Harvest Moon: Island Of Happiness

They’ve been making Harvest Moon games for over ten years now and for most of that time the world’s premier farming simulator has been as popular in the UK as genetically modified beef at a vegan convention. What was the only one to buck the trend and actually become a sizable hit? Why, Harvest Moon DS of course – the worst game in the series’ otherwise illustrious history.

The main problem with Harvest Moon DS was that it was a thinly veiled port of Friends Of Mineral Town on the GBA. Island Of Happiness, on the other hand, is a proper DS game, although it originally came out in Japan in February 2007 – so it’s been superseded by another two portable sequels already.

That probably explains why the use of the touch-screen is so awkward, because although you’re meant to control everything with only the stylus, it never feels anything like as slick or accurate as Animal Crossing. Actually doing anything seems to take one or two stabs of the stylus more than it should do, as you keep picking up rocks you were meant to be smashing or accidentally select the wrong tool. It’s not all bad by any means, though, and if you can put up with the low-rent presentation and mediocre graphics this is actually one of the most content-stuffed versions of the game so far.

If you’ve never played a Harvest Moon game before, the premise is as simple as it is unappelaing. You start the game as the owner of a derelict farm (in this instance you’ve been shipwrecked on the titular Island Of Happiness, which has got to beat the neighbouring Island Of Death) and you’re given no more specific a goal than getting rich off the fat of a land and tying the knot with a willing farm gal or guy (you can choose your own gender). Harvest Moon’s open-ended goals and non-violent gameplay were always well ahead of their time, but the problem has always been one of repetitiveness. Sowing some seeds and keeping them watered all seems terribly productive and rewarding the first few times, until you realise you have to keep doing the same old thing year in, year out in order to be able to afford a slightly better hoe.

Another evergreen problem is that it takes so long to actually do anything useful at the beginning of the game. Although you can eventually get better tools and automate some jobs, at the start you’ll be fainting from overwork after just a minute or two of planting seeds and moving small logs. Either your farmer has got narcolepsy or their level of fitness is somewhere behind Rik Waller and Jabba the Hutt.

If you stick with it, though, gradually more and more of the island opens up to you, more people move in and you’re able to branch out with new crops, as well as owning cows, chickens, horses and a pet dog (there’s no pig farming). You can also increase the size and salubriousness of your farmhouse, go mining for gems in the nearby mountain, enter a vegetable growing contest, enjoy a spot of fishing for fun and profit or learn to cook.

Or you can concentrate your efforts on wooing your bride/groom-to-be and maybe rearing some kids (despite the fact that you seem to be barely out of primary school yourself). If only the controls weren’t such an ill-designed mess, this would be a very easy game to recommend. As it is, the ten-yearlong wait for the definitive Harvest Moon continues.