For example, there’s one fruit that you can normally only gather a few of at a time, but for a couple of days you can harvest many of them at once. "I especially appreciated how so many little things would change as time passed. He says he really enjoyed details like the festival decorations in the town during seasonal events, and the sound effects that continued to play even when the music stopped. I ask Nakano if he's played Stardew Valley - a game indebted to Harvest Moon and Story of Seasons, but which many believe pushed the series’ ideas further than they had been before - and he has. "However, I also think more people have grown interested in Story of Seasons thanks to an increase in and a mutually beneficial relationship with wonderfully playable titles like Animal Crossing and Stardew Valley." Story of Seasons has always been committed to this design philosophy. "But the ones you see nowadays are designed to be easy to pick up and play. "I’m not sure how cleanly Story of Seasons fits into the mold of the simulation game genre, but I used to assume that such games were difficult and had these unbearably thick manuals," he says. More broadly, Nakano is happy to see how much more accessible gaming has become - not just in terms of platforms, but in design as well. He also notes that technological developments over the years have given developers more tools and ways to express themselves, but have also made it more challenging to balance games and tie their different elements together. I’ll always be rooting for the success of the Story of Seasons series as it continues to grow and evolve." "This beloved series has come so far thanks to the enthusiasm of the fans who play these games, as well as the love and devotion of everyone who has contributed to them. But he did have a statement to share in honor of the series' 25th: "Reminiscing on the difficult early days of development stirs up so many emotions within me," he says. The original creator of Story of Seasons, Yasuhiro Wada, has recently been working on his own separate projects like Birthdays: The Beginning and Little Dragon's Cafe. He says he believes that the introduction of portable platforms had "the greatest impact in the series' history," and that development of Story of Seasons has shifted deliberately in the direction of portability in recent years. Nakano is no stranger to the massive changes the games industry has seen over Story of Seasons' lifespan, and has seen firsthand how those changes have impacted the genre it helped pioneer. Part of the series’ uniqueness lies in how it embraces that theme, and it’s one of the biggest reasons to play it."īut for a series that, outwardly, seems to have changed so little, the director does point out a number of crucial shifts over the years. But do we really want to live our whole lives this way? This series has always sought to explore that fundamental question. "City life has its benefits and conveniences. "The series’ main themes have changed gradually over time, but I think you could sum up its simplest theme as the desire to live in the countryside away from the big city," the director says, speaking to IGN. And now, he's the director on both Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town and Story of Seasons: Pioneers of Olive Town. As the series moved to the DS, he worked as assistant producer on Harvest Moon DS: Cute and as producer and director on Harvest Moon DS: Island of Happiness, among other games. He first worked on the games as a designer for Harvest Moon 64 (which he says remains his favorite game in the series), and returned for other titles including Harvest Moon: Save the Homeland for PS2 and Harvest Moon: Magical Melody for the GameCube. Hikaru Nakano has been with the series since before we knew it as Story of Seasons in North America, and has seen a run of farming games through numerous iterations. And if you look to the genre the series pioneered as a source of comfort rather than novelty, like I do, that's just fine and dandy. In fact, rather like its protagonists' farms, it has nestled into a cozy repetition. 2021’s installment of Story of Seasons may have changed name (having ditched the Harvest Moon moniker when its developers broke off from publisher Natsume) but the plotline and gameplay goals have changed very little.
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