Harvest Moon: One World review – a farming game that's gone to seed

Nintendo Switch; Natsume
This new iteration of the escape-to-the-country fantasy replaces all that was charming about earlier versions with an average adventure game

Before Farmville, before Stardew Valley, there was Harvest Moon - a Japanese farming game dating to 1996, when tending virtual crops and cows was new to video games. Created by Yasuhiro Wada, who wanted to convey the goodness of rural life, Harvest Moon has for most of this time been a straightforward escape-to-the-country fantasy about building up an abandoned farmstead and making a life in a nearby village. As vegetables grew, animals matured and friendships developed, you'd get sucked into the game's predictable seasonal rhythms and gentle busywork. Since 2014, however, Harvest Moon has been in the hands of new developers, and let's just say that changes have been made.

In One World, you do not move to a dilapidated farm; you pack up and explore a small continent of boring branching pathways that take a long time to walk down, and the occasional desert village or fishing town. Instead of building a tiny agricultural empire, you take a pop-up farm with you wherever you go, like a campsite. Different crops grow in different places, which could be interesting, but there's no variation in how you look after them. In place of a village full of characters, we have cardboard cut-outs who do nothing but give you random tasks (bring me three sweetcorn).