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| Harvest Moon type game |
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sunandshadow Moderator - Writing for Games Member since: 4/23/2000 From: Pittsburgh, PA, United States |
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 Posted - 7/14/2005 3:57:06 PM |
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| Harvest Moon is a popular series of games with an interesting hybrid genre: farming sim/relationship sim. (I have sometimes seen this game labeled as an RPG/sim, but it has no monster fighting, very few quests, no travelling - the only vaguely RPG-ish elements it has are talking to NPCs, buying items at shops, and upgrading tools, all of which can be filed under one of the two types of sim, so personally I won't call it an RPG.) Anyway, suppose we want to design an ideal farming(or settlement building) sim/relationship sim. What should we include, what should we avoid, and why? ______________________________ For a very reasonable fee I am available as a freelance design consultant, editor, or ghostwriter. PM me if interested. |
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SiCrane Staff Member since: 12/10/1999 From: Vernon Hills, IL, United States |
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 Posted - 7/14/2005 5:11:53 PM |
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| Having played many of the Harvest Moons, I'd have to say the ones with simpler controls were better, probably the best being Back to Nature for the PS. The Gameboy ones suffered from not enough buttons to do everything so you were constantly in menus. The Game Cube one, you were constantly messing with the camera and that just ruined immersion. For the actual game play elements, one thing that turned me off in Harvest Moon 3 for the Gameboy was that you had to go back to the mainland to do some things, which made things a hassle, especially considering this was a portable version where being able to pick it up and put it back down was at a premium. Actually, why I just save us all some bandwidth and say that Harvest Moon Back to Nature was practically perfect, core gameplay wise. There are of course things I'd liked to have tweaked like making Karen somewhat more accessible, getting rid of those stupid blizzards and hurricanes, making it possible to visit people on festival days, and maybe some cows that wanted to be eaten. |
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Brokenimage Member since: 4/5/2005 From: Camarillo, United States |
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 Posted - 7/14/2005 7:34:42 PM |
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| Personally, I thought it was really frustrating to have a very small vegetable-carrying capacity, which means you have to pick ~8 veggies, then walk ALL THE WAY BACK TO THE DROP OFF POINT, sometimes on the other side of the farm. I think Back To Nature fixed this by giving you a >30 veggie capacity, if you upgraded it, but, I think my favorite idea was the saddlebags--basically, your horse acted as a mobile drop off point with unlimited capacity. One thing that I always thought was kinda lame, story-wise: in most of the games, you inherit the farm from your dead grandpa. And it's ALWAYS in really cruddy condition. Why is it that Grandpa is automatically assumed to be a loser, and neither he or his son did anything for the place for about ten years before he kicked the bucket? I designed an HM clone (never went through with it, tho), that started in the summer, in the middle of a drought. Your character had everything he needed--really nice farm, crops all planted, maximum tools, a wife (but no kid). there's about a week, where the player learns how to work the farm, then he loses everything in a fire (including wife :( ). He then waits ~6 months before re-opening business. This would explain why a)the farm looks like crap b)the farm starts with zero good tools, even after >30 years of previous occupancy, and c) why the house isn't upgraded worth crud. Just a thought. |
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Cannibal_Coder Member since: 6/7/2004 From: Okinawa City, Japan |
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Posted - 7/14/2005 7:50:34 PM |
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| What kind of time are you planning to set this in? Present day? 1500's? I think that would be a major determining factor. C_C (Enter witty/insightful/profound remark here...) |
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sunandshadow Moderator - Writing for Games Member since: 4/23/2000 From: Pittsburgh, PA, United States |
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Posted - 7/14/2005 8:09:36 PM |
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Quote: Who, me or Brokenimage? I was thinking fantasy setting myself. Or maybe modern humans dropped onto an island without any tools. |
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Cannibal_Coder Member since: 6/7/2004 From: Okinawa City, Japan |
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Posted - 7/14/2005 8:52:55 PM |
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| Fantasy would be really interesting depending on whether or not you would mind putting in a little bit of RPG into it all. *Evil dragon Smog steals 3 sheep* Kinda thing. Mayhaps have to hire someone to watch over your livestock at night to protect against wolves or thieves. There is alot of possibility. C_C (Enter witty/insightful/profound remark here...) |
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Brokenimage Member since: 4/5/2005 From: Camarillo, United States |
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Posted - 7/14/2005 9:53:49 PM |
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| Something I forgot to mention in my original post... Another must is a hot key to put whatever you're carrying in your pack, and, maybe another to pull the first thing out. Otherwise, you spend a massive amount of time loading/unloading your pack. |
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Trapper Zoid GDNet+ Member since: 5/20/2005 From: Melbourne, Australia |
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Posted - 7/14/2005 10:01:00 PM |
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| Sound interesting sunandshadow, and rather similar to a game idea I've been designing this week (mostly in my mind at this stage though!). Although my idea is more of a fantasy RPG village simulator than a farming sim/relationship Harvest Moon type game, although it would have farming and romance in it. But regarding Harvest Moon, the better versions of the game that I've played managed to get enough variety in it to keep it interesting. A good pattern of gameplay went something like: a few days of farming, then a festival, then a few more days of farming, then a different festival, then a few more days of farming, then a change of season. Repeat for the rest of the game. The game got a bit dull once you had a good set of tools, a good spread of livestock, and were just farming for weeks on end. Oh, and if you can, I'd put a bit of variety into the 'special events', so they can play out differently depending on the player actions (and the element of chance). It would increase my interest, the replayability of the game. Plus interactivity and customisablity are my interests in game development, so I like to see more of them around. |
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GroZZleR Member since: 1/26/2002 From: Whitby, Canada |
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Posted - 7/14/2005 10:07:18 PM |
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| Maybe I'm too competative but Harvest Moon got a little stale for me. 01: Wake Up 02: Open Barn 03: Milk Cows 04: Collect Eggs 05: Process & Sell Goods 06: Sleep 07: Close Barn 08: Sleep 09: Wake Up... |
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SiCrane Staff Member since: 12/10/1999 From: Vernon Hills, IL, United States |
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Posted - 7/14/2005 10:11:13 PM |
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Quote: Dude, you totally forgot the wooing the women part. |
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sunandshadow Moderator - Writing for Games Member since: 4/23/2000 From: Pittsburgh, PA, United States |
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Posted - 7/15/2005 12:12:24 AM |
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| Not to mention mining - I think I spent more time in Back To Nature mining that farming. But I agree that it does get boring - I don't think I ever made it through the full three years of the game, because it does lose its appeal once you've maxed out your tools and your house expansions. I was thinking maybe more random events to spice up the main activities, more visual variety (how come there are different color horses and chickens at the festivals but I can't have some?) and a higher percentage of story events, which would be aided by making the town more compact, putting the people where you run into them every day or two rather than way on the other side of town so it's too expensive to go there often. What did you guys think about the cooking, was it fun or a waste of programming? I thought it would have been more fun to do this sort of direct creation to get your house expansions or try to breed interesting mutant animals/plants rather than something as irrelevant as cooking. |
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Trapper Zoid GDNet+ Member since: 5/20/2005 From: Melbourne, Australia |
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Posted - 7/15/2005 1:04:02 AM |
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Quote: I don't remember the cooking; maybe I didn't get far enough in the game? Hang on, there was a cooking element in the Gamecube version, wasn't there? I never really used it, but I only got a couple of years in before lending the title away (I should probably get it back and try it out again). Anyway, if the cooking wasn't too much of a hassle to use the recipes, and acted a bit like 'value-adding' to the produce, I think it would work quite well. If you're a talented cook, you could convert your produce into baked goods that sell for more (or impress the ladies a little bit better). However, most of the cooking in console games seems to revolve around having exactly the right ingredients, with a pure binary success/fail motif. I'd like it better if you throw in extra ingredients for a unique taste (like adding fruit to a bread recipe to make fruit loaf). And there's a more analog result of cooking; burnt bread is still edible, but not high quality. You could make the result range through terrible/bad/average/good/great, and sell the cooked goods accordingly, based on chef skill. |
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The Shadow Nose Member since: 4/23/2004 |
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Posted - 7/15/2005 5:10:16 AM |
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| I really liked the Back to Nature version of Harvest Moon. Though I hear the Wonderful Life is pretty nice (but I don't have a GameCube so I can't really play that one). Anyway, with the Harvest Moon series I always wanted to get somebody to really help me out. In Back to Nature you could ask the little elves to help you, but they often did a poor job (they wander around aimlessly instead of daking direct routes and when they harvest things like eggs, wool, or milk they never use the yarn or cheese makers to increase the value of the things). So, if you are making a Harvest Moon type game, it would really help if you added something like a farmhand to help out or let the wife help in some way. Ideally with the farmhand the player can give them a set of tasks or instructions to do. Personally, I would have settled for an empty-headed NPC that required such detailed instruction that you practically wrote his AI. Something like, you hire the local idiot who can only follow super-specific instructions that you write doen on his to-do list. So his list looks like this: 1. When it is 6:00AM, come to the farm. 2. Enter the Henhouse 3. If you see an egg then 4. Pick up the egg 5. Put the egg in the Egg Basket 6. If you see an egg, repeat from step 4 7. Exit the hen house Or something, I mean, in Harvest Moon, I found it really fun to get the farm cleaned up and start producing, but I couldn't get a really big farm going because it's so darn boring doing the same old chores every day that writing code for the farmhand would at least be mentally challenging. But anyway, getting a good farmhand from either a good AI or the ability to customise would be a big plus for a harvest moon style game. Also, in Back to Nature. It would have been neat if each of the girls helped out in some way. Like Poupori helping water plants, Anne helping take care of the animals, Karen buying supplies from the stores etc... something that provides a gameplay bonus while staying in character to the world. |
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Anonymous Poster |
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Posted - 7/18/2005 6:13:18 PM |
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| I love HM, and what I think it needs is to be less awkward for the player. On Back to nature, I did everything, simple and fun, but on Gamecube, they were thousands of plants, I was excited, but you have to water each on, with a painfully slow animation, you couldn't upgrade to water 9 at once etc, so it was a real shame. What Harvest Moon needs is to show you how much being a farmer is and you can do, without making it boring. Make fields bigger, more life like, and make tractors, to plough your fields. How about you start, with a small field, and you plow with a hoe. Later you get a donkey, to plough, and then further on, a tractor? In the relationship terms, they still need to focus on the family. Once your girlfriend becomes your wife, she is useless. Same old talk, just waiting for a baby. Baby system is getting better but it needs more. A market perhaps too? Take a little ferry to a small Island to sell products at market? |
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Anonymous Poster |
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Posted - 7/18/2005 8:27:44 PM |
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How about Evil harvest Moon, where you have to fend off goblins from stealing your crops. You would never know when they might attack. |
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Jiia Banned Member since: 6/17/2001 From: Bridgeport, WV, United States |
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Posted - 7/18/2005 8:52:47 PM |
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Quote: Sounds like The Horde. (edit: Erm, um, kind of) Quote: I started playing it way back before the SNES version was even translated to English. You could only carry one thing at a time! The version I played was pretty RPGish. There were quite a few side quests. I seem to remember something about a monster to the north, but the rest is hazy. I personally played it all the way through. I think the farming genre has a lot of potential. No one has really pushed the idea very far. |
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