Happy Farm'n Friday! The first attempt at growing a lotus plant in the empty 1-gallon fish tank at the office didn't work out so well. We had started with a base of soil and covered the soil with gravel for the plant to grow into. It had started well, as the lotus sprouted four leaves, but then the plant shriveled up and rotted away.

So now we're trying a new lotus tank set up. This time I have set up a base of clean sand-like gravel with larger gravel on top to keep the finer gravel from floating to the top. We'll be successful this time! Teamwork makes the dream work!

Though my coworker's contribution is simply popping into my office and asking how the lotus is growing. He's the support group leader for this little experiment I guess.

Still nothing set in stone yet regarding an outside-Japan release date for Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town from XSeed Games (NA) or Marvelous Europe. Famitsu magazine notes that the game has now sold over 133,000 retail copies in Japan since its release last October.

XSeed Games has launched their own Discord server to connect with fans of all their published games. You can join at the following URL using your Discord account, which is free to register if you don't already have one:

• https://discord.gg/xseedgames

Discord is a popular voice/text chat network for video game fans. Even the publisher for Stranded Sails: Explorers of the Cursed Islands has their own Discord server, as do the Snacko farming game developers. Come join in!

Harmony Days in SoS:FoMT

Since it's a romantic day today, let's go over how the Valentines-day equivalents work in Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town. There are two days each year that are dedicated to this event: Winter 14 and Spring 14. On the date of the wintertime Harmony Day, the girls will give gifts of Chocolate, and on the date of the springtime Harmony Day the opposite will happen, where the boys will give gifts of Cookies.

In the original GBA version of the series, these events would play out differently depending on if you were playing Friends of Mineral Town or More Friends of Mineral Town:

• In the male-protagonist FoMT game, on Winter 14 there would be visits from the normal girl marriage candidates to your farmhouse front door if they had a purple heart color or higher. Each girl would give you a gift-wrapped Chocolate bar. Then on Spring 14, the male-protagonist could return the favor by giving the girl marriage candidates home-baked Cookies to raise their Love Points.
• In the female-protagonist MFoMT, on Winter 14 you would be the one to give Chocolate bars to the normal male marriage candidates. Then on Spring 14, the purple-heart-or-higher male marriage candidates would visit the farm to deliver gift-wrapped Cookies. Since Kai wouldn't be in town, he would mail his Cookie gift to your farm mailbox.

In both versions the special candidates don't participate in these festival days.

This is generally the same in the Nintendo Switch remake, but also a little bit different...

In the updated version of the game, both sides of the event play out on their dedicated days. As the Switch remake doesn't present a different experience based on the chosen gender of the protagonist, players can both give and receive on each of the annual Harmony Days. On the Winter Harmony Day, the normal girl marriage candidates will visit the farm throughout the day to give their Chocolate gifts, while also permitting the protagonist to venture into town to give Chocolate to the male marriage candidates. Then on Spring Harmony Day, the normal male marriage candidates will be the ones visiting the farm to deliver Cookies, and the normal female marriage candidates could also be gifted Cookies to raise their Love Points.

The fun part of this change is that you can simply recycle the gifts you receive on the Harmony Days. For example, if you can't bake Cookies using your kitchen for the Spring version of Harmony Day, the Cookie gifts received from the boy candidates can simply be re-gifted to the girl candidates! Love Points for everyooooone!

Farm'n Discounts!

On the Nintendo eShop in Japan:

• My Time at Portia = 50% off (1647 Yen) until February 16
• Wada's Little Dragons Cafe = 60% off (2552 Yen) until February 26
• Stranded Sails: Explorers of the Cursed Islands = 30% off (1799 Yen) until February 25

On the Nintendo eShop in North America:

• My Time at Portia = 50% off ($14.99 USD) until February 16

And on the eShop in Europe:

• My Time at Portia = 50% off (£12.49 or 14.99€) until March 1

Until next time!

- Cher
(Auu... Mr.Fogu bought us a box of chocolates. Caramels for him and everything else for meeeee!)

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