Happy Farm'n Friday! We've a lot growing in the backyard of Fogu HQ!

Today I picked some more blueberries from one of the blueberry bushes, the remaining tiny strawberries from the strawberry bed, some snow peas from the raised beds, a ity-bity raspberry, and a single marionberry that Mr.Fogu hadn't eaten yet. The bin of raspberries doesn't produce much, so I'm hoping that the new drop-line watering system will help cultivate more canes for later, as this particular variety likes to produce raspberries again during the fall.

The marionberry grows long canes that have been trained around an old tri-frame tomato cage. Currently it's producing canes for next year while this year's canes are producing fruit. Later this summer I'll cut the old canes out so there's more room for the new canes. It has to be grown in a container, else it will spread everywhere! Kind of like the plants in my next door neighbor's yard, which is overgrown with blackberry vines that reach up and over the top of the fence that divides our yards. On the bright side, I may end up with blackberries thanks to him!

Steam Summer Sale!

Online game platform Steam is having its summertime sale on a plethora of games until July 9. Many of our favorite farming games are discounted:

• Harvest Moon: Light of Hope Compete Set (base game + DLC) = 50% off ($14.95 USD)
• Stardew Valley = 20% off ($11.99 USD)
• My Time at Portia = 20% off ($23.99 USD)
• Farming Simulator 19 = 20% off ($27.99 USD)
• Fantasy Farming: Orange Season = 30% off ($9.79 USD)
• Harvest Life = 65% off ($5.24)
• Little Dragons Cafe = 70% off ($17.99 USD)

Stardew Valley is one of participating game in the summer sale race-off contest. Completing tasks in Stardew Valley will earn points towards your selected summer sale team's race car driver.

Doraemon Sales and Patch

Famitsu reports that Doraemon: Bokujou Monogatari sold another 14,500 copies, bringing its sales total to 56,700 since its release on June 13.

A patch was released this week to update the game to version 1.02. The patch made some adjustments to the game's mechanics and fixed in-game hiccups:

• Fixed a bug where tools will disappear from players' inventories. The impacted items have been added to the inventories of the blacksmith and Nature Sprite shop for players to get again if the items went missing.
• Special items that didn't make it to players' inventory during a cut scene can be obtained again by replaying the cut scene via the Replay Box.
• Items received from stamps can't be shipped anymore.
• A lot of items have had their prices adjusted. For example, beneficial Fertilizer was 400 G per purchase and is now 20 G. Selling a Golden Cheese will now earn 300 G instead of 150 G.
• The amount of stamina recovered when eating an item have also been adjusted; some increased (Butter now recovers 6 points instead of 2 points) and some decreased (Cookies now recovers 16 points instead of 33 points).
• Adjustments to chickens' stress reduction when interacting with the birds were made.
• The Flour Maker machine now makes 1 item instead of 10 items.
• Noby now moves a bit faster as well as charging tools is faster.
• Fixed various bugs like getting stuck in the general store, festival scenes now only occur during the festival times, and fixed errors in the game's text.

According to the Nintendo eShop, the game was the 10th most popular downloaded game last week.

Rune Factory 4 Channel Special #3

The third streaming special for RF4 took place last Wednesday. In this episode the presenters covered the battle mechanics and the new "hell" difficulty level, taming monsters (they had a lot of fun with their dragons!), participating in the Turnip Flurry festival, and even playing through a hell-mode battle. You can watch a recording of the 2-hour presentation over on the Marvelous JP Youtube page.

The presenters also revealed that DLC will be available in RF4 in the form of "Another Episode." This DLC contains voice dramas and illustrations for each of the 12 main characters (Lest, Frey, and the five marriage candidates); the game comes with the Another Episode for dragon Ventuswill. The DLC will be 700 Yen, but Marvelous will make the Another Episode DLC a free download for Rune Factory players until August 26. After that, the DLC will cost the 700 Yen.

Players can now pre-order the digital version from the Nintendo Switch eShop at a discounted rate of 4840 Yen, about 10% off the normal price of 5378 Yen. The game requires 3.6 G of SD Card space. The download discount will be in place until August 7th.

The game is scheduled to be released in Japan on July 25, with a North America release planned by XSeed Games for later this year.

Marvelous JP is offering another retweet-and-win contest for the little Wooly plushie. Participants in Japan can retweet this tweet to enter a lottery to win. Ten random winners will receive a Wooly plushie prize.

As for my adventures through Rune Factory 3, I finished the winter dungeon, got yelled at by Kurura, and now I'm helping Shara build a flower bouquet for some reason or another. I play the game before bed and was half asleep when she was telling me the reason why! I've also been wooing the potential candidates. Initially I was going for Carmen (am I marrying her big brother too?), but Raven is a bit mysterious. Once I figure out what's up with Raven I may have a tough choice between mysterious-and-moody or the fisherwoman. Though the game hasn't explained to me how to get married yet. I've the large bed in my house, and Carmen is my bestest buddy, but I'm not sure what to do next. I'm sure it'll reveal itself at the right time. Adventure awaits!