Check it out
Look what we got through the post today - a pop-up desk garden. We think this probably wins the award for the most random thing we've had through the post, beating the (fake) severed finger from a few years ago.
As both Harvest Moon: Grand Bazaar and Rune Factory 3 release at the end of the month - with this year being Harvest Moon's fifteenth anniversary, and having recently broken the million sales barrier - Natsume/Marvellous Interactive/Rising Star Games have plenty to celebrate - and they've chose to do it by sending us a PostCarden, a little pop-up cress farm. Over the next ten days or so, we'll be letting you know how our little garden is going - along with the various adventures associated with it.
For those of you who don't know, Harvest Moon and Rune Factory make up a rather unique genre of farming/life simulation games - you play as a person who's trying to make a life for themselves by farming various crops and looking after animals. And when you're not busy farming, you'll be run off your feet socialising with the various villagers and helping them out, whilst looking for a spouse to eventually start a family with. While Harvest Moon is solely about farming and making friends, Rune Factory likes to mix it up a bit by adding a sort of role-playing game element - there are also dungeons to explore and monsters to fight alongside your farming.
Part One, In the PostCarden...
After unpacking and assembling our PostCarden, we decided it looked rather boring and white, so gave it a lick of felt-tip pens. Due to my limited selection of felt pens, and the laminated nature of the cardboard, the colouring in didn't go toooo well and smudged a fair bit - in the end, I decided to cut my losses and run with my half coloured in farm...
As you can see, today is a nice sunny day, so we expect our cress should do ok germinating and stuff
Meet Maxwell. He's always dreamed of being a farmer - and now he has the chance to, taking over the abandoned Dappeldown Farm, in the quiet town of Window Ledge. He may be too tall to fit in the shed, have a very pink ear and hands that don't match, but hopefully we can trust him to raise our cress seeds for us.
He's as tall as the sun!
Meanwhile, On Rune Factory 3...
Today was the 'Catch the Most Fish Contest' - so after harvesting my eight Cabbages, five Toyherbs and two Pink Turnips (which earnt me 5140G), I headed down to the beach to catch myself loads of fish. From about 10AM, I was slaving away catching as many fish as I could, hopefully dangling my fishing rod into the water, patiently watching the fish nibble at it until one took the plunge and hung on - where I'd need to press the button as quick as I could to yank them out of the water. By about 5PM, I had a decent hoard of two Boots, three Needlefish, three Cherry Salmon, two Masu Trouts, two Squid, a Gibelio and a Rare Can - so a total of eleven fish, which sounded like a decent haul to me.
So I trotted off to go and see the Mayor and flaunt my fish , who signed me up for the contest, and told me the deadline for handing in your fish was 6PM. As it was 5:30, I thought I better kick the show off then - so I had a chat to him, and he started to announce the winners. In first place was Sherman, with eighteen; second was Daria with twelve; and third was Sakuya with eight - hang on, I thought, I got eleven fish? Why am I not third? Then it occurred to me. I probably should have registered for the contest this morning, rather than a few minutes before the deadline - because in that short time frame, I didn't catch anything. D'oh.
Carlos' arms are about as wide as my person...
Returning to my tree house, I had a quick peek in my post box, and had a request from Carlos, asking me to come and see him to collect my welcome present - my failure at the fishing contest forgotten, I trundled off to see him. Talking to him, he gave me a Protein Boost, because he says fishing is "extreme" and I need muscles like his to get anywhere. But if I had muscles like him, how could I wear my character's strange frilly sleeve/glove things? Or would I just need a bigger size? What hadn't occurred to me at the time, was maybe he was rubbing in the fact I'd come last, without handing any fish in, in the 'Catch the Most Fish Contest' - the swine.
Then I decided it was probably time to head off home to bed, seeing as I needed to be up at 6AM the following morning - so I lobbed all my caught fish and boots into the shipping bin as I went past (every little helps!), and headed off to bed.
