Farming and life sims have certainly grown in popularity over the years, largely thanks to the success of games like Stardew Valley and Animal Crossing, but once upon a time, Harvest Moon and its action offshoot, Rune Factory, ruled the farming and life sim space. It doesn’t help that the developer has run into branding issues, where what used to be Harvest Moon is now Story of Seasons, but despite the genre’s growing popularity, it feels like Story of Seasons, as well as Rune Factory, have grown rather stale, with the developer, Marvelous, relying on remasters of older and better games to keep the brands alive and kicking.
Historically, one of the best Rune Factory titles is considered to be the fourth entry, and that was directed by Shinichi Manabe, who was also the lead programmer for the third title (which is also really solid), and he has opened a fresh Kickstarter campaign for a game he is making alongside a handful of Rune Factory veterans, called Farnia Village, and the campaign has already blown past its goal in less than 24-hours. Clearly, fans are hyped for a Rune Factory 4 successor free from Marvelous and its mismanagement of the series, and so far, what has been shown looks pretty dang promising.
Farnia Village could be the Rune Factory successor everyone has been hoping for
Short trailer showing gameplay (Source: ManaGames)
If you’d like to see how Farnia Village’s development is shaping up, a slew of trailers have landed on YouTube, including the short English trailer above. As you can see, so far, Farnia Village looks the part, leaning on many of the Rune Factory mechanics fans are familiar with, such as farming and fishing, not to mention the series’ signature combat. You can also find a few character trailers on the Farnia Village channel, pointing towards the game’s dating mechanics.
Much like the series Farnia Village is based on, your character will wake up with amnesia, allowing the game’s mechanics to be introduced to the player as they work their way through the story. Beyond the familiar core loop, players can also expect plenty of festivals to celebrate, monsters to catch, and crafting for weapons as well as food. So no matter how you slice it, Farnia Village isn’t being shy about leaning on the very mechanics that ensured Rune Factory 4’s success.
Screenshots of Farnia Village (Source: ManaGames)
While we don’t know when the game will launch since it is still very much a work in progress, we do know that PC is the target platform, with the title already listed on Steam (for those of you eager to add it to your wishlist), though it sounds like console ports are being considered as stretch goals. So far, funding has reached the first goal, and if the remaining goals are met, features like extra characters and dungeons will be added to the game. What’s really nice is that the developer, ManaGames, is aiming for Farnia Village to run comfortably on hardware comparable to the Nintendo Switch, which should ideally mean PC performance won’t be too demanding.
Farming and combat GIFs (Source: ManaGames)
At the end of the day, there have certainly been plenty of Kickstarter-funded games that have failed to live up to expectations, like Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night and Mighty No. 9, where the lead developers of famous titles didn’t manage to recapture the original’s magic, there is no doubt that Rune Factory 4 holds a special place in a lot of people’s hearts, so if Shinichi Manabe can manage to tap into what made the original so great with the release of Farnia Village, success is all but guaranteed.
