If you were given the choice to go back in time and choose a different lifestyle, would you? Harvest Town tells the story of your character who has grown old and tired after living a life in the city. You are then given the chance to travel back in time and relive your life on your childhood town. Harvest Town is a relaxing RPG farming adventure game where you grow crops and restore your manor to its former glory.
Harvest Town was published by AVIDGAMERS and is available on both iOS and Android devices.
The story of Harvest Town follows the same trend of characters moving to the countryside as you see in other games like Stardew Valley or Story of Seasons. However, Harvest town adds in a mix of time travel as your character is given the chance to stay in their hometown instead of moving into the city. The player must then restore their manor and live out their life to the fullest.
In the beginning, you are teleported back in time and decide to fix up your rundown manor. This manor serves as your main goal throughout the game. By upgrading the manor, you are able to unlock many new features, decorations, and more activities to do within the game. Harvest Town allows you to play at your own pace without setting any time limit for you to complete the quests. You can choose how to best spend your time whether it is harvesting your crops or fishing in the river of the town. There are also main quests and additional side content to keep you busy.
Like farming games? Check out our review on Story of Seasons: Pioneer of Olive Town
The map of the town is also pretty spacious, but is rather confusing at first. The auto-move feature of the game is an essential part of the game and will save you a lot of time when you need to figure out where to out for a quest.
A main feature of the game is the ability to decorate your land. By adding decorations or putting buildings on your land, you can gain prosperity for your manor. Buildings require materials that you can find throughout the land to be crafted at the carpenter’s shop. These building structures are often used to create products from your crops or animals. There are also decorative structures that you can put on your farm for extra buffs like reduced production time or doubling the number of items you receive.
To buy a majority of the items or decorations, you will have to use coins or the premium currency diamonds. Diamonds are more difficult to obtain, but there hasn’t been a need for me to obtain them as you can do a huge chunk of the gameplay without it. You can obtain diamonds by buying them with money, logging in the game, or completing quests and achievements.
The Citizens of Harvest Town
Throughout the game, you are able to interact with a variety of different characters. There are over 40 characters you can befriend, and even marry once you get their fondness level up. All of the characters have their own schedules and preferences that you will need to learn if you wish to befriend them. They all have interesting stories that make talking to each one of them a treat! For example, there is Bill who was born with superpowers, but lacks common knowledge, and Ella who is in charge of her household after her mother passes away. By befriending the characters you will eventually unlock new events, rewards, and even get the occasional gift from them! The game currently has 7 bachelors and 8 bachelorettes you can potentially marry.
Skills
To process throughout the game you must unlock new skills and improve them. The game currently has 8 skills: logging, mining, fishing, farming, breeding, pickup, cooking, and battle. Many of these skills require you to obtain their respective items such as the fishing rod. By using your skills, you use up energy called vitality. This energy system is displayed with the green hud on the left top corner of the game. Once you run out of vitality you won’t be able to use any more skills. However, it is possible to restore it by drinking a vitality drink. There is also a red hud underneath the vitality bar which displays your current health. This hud will be important when you are battling monsters you find throughout the town. There is plenty to do in Harvest Town and you can enjoy it all in any order.
The farming aspect of the game is pretty simple and follows the same formula as other farming simulation games. Each season you can grow different crops and even their quality by raising your farming skill.
Tip: One of the easiest way skills to level up is the pickup, which doesn’t require any vitality to be used. you can often find berries on the ground that can be picked up throughout the entire town.
Ads
Throughout the game, you will find the chance to watch ads to gain additional rewards within the game. This aspect of the game didn’t lower my enjoyment as most of the ads are optional and reward you with more items. You can even watch an ad to raise your fondness with a character! The game also offers many different bundles and items that will be displayed for you to buy in the shop.
What I Liked
What stood out to me the most while playing Harvest Town was the pixel environment of the game. The town has amazing architecture and the designs of the buildings are unique and vivid. I had a blast exploring the town and getting to meet all the characters within the game. The mechanics are also pretty simple and easy to understand.
Each of the characters are also done well written and bring the town to live. Each of the marriage candidates felt unique and none of them felt redundant or boring.
For a free mobile game, Harvest town offers a relaxing and stress-free atmosphere as you are free to live out your days as a farmer and do your tasks at your own pace. There is no timer to get things done, and with the game easily available on your phone, you can access the game from anywhere at any time.
What I Didn’t Like
At the start of the game, the controls were hard to get used to as everything was touch screen and there was no joystick. To move your character, you would have to click on an area and they would automatically move there. This way of moving your character felt unnatural and clunky. It wasn’t until a couple of hours in that I found that that there were several options that you can play the game, either with the touch screen or with a joystick that will appear on the screen. To avoid frustration with the controls, I would have loved if the developers displayed the option at the start of the game so players can pick how they want to play.
Although the pixel environment looks amazing, some of the sprites for the characters do not blend in with the environment very well. This is most noticeable in your player sprite which you get the chance to customize.
At the start of the game, the pace was also pretty slow. However, as you process throughout the story you begin to unlock more content that will be sure to keep you busy throughout your time in Harvest Town!
Conclusion
Harvest Town is a fun and relaxing farm simulation game as you travel back in time and get to relive your life. It offers fun game mechanics like farming, fishing, crafting, like other farming games, but doesn’t add in anything new. The characters are interesting and add flavor to the town. For the most part, you will be spending most of your town collecting resources and improving your relationship to one day restore your ruined manor.
Gameplay 4/5
This game is perfect for fans of farming games like Stardew Valley. The mechanics are pretty similar with the added bonus of being free to play. From farming to crafting, the game has it all, however, it fails to add in anything new to the farming simulation genre. The game was slow at the beginning, but started to pick up once you unlock the events and skills. The game mechanics were also explained in a simple way that got the point across without it being too long. I also liked the addition of the auto path system that will take your character where they need to go.
Enjoyability 4/5
There is a lot of grinding in the game to collect materials needed to upgrade your buildings or complete quests. This took up a majority of my time in the game as I worked to gather ore and wood, which often caused me to use up a lot of energy. Luckily, the game gives a lot of in-game items that restore energy, but those will often be used up before you know it. Collecting the items was simple enough, but overall didn’t feel as rewarding as it should be. The game is best played at your own pace as rushing the game will burn out the contents of the game pretty quick.
I did enjoy talking to and getting to know the characters in Harvest Town. They all had unique stories that made the town feel more alive. The pixel environment was also expertly designed, but some of the character sprites do look wonky and awkward in their environment, especially your character.
F2P Friendly 4/5
Opportunities to view ads are posted every you look, but they are integrated in a way that rewards the player for clicking on them. Throughout the shops, you will also see the many deals of the day or bundles you can purchase. However, I didn’t feel the need to purchase them to process throughout the game.
Score: 4/5
What are your thoughts on Harvest Town?
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The Informal Gamer 