In my youth, one of my favorite games was Harvest Moon: Magical Melody. It started my love for farming simulation games, which continues to this very day (with some of my favorites being Slime Rancher and Stardew Valley). I decided this would be the perfect time to try the start of it all: Harvest Moon. I was excited to play, however, I just could not get into the game. The controls frustrated me, the soundtrack felt a lot less charming than all the other farming games I liked, and I was just generally confused on what I should do. So, what happened? Why did I feel this way?
One of the biggest frustrations for me was the lack of guidance in the game.
In Magical Melody, I felt a lot more guided in terms of controls and actually setting up my farm. The game had an option to show a grid with guide lines for where your actions would interact with the world. It would show how your seeds were scattered, and what tile you were using your tools on.
This, however, was not built into the original Harvest Moon game. Another thing this game lacked which left me feeling a bit lost is a lack of UI on the screen (no time was displayed and I could only see my inventory by swapping between the two tools I could hold). Later, I learned that SNES games would typically come with a booklet which would show the user these kinds of guides. The expectation was to refer to the booklet when confusion arose. Still, I did not have this booklet on me, thus I was left in confusion. One might attribute the lack of guidance to the machine this game was on, but I think it was more than that. The production for this game was also incredibly stunted.
Yasuhiro Wada, the producer for the game, stated on a panel that his team was downsized during the development of his game, leading to much of the game needing to be reprogrammed before its release. Yet, with this setback, the game did really well. This to me reminds me a lot of Myst, in the sense of a small development team created a game which did surprisingly well. But what do these games have in common? It is due to the creation of something new. Many reviewers for Harvest Moon called the game fun, and one of them said it was due to how it was “as fun as it was original”. While missing some of the components that I enjoyed in other successors to this game, the original players still enjoyed this game. So what made it so special?
It was one of, if not the first, farming simulation game. To me, starting out on Magical Melody, it was missing the classic parts of a farming game such as a fishing or a mining mechanic. So what does it have? It has the basics to making a farm: growing crops, raising livestock, and interacting with other townsfolk. Later games in the Harvest Moon (now known as Story of Seasons) franchise added these other components, but these three parts seem to be the most essential. But why? Especially with interacting with townsfolk. This game holds the core value that Wada cared about, which was to make a game without competition or combat, which he decided to do through farming. Adding the component of other human interaction drives home that community aspect. All of these people you can talk to, yet you are left as the only farmer. You can do things at your own pace and are left to do whatever you want. Many cozy games leave the player with so much freedom, just like this one.
This game created an original idea which held much success throughout the years. Yet for all of its success, it stayed as a game with relatively small competition; not many similar games were made for a long time. There are some games which have slight similarities, such as Animal Crossing, but Harvest Moon stayed unique, until around 2016 when Stardew Valley was released. This is when there was a huge surge in interest of farming games. During and after this game’s success, many more similar games were released. But what caused this surge, and who released these games?
Just like the original game, the teams were also very small, represented by relatively new companies. Stardew Valley was actually made by a team of just one person! All of these farming games are represented by indie developers. But why do we see this trend? Major companies don’t see the market of cozy games, unless they have a relatively established ground already (such as Animal Crossing or the Sims). Indie developers are willing to be the ones to fill this gap in the market, just as the creators of Myst were. Game development is much more accessible these days, plus advertisement for games is much easier to spread nowadays (through social media or simply posting the game on the Steam store page). Thus, indie games are much more widespread nowadays, which comes with a much wider diversity of genre (or in this case, filling out a genre which has already been established).
I recognize being spoiled, in the sense of getting to play the successors which could build on the foundation that Wada laid down in Harvest Moon. However, I can still respect it as the original and new creation of a genre, with effects which were not as widespread until recently.
Citations
“Review Crew: Harvest Moon.” Electronic Gaming Monthly, No. 95, June 1997, p. 46.
Wada, Yasuhiro. “Classic Game Postmortem: Harvest Moon.” GDC Vault, Informa Tech, https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1016368/Classic-Game-Postmortem-Harvest.
