Happy Farm'n Friday! While he isn't a fan of farming games, Mr.Fogu is a big fan of Path of Exile. So you can imagine how hilarious it was when Grinding Gear Games announced the other day that farming will be added to the next season of the game Path of Exile: Harvest includes its standard dungeon-crawling RPG gameplay, but during this season players will be looting special seeds to plant in their sacred gardens. Players will have to tend their crops until they mature, at which point they'll produce a monster at harvest. If the monster can be defeated, they'll drop materials used to craft in-game items and possibly higher-tiered seeds. A level 1 monster can drop tier 2 seeds, level 2 monsters can drop tier 3 seeds, and so on.

Oh it'll be exciting to see the lovely crops that Mr.Fogu will grow! (So beautiful, thank you GGG for showing him the splendor of video game farming)

Finished the last romantic event last weekend for the SoS:FoMT guide. With the game coming out in about a month in EU, it still needs important holes filled.

Mara Release Date

Chibig Studios announced this week that their tropical island adventure with farming and fishing gameplay, Summer in Mara, will be released on June 16 on the Steam platform. A free prologue is available to show oceanic farmers the protagonist's island farm:

The prologue demo takes about a half-hour to go through, and covers the basics of crop care (tilling, sowing, and watering), chopping trees, and catching fish. Yaya's stories will foreshadow Mara's future to little Koa, with the prologue ending right as a mysterious pirate ship dock at their island beach. How exciting! Visually, the game is quite lovely. I was skeptical that the game would run on my PC, as My Time at Portia was a no-go on my system, but Mara did play in full-screen mode without too much trouble. There's a difference in watering crops than an SoS/HM game, as players will be carrying a water bucket that appears from the watering well; the prologue did not have a watering can, but a standard hoe was used to make a field for planting tasty carrots. Fishing is similar to Stardew Valley, where the fishing bobber has to follow the fish along its gauge, but it was also easier to successfully reel the fish.

I enjoyed the short prologue, and you can download and play the prologue too from the Steam store:

• Summer in Mara - Free prologue

SoS:FoMT 1.1.4 DLC

Yesterday, Marvelous JP released a free 1.1.4 update for Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town. The release notes don't indicate any bug fixes, but it did add a cute Cherry Blossom Nature Sprite costume for the farmer to wear. We'll find out if this costume is available as a $2 DLC when the game is released outside of Japan next month.

June Bokumono for Mobage Events

It's a new month of events taking place in the online Bokujou Monogatari game on the Mobage social game paltform.

• A summertime morning glory-themed competitive harvest event started on the 1st. Players will harvest morning glory flowers and trees, and care for frogs and umbrella rabbits. In-game prizes will be awarded based on the number of points a player earns.
• A bingo event starts on the 11th, where players grow special crops that will mature into one of three plants. A bingo triggers when three of the same plant appear in a row on the 3x3 bingo card, or when all nine spaces are the same plant.
• Finally, a hungry animal event begins on the 21st. Players will grow crops to feed to one of three randomly appearing animals on their farm. Prizes are awarded based on how the number of animals are fed. Players can feed their hungry animals as well as their fellow farmers' animals.

Until next time!

-Cher
(Another rainy weekend, time for some indoor farming!)

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