Despite looking like an all-new Harvest Moon game for the DS, this is a mish-mash of characters from Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life and HM: Friends of Mineral Town, with the story itself borrowed from HM: Shiawase no Uta. The premise is as always: a guy inherits a farm from his father and is asked to bring it back to its former glory by re-cultivating the land and raising farm animals. But to "win" this game, there's an actual goal to complete rather than just getting married and farming your life away.

The game begins with the farm's reigns being handed over to you after the death of your father. You're given a huge plot of land on which you can build different buildings that you'll need for the upkeep and care-taking of your crops and farm animals. The major difference between previous handheld versions of Harvest Moon and this one is that the amount of work it takes to keep your farm held together is much greater. When you start out in the game, you only have your house and a barn at your disposal. You're going to have to collect stone and wood from your farm and around town in order to build things like a silo, chicken pen, storage buildings and so on. There's only so much you can hold, so you're given the option to build storage space for different materials you collect. You can also build everything out of five different materials, and how strong what you're using to build with is will determine how long the building stands and whether it can handle the storms that frequent the area. Whenever you build a structure, it's put on valuable planting grounds, and it's very easy to have a whole mess of them scattered around your plot of land unless you build carefully and leave ample room for crops.

As far as the story goes, it might sound familiar. The Harvest Goddess of Forget-Me-Not Valley, where your character and his farm live in HM: Sprite Station, has been turned to stone, and it's your job to restore her back to her former self. You must find and befriend the scattered Harvest Sprites around Forget-Me-Not Valley. Once you find all 60 sprites, the Harvest Goddess will return to her normal form, and you will be able to propose to any of the women you've been courting that live in the valley.

This game makes great use of the touch screen. The top screen is used for moving around in town and interacting with the environment, while the bottom screen is your inventory and menus. If you're interacting with your animals (everything from your cat to your cows), you can use the touch screen to bathe them, brush them, or pet them, and your performance will be rated with either hearts or skulls from the animal, and an overall score at the end, as well as a heart rating showing how much they like you. Keeping your animals very happy will garner better quality milk, eggs and such from them.

Of course, there are seasonal produce to grow, as well as a tree that's been on the farm plot since before you got there that produces fruit you can eat or sell. A lot of the ordering of supplies and buildings to be built are done over the phone, leaving you to run around and visit all of the different houses, bar, inn, and so on, that are in Forget-Me-Not Valley. There are some odd characters in town, and befriending a lot of them will get you different gifts and access to different things depending on how much they like you.