansive stamina bar to allow players to perform essentially unlimited actions. From my experience, the fatigue indicator would trigger before running out of stamina. At one point, I just let my character remain exhausted, since there was plenty of stamina remaining, but that resulted in slow actions from the protagonist!

Besides farming and crafting, players can explore temples filled with dangerous baddies. Only check them out if you're well-equipped. There's also a bit of fishing too, which requires mouse clicks to reel in whatever is caught on the line.

Downsides: saving in the demo is only triggered when going to bed. With how long a day can play out, this could become an issue if your PC has a conniption before you can rest, resulting in progress loss up to the last save point. Another thing to be aware of is that time proceeds regardless of what menu you're interacting with (workbench, quest-complete pop-up, etc.), though there isn't a penalty for staying awake all night.

There is also a lot of crafting, with blueprints that require multiple crafting steps to complete. With so much reliance on crafting to restore the village, make money, and build the homestead, I would compare Moonfrost more to a game from the My Time at Portia series than to a typical farming game. For example, collect copper ore and charcoal to make a copper bar, then combine the bar and wood to make a copper sickle, which then needs to be turned in at a story-progression crafting point along with 5 bags of cement, which itself is made by combining limestone and clay at another workbench. Some story spots may require multiple stages of crafted materials before they'll be marked as complete.

Despite the game's heavy reliance on crafting and requests under the guise of rebuilding a village destroyed by Frostfall, Moonfrost genuinely is a visually pretty game. The day-to-night cycle is smooth, the weather dynamically changes (though rain doesn't appear to water planted crops), and even the corrupted monsters in the dungeon temples are more lovely than terrifying. The world environment regenerates as you harvest materials, with plants and pebbles popping up as in-game time moves forward, not like a typical farming game where you wake up in the morning and discover weeds everywhere.

I think in time, Oxalis Games can flesh out a bit of the remaining elements that make Moonfrost feel like the daily-grind game it once was. It will be interesting to see how they turn it into a single-player experience for players who adore crafting-casual life sims.

• Moonfrost | Steam Store

New Arcade Prizes

FansClub will be releasing four new cow keychain plushies in Japan this month. These are the same size as the ball-chain plush cows released in January 2025 (egads, was it that long ago?). This time, instead of a black/white, strawberry, fruit, and coffee cow, we have black/white, strawberry, brown, and black cows, each with sleepy eyes. If you weren't convinced these cows were asleep, each ball chain has snoozing bubble charms.

Each cow is about 3.75 inches long and will be available soon at participating arcade centers in Japan.

Indie Updates

The crowdfunding campaign for robot-rebuilding farming game Silicone Heart reached its funding goal a few days before campaign completion. While the campaign had a slow start, making a playtest available on Steam ignited support and pushed it toward a successful conclusion. The next goal for this game is a Steam alpha test in August, a 1.0 release planned for November 2027, and then home console support.

• Silicone Heart | Steam Store

The developer of the upcoming story-driven farming game Delphinium has moved the release date from late 2026 to early 2027. Cinnadev recently has been reworking the character sprites to make the game visually unique in comparison to other pixel-style games, along with improving animations.

• Delphinium | Steam Store

After clawing back the publishing rights to their game with the assistance of their legal team, Aftabi Games has announced plans to rebuild their indie farming and life-sim game, SunnySide. Currently no longer available on PS5 and Xbox, which limited the supported version of Unreal Engine due to console port restrictions, the development team intends to start over using a new foundation for their game. The "2.0" version of their farming game will no longer have monsters in the caves, will have an improved social experience with the NPCs, include updates to its user interface, and much more. As development moves forward, the original version of the game will remain available for those who want to play, but save files will not be compatible between legacy SunnySide and the new 2.0 version.

• SunnySide | Steam Store

RF Sale

Just as a quick note, Marvelous has games in the Rune Factory series discounted on Steam until May 18 (Monday). The mainline Story of Seasons games are not on sale, but one of the Doraemon versions is discounted.

• Rune Factory 3 Special - 65% off ($13.99)
• Rune Factory 4 Special - 70% off ($8.99)
• Rune Factory 5 - 65% off ($13.99)
• Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma - 35% off ($38.99)
• Doraemon Story of Seasons: Friends of the Great Kingdom - 50% off ($32.49)

Until next time

-Cher
(The air show is this weekend at the local airport. Maybe we'll see some cool planes fly over!)

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