Adventure in Japanese rural life It's what it says: it's a 16-bit farming simulator that takes place in the countryside and is full of features of the genre: you leave the city to arrive at a ruined farm that you revitalize as you go. Meet the townspeople and become part of their community. But this one doesn't feel tight or let down on mobile. In fact, it is designed for the medium.
Released on Apple Arcade on September 15, 2023. Adventure in Japanese rural life is not developer Game Start's first foray into life simulators or pixel art: the studio is also responsible for Survival on a small island and Little pixel farmwhich nail the nostalgic aspect.
“When we develop a new game, we try to create images of various worlds using pixel art (for example, a desert island, a space, a museum, an amusement park, etc.),” said 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 a 'rural Japan' motif.”
And that motif is very successful in the game, so much so that I found myself searching for images of a real-life location that evoked the city in the game. It's hilly and full of 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 no easy task.
“There is no electricity or gas infrastructure and water is extracted from wells and rivers. It may be difficult to find a place like this in today's Japan,” said Fujita, clarifying that despite its rural nature, the game is set in the present day. “An old popular house deep in the mountains, silently abandoned by the current of modernity. This is the stage of the game.”
However, 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 who live there. You will arrange a shrine where you can worship every day. You'll clean the scratches and dirt off 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, such as energy that decreases as you complete tasks and gifts that increase your relationship with others. But those are not the focus of the game. The motivation to keep playing lies in opening up new areas of the map, including the mystical realm that was just added in the game's October 17 update, and celebrating as many cultural moments as you can, some of which take up the most time. . -Year of play to prepare.
Those cultural elements – such as recipes and gosekku — shed light on traditions old and new, religious and secular. For example, in spring, you will participate in ohanamiwhich simply means admiring the flowers in bloom. In winter, you will do the “big clean,” where you will wash your house in preparation for the new year.
“We also select a balanced selection of traditional Japanese events that are celebrated in each season: spring, summer, autumn and winter. We also wanted players to learn about 'Japanese food,' so we developed a cooking mini-game,” Fujita said.
Image: GameStart/Apple
The cooking mini-game is a joy to play and takes up the entire screen so you don't have to squint to click on the right pot or bowl. Each minigame is well thought out, including fishing, optimized for touch screens with a tap-the-reel mechanic.
Overall, the game is a simplified version of a farming simulator, but that doesn't mean it lacks depth; It simply means that instead of 28 days a month, there are two, and instead of endless missions, there are one-off missions. that emerge as you progress.
However, the daily quests could use some work. You can take one of these every 24 hours in real time, but there's no mechanism to remind you to do so, nor any notification that you've failed when the time is up. Still, the game doesn't really need those daily quests, as you can spend anywhere from two minutes to several hours playing. Adventure in Japanese rural life.
The October 17 update, which throws players into a “mysterious world where spirits live,” is not the last Game Start has planned.
“This year, and even next, we will add new areas where you can experience Japanese culture and which will be represented in pixel art. We would also like to add as many requests as possible from players,” Fujita said.
So if you're looking for a mobile-friendly (i.e. portrait and landscape mode, commuters) farming simulator that you can play for weeks, Adventure in Japanese rural life you won't be disappointed. I've kept up with my farm on and off over the year since the game launched and haven't run out of new discoveries.
Adventure in Japanese rural life was released on September 15, 2023 on iOS and Mac. The game was reviewed 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 on products purchased through affiliate links. you can find Additional information about Polygon's ethics policy here.