New details about Harvest Moon: Skytree Village have emerged from the game’s playable demo at E3. Read up on some information below, courtesy of Nintendo Life.
– Town has been in a downward spiral of sorts lately
– It was previously green and thriving, but it’s now taken on a somber tone
– The town has experienced an extended drought
– Ever-waning presence of the Harvest Goddess
– Play as a plucky local farmer
– Play as a male or female
– Restore the town’s seven Skytrees
– Bring back the Harvest Goddess through a combination of diligent farming, attentive animal husbandry, and item-based courtship
– Engine/style similar to The Lost Valley
– Terraforming your farm returns
– Natsume listened to feedback with the previous game
– Moved away from chibi character models
– Character models are conventionally proportioned
– Uses 3D character models instead of character portraits in dialogue scenes
– Terraforming now significantly faster and easier
– Can now work with more than one cube of earth at a time
– Hold down the ‘A’ button and the selection cursor will grow from one square, to three, to six, to nine, depending on how long you keep it held
– After choosing a size, you can move that selection as you like, and act on all selected tiles at once, either raising the earth or digging them down as a group
– The adjustable selection is also used for all your other tools in Skytree Village
– Tilling, planting, watering, and harvesting all benefit from the efficiency boost
– Expand the selection range as you upgrade your tools
– 2 new views
– There’s the standard 3rd-person free-camera perspective from The Lost Valley
– Also a faux-2D overhead view and a locked-in ‘Farming mode’
– Farming mode: variant of the overhead angle where your farmer will hold her stance and let you strafe along to water, till, or plant in tidy rows
– Press ‘Start’ to cycle through the three views
– At least six bachelors and bachelorettes
– Melanie: red-headed, hot-headed tsundere tailor
– She will turn your fur into fabric
– Jeanne: green-haired, bespectacled herbal doctor who’s brilliant and talented in her trade, but not very confident interacting with farmers of the opposite sex
– Elise: an outgoing blonde chef from out of town who’s written with a French accent
– Dean: buff florist; has a combo of tulip apron and boundless horticultural enthusiasm
– Gabriel: gentle, kindly livestock salesman who’s more at ease with animals than people
– Cyril: ponytailed aristocrat from far off lands who’s visiting Skytree Village as part of his grand tour
