The Harvest Moon series attracts many players with its cute graphics, easy gameplay and peaceful farm sim. Labelled with the 10th anniversary logo just like Rune Factory, “Harvest Moon: The Island Grows with You” begins with you and a group of other people migrating to a new land by ship. Seeing how beautiful the weather is out at sea you decide to go take a nap but, waking up the next moment you find the ship caught up in a great storm. With a flash of lightning, you pass out and find yourself washed up on an island together with an old man “Tarou” and his family. It seems there are no other survivors. Now it’s up to you to work on the farm, export goods and help develop the island so that more people is attracted to your new home. Sounding good so far? Read on.

As I mentioned earlier, Harvest Moon games have always been easy to play but things have changed in this latest title. The first thing you’ll notice is that it’s mainly touch screen control only. Your character runs or walks in the direction of your stylus and, tools and items are equipped by dragging them to one of four slots on the screen. You can then use the items by tapping the slots or by pressing the corresponding direction on the D-Pad. Although it all feels a bit slow and cumbersome to use initially, you do get used to it after about an hour or so.


You’re washed up on a deserted island with Tarou and his family.
The second thing is that on the top screen are now two gauges – an energy and hunger bar. In previous games, you could only tell if your character was getting exhausted from a day’s of hard work when he’s wobbling on his feet but now you can tell from the gauges.

The energy bar works very similarly to before. Every movement you make such as watering your crops, ploughing or taking care of the animals requires a bit of energy. What’s new however is that the weather can affect how much energy you end up using. For example, if it happens to be a bright hot sunny day, your character uses up more energy than usual while on rainy or cloudy days, you use up less energy. It all adds up to the realism of the game but you’ll notice how fast it depletes! It depletes so fast that the bar only gives you enough energy to manage about two patches of crops.


On a hot day you can only manage to plough two patches of earth.
Fortunately, there are free heart shaped herbs scattered around areas that you can consume to replenish your energy and how much they replenish depends on their colour. You’ll find yourself hunting for these a lot if you want to get much done in the game. Then there is also the hunger bar to mind which drops a little everyday so, you’ll have to find yourself some source of food such as chocolate to fill it back up. As you would expect, if either of the two bars are depleted you’ll pass out and you’ll wake up in bed the next day with only half the energy.