Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town

I know a lot of people who play video games (practically all of my friends). A lot of them also do things like play Dungeons and Dragons, or Warhammer.

Oh the memories...

A few of them play Harvest Moon, in it's various incarnations. They're the ones who will understand me when I start ranting about it. The ones who don't play it give me a look that clearly says "What are you on woman?"

They do this because Harvest Moon is a farming RPG.

You're the one who's holding the dog.

People who don't play it go "Oh, it's a farming game? Like Farmville?"

It kind of is, but only in the farming part. 

In Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town, you start with your character showing up at on a farm near a small town, and the mayor of the town explains that the previous owner has died and left it to someone.

That someone is you.

If you choose to keep the farm, you start working on it the next game day.

You get to tend cattle, sheep, and chickens, and you own a dog, and a horse. But you only start with the dog, the cattle, sheep, and chickens you have to earn enough money to buy. The horse is given to you by the  owner of the cattle farm.

Heeere chicken chicken chicken!

Then there are the Non-player characters (NPC's). Other than your character there are no other characters controlled by you in the game. That's a lot of characters, at least about 39. 

They all have their own personalities, likes and dislikes, interests, etc. They have their own birthdays even, which people like me (slightly manic people) try to find out.

For example one of the bachelorettes, Popuri, will like your puppy if you talk to her holding it, but when it's a full grown dog, she won't like it.

Speaking of bachelorettes, you get to have a girlfriend in this game (or several) and get married. You also get to have a child.

Personally, I always go for Popuri.

This is Popuri.

It's not all fun stuff either, there can be hurricanes in the summer, and blizzards in the winter. Your animals can get sick, and they can die from their sickness. They can also die from age.

This is also a game that consumes you, you have to budget, plan when you're planting, and when you're harvesting, be friendly with the townspeople, not overexert yourself (or you faint and lose a week of game to recover in the hospital).

And you never win the game. It just keeps going and going and going.

At least in my experience it never ends. I had a file until recently that was into year five in the game, my character was married, had a kid, was running a good farm. And then my file disappeared. 

It made me so sad, and when I told my friends that play Harvest Moon, they had a  look of horror on their faces. When I told the ones who didn't play, they told me it sucked that I'd lost the file, but just play it again.

But it takes an emotional toll on you, you build a life in the game, and make a family, and then... BAM! it's gone.

Which sounds silly to a lot of people, I know, it's just a game. 

But now I get to restart my game life tonight, and build it back up. Because no matter how many times I lose my files, I will keep on playing Harvest Moon.