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![]() ![]() ![]() Watering plants is as straightforward as a single tap, and most other tasks involve either foraging or buying the right items, but what it has a lot of is heart. Often, Japanese Rural Life Adventure doesn’t feature a lot of mechanical sophistication. The fact I won a young koi fish to release in the pond in front of my house was a bonus. This task consumed a few hours of my time, but the reward was a beautiful night time celebration that felt like a culmination of everything I had done up to that point. It was also up to me to produce the 21 chochin lanterns needed to light everything. Before I could even start preparing for the event, I first had to repair and repaint the torii gates of the temple where the town planned to hold the festival. The project culminates in a summer festival that requires a significant investment from the player, both in terms of time and money spent. More rewarding was seeing the results of my efforts. The village head compensates the player for completing the tasks he assigns to them, but I found the money I earned was often only enough to cover the costs of the next repair I needed to complete. Take the restoration project I mentioned earlier. It’s also that focus that makes the game feel fresh and compelling. However, in orienting almost all of the player’s actions towards the betterment of its unnamed town, Japanese Rural Life Adventure puts community front and center in a way I hadn’t seen in the genre before. After all, it’s safe to say part of the reason why so many people love Stardew Valley is because of Pelican Town and all the weird and wonderful characters that inhabit it. To some extent, all games like Japanese Rural Life Adventure share an interest in community. So we adopted ‘village regeneration’ as one of the themes of the game.” "‘Growth’ and ‘development’ are elements that can make a game attractive to prospective players. We believe that games should be something you can enjoy and forget about everyday life,” he said. “When developing games, we do not consider difficult themes such as vanishing rural communities or population aging. A 2019 Bloomberg article, citing data from the Japan Policy Council, frames the stakes succinctly: “If current trends continue, by 2040, 869 municipalities – nearly half of Japan’s total – will be at risk of vanishing.”įujita says GAME START didn’t set out to create a game about the plight of his country’s towns and villages. In Japan, declining birth rates and one of the world’s oldest populations threaten to erase rural life as the country knows it. I didn’t expect this from Japanese Rural Life Adventure. After exploring it for a bit, I meet the village head, who tasks my character with restoring the decaying roads and buildings, including a Buddist temple and schoolhouse, all in hopes of bringing tourists who will help revitalize the local economy. It’s one step removed from becoming a ghost town.Īs it turns out, this town is the heart of Japanese Rural Life Adventure. The town is in a sorry state when you first visit. After completing a few of the game’s early objectives, including the partial restoration of a local Shinto shrine, the nearby town unlocks. Before I could buy seeds to grow my first batch of cucumbers and daikon radishes, I first had to build a bench for an old peddler lady to sit and rest. More often than not, advancing the plot or opening a new section of the game involves helping others. What I didn’t expect to find was a heartwarming experience about the importance of community.Īt first, Japanese Rural Life Adventure limits players to the small area around their farm. ![]() The game features a beautiful pixel art style, and a pastoral setting evocative of anime classics like Only Yesterday and Wolf Children. I took one look at Japanese Rural Life Adventure and knew I had to play it. I discovered this gem through an X account that tweets about upcoming indie games. Instead, my bedside companion is a small Apple Arcade exclusive called Japanese Rural Life Adventure. Now, during one of the most stacked years in recent gaming history, I find myself under the covers not with Starfield, Spider-Man 2 or any of the other big fall releases. When I was sick with COVID for the first time, I jumped into Red Dead Redemption 2 blind, and found a story about sickness and human mortality. In 2009 I played through all of Assassin’s Creed II in a feverish, swine flu-induced haze. Whenever an illness has forced me to stay in bed, my comfort food has been gaming. For the third time in less than two years, I have COVID-19. ![]()
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