Harvest Moon Home Sweet Home announced by Natsume

“Home is where the heart is! After ten years of city life, you’re ready to head back home in Harvest Moon: Home Sweet Home! Your childhood friend has convinced you to move back to your hometown to try to revitalize it, but it won’t be easy going! The town of Alba has seen better days, and not all its residents are happy to see a city slicker like you back! Can you convince even the negative naysayers that you truly have the village’s best interests at heart? And can you revitalize Alba? With the help of your childhood friend and other villagers on your side, you definitely can!”

It was accompanied by an image of the game’s logo and the game’s release details. Harvest Moon: Home Sweet Home comes to iOS and Android on August 2024. The exact day is unannounced, and Natsume is yet to give players a look of the game via screenshots or trailers.

Harvest Moon? Story of Seasons?

The Harvest Moon series began in 1996. With dozens of entries and releases under its belt, it has been on almost every mainstream platform from the Game Boy to PlayStation 5 and PC. In 2013, due to a change in localizers, Harvest Moon games were released to the North American region as Story of Seasons. The European region soon followed suit in 2015.

The most recent entry in the series is Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life last June 2023. This was a remake of Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life and Harvest Moon: Another Wonderful Life. The next most recent entry was Story of Seasons: Pioneers of Olive Town in early 2021. A Wonderful Life, unlike most of the games in the rest of the series, puts players on a track. It doesn’t have as much freedom as the other Story of Seasons games, but this makes space for unique features such as growing older as the game progresses and seeing your child grow up and take over the family farm. The game can also prematurely end if set conditions are not met.

The series has seen multiple spinoffs, and a couple of crossover games with Doraemon, aptly named “Doraemon Story of Seasons.” The Doraemon crossover games were reviewed fairly well. As for the spin-offs, the most notable one is Rune Factory which has grown into a series of its own.

The first title in the spin-off series, Rune Factory: A Fantasy Harvest Moon, was first released in 2006 in Japan for the Nintendo DS. Since then, multiple titles have been released, including a couple of remakes. Rune Factory 6 was announced but a release date has not been made public as of the time of writing. It was also teased that Rune Factory would branch off into “Project Dragon,” its own spin-off. Don’t worry though, references to Harvest Moon / Story of Seasons have considerably dropped since Rune Factory 2, so no need to be concerned whether you’re missing out on some vital information.

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