STORY OF SEASONS SKIN

Most of your stamina will be consumed initially by preparing and clearing your messy farm and tending to your seedlings. Managing both of these is a big part of the game as you want to make as much money as you can but if you overdo it you’ll pay the price, requiring you to plan each day if you have a goal in mind. You can restore both by bathing in the hot spring, eating food or going to sleep in your bed before it gets too late. You build fatigue (shown by different emoji icons) if you use tools when your stamina is zero, as well as when you work outside late at night or in poor weather (even if your stamina isn’t zero). Your stamina is indicated by little fruit icons and goes down when you use tools. Unlike some farming games that have an all-in-one measure of stamina, in SoS: FOMT you have both stamina and fatigue.

STORY OF SEASONS SKIN

You can choose from two male and two female avatars, two original and two that are new to the remaster, along with three skin tone options. As a part of the remaster there is also an increased amount of character customisation. The game contains a simple mode for beginners (start with a lot of gold, items sell for more, easier to raise affection with people, start with 18 turnips in the field) and normal mode (offers a satisfying challenge with none of the benefits of simple mode), which is what I chose. When you start your game initially you have a few choices to make. With that you give the farm a name, and have a quick rest before your first proper day of farming. You rock up to your abandoned new digs and meet Mayor Thomas in his gravity-defying top hat who checks that you want to take over the farm. Twenty years later (even though you don’t look it) he has passed away and left you his farm in Mineral Town in the countryside.

The story setup is fairly simple, starting with a flashback told through photographs to a summer spent on your grandfather’s farm. I was super excited to hear that Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town, now Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town (SoS: FoMT), was getting remastered as it would give me an opportunity to go back to the early days of farming sims and dig into my nostalgia. Stardew Valley changed all that and had me hungry for almost all new farming sims after that. The number of games I would get in a year growing up was limited, and usually lent towards whatever Pokémon, Mario and/or Legend of Zelda were coming to handhelds that year. I adored that game and its little pink-haired female character, but even though I loved the title it would be a long time before I picked up another farming sim. My first ever farming game was Harvest Moon 2 on the Game Boy Colour.

Story of seasons