Harvest Moon: Light of Hope coming to PC
Creepy moon, cute game
Fans of pumpkins and buying affection with said pumpkins will be happy. Harvest Moon: Light of Hope [official site], the next entry in the farming and flirting series, has been announced and it’s coming to PC as well as the Nintenbox and Play-Station. It wants us all to be friends. We haven’t been shown any images yet, because developers Natsume don’t feel like it. But we are told it will be a “SNES-style nostalgic game” and, to be fair, if you’ve played any Harvest Moon before you can probably guess what it’ll look like with 90% accuracy. There’ll be cows and probably some grass.
But you want more than that. OK. Here’s what the story is, according to their pre-E3 press release.
In Harvest Moon: Light of Hope, players begin the game as they set out looking for a fresh start and new surroundings. During their voyage, their ship is hit by a monsoon and goes down. As they drift into a small harbor town, now in a shambles from the storm, it will be up to the player to help rebuild the town and save the lighthouse… but it won't be easy! Nevertheless, with some hard work growing crops, tending livestock, and gathering materials for repairs, players will be able to make new friends, start a family, revive the lighthouse, and save the town!
This isn’t the first Harvest Moon to grace the PC – that’d be Seeds of Memories from a couple of years ago – but it is the first to come out on Steam [Edit: Nope! I'm talking shite. Turns out Seeds of Memories never did come to PC in the end, despite being shown at E3 in 2015. The port was cancelled and it ended up only on mobile]. It's an old-fashioned sit-in-your-pants all day with a controller and plant potatoes type deal. If you’re not convinced, Kate wrote about why having the farming series on PC is great, so shut up.
It’s also the year of the 20th anniversary of Harvest Moon, they say, but WELL ACTUALLY it’s the 21st anniversary if you count it from the Japanese release date. And I do. Natsume will be showing off more of the game come E3 next month and, depending on how flooded to death with news we are, you might see more of it then.