Japanese rural life adventure It's what it says on the tin: it's a 16-bit style farming sim set in the countryside and is full of genre features: you leave the city to arrive at a broken-down farm that you revitalize yourself as you move forward. meet the townspeople and become part of their community. But this one doesn't feel cramped or cramped on mobile. In fact, it is designed for the medium.
Released on Apple Arcade on September 15, 2023, Japanese rural life adventure isn't developer Game Start's first foray into life simulations or pixel art – the studio is also responsible for Small Island Survival And Little pixel farmboth of which give a nostalgic look.
“When we develop a new game, we try to create images of different worlds using pixel art (e.g. desert island, space, museum, amusement park, etc.),” said the Game Start founder Takeo Fujita in an email interview. . “When we drew 'rural Japan', we thought 'this will surely excite users' and uploaded the image to social media. The answer was beyond our imagination, so we began large-scale development of a game with the theme of “rural Japan”.
And this motif is extremely successful in the game, so much so that I found myself searching for images of a real location that evokes the city in the game. It's hilly and filled with relics of the past, like abandoned shrines and overgrown stone walls, and I can almost smell the petrichor of misty mornings on the mountainside. But according to Fujita, finding a place like this in real life is not an easy task.
“There is no electricity or gas infrastructure, and water comes from wells and rivers. It can be difficult to find a place like this in modern-day Japan,” Fujita said, clarifying that despite the rural nature of Japan, the game is set in modern times. “An old folk house deep in the mountains, quietly left behind by the tide of modernity. This is the setting of the game.”
Your goal in the game is not to bring more modernity, but simply to make the place more livable for you and the other people living there. You will set up a sanctuary in which you can worship every day. You'll remove scratches and dirt from a grumpy neighbor's old car. You will work on your farm, growing food to cook and feed your various pets.
The game includes the expected elements, like energy that decreases as you complete tasks and gifts that improve your relationship with others. But that's not what gameplay is about. The motivation to keep playing lies in opening up new areas of the map – including the Mystic Realm that was just added in the game's October 17 update – and celebrating so many cultural moments as possible, some of which take up the better part of a moment. -year of play to prepare.
These cultural elements — such as recipes and gosekku — highlight old and new, religious and secular traditions. For example, in the spring you will participate in ohanamiwhich simply means admiring the blooming flowers. In the winter, you'll do the “big clean,” where you wash your house in preparation for the new year.
“We have also selected a balanced selection of traditional Japanese events that take place in each period: spring, summer, autumn and winter. We also wanted players to experience “Japanese cuisine,” so we developed a cooking mini-game,” Fujita said.
Image: GameStart/Apple
The cooking mini-game is a blast to play and fills the entire screen so you don't have to squint to click on the right pan or bowl. Each mini-game is well thought out, including fishing, optimized for touchscreens with a Tap-to-Reel mechanic.
Overall, the game is a stripped-down version of a farming sim, but that doesn't mean it lacks depth – it just means that instead of 28 days a month, there are two, and instead of endless missions, there are pointed quests. that arise as you progress.
The daily quests could use a bit of work though. You can collect one every 24 hours in real time, but there is no mechanism that reminds you to do them, nor any notification that you have failed when the time is up. However, the game doesn't really need these daily quests, since you can spend anywhere from two minutes to several hours playing. Japanese rural life adventure.
The October 17 update, which immerses players in a “mysterious world where spirits live,” is not the last one planned by Game Start.
“This year, and even next year, we will add new spaces where you can discover Japanese culture and which are represented in pixel art. We would also like to add as many player requests as possible,” Fujita said.
So if you're looking for a mobile-friendly farming sim (i.e. portrait and landscape modes, commuters) that you can play for weeks, Japanese rural life adventure will not disappoint. I've been following my farm on and off throughout the past year since the game's release and I'm not short of new discoveries.
Japanese rural life adventure was released on September 15, 2023 on iOS and Mac. The game was tested on an iPhone using an Apple Arcade subscription provided by Apple. Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These do not influence editorial content, although Vox Media may earn commissions for products purchased through affiliate links. You can find additional information on Polygon's ethics policy here.
