Check it out
A few days ago, the nice folks over at Rising Star Games sent over a rather unique goodie - a pop-up desktop garden, to celebrate the upcoming launch of their farming-come-life-simulators, Harvest Moon: Grand Bazaar, and Rune Factory 3, which both launch at the end of the month. While it certainly wins the award for the most random thing we've ever had through the post, (beating the (fake) severed finger from a few years ago) we decided to try our hands at farming in real life, running a diary of our progress with the desktop PostCarden (do you see what they did there?), and a diary of our time with the upcoming Rune Factory 3, to give you a bit of a better idea of what it's like to actually play the game..
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.
Don't forget to check out Part One and Part Two here!
Part Three, In the PostCarden...
We think Maxwell fancies himself as a Professor Layton-alike in that top hat - he keeps setting us puzzles. Earlier, he asked me one of those split the piece of land so four people all have an equal share, each with a well, house and a pond in, puzzles. I told him where to stick it - I hate those sorts of puzzles. And he keeps announcing that everything he does is "another puzzle solved".
As you can see, over the weekend the cress has gone mental, growing as high as Maxwell's waist and completely obscuring the wheelbarrow, table and smudged fence. Considering it was a very dry weekend (seeing as we'd gone on a trip to a farm for Harvest Moon, so didn't water it), it seems to have shot up - maybe cress doesn't need that much water after all...
The shed's going to be swallowed up by GIANT CRESS by the end of the week at this rate...
Meanwhile, on Rune Factory 3...
Checking the bulletin board this morning, we found a request from Pia, entitled 'Help Me', saying "I have questions for those who use the bath" - she's part mermaid and runs the local bath house. So off we trotted to meet her, where she explained we'd be taking part in a census - the bath census.
The first question was whether I preferred the water to be hot or cold, or somewhere in-between - I chose 'hot', like me, and Pia seemed to agree, coming back with a "Smmmooookin'! Somebody stop you!". Then I was asked what my favourite colour of water was - I chose 'rainbow colour', much to Pia's annoyance; "What!? Now you're just making up colours, buddy!". My pitiful excuse was that it was down as one of the options, although Pia had an answer for that too, saying it was a "Clerical error. I blame the gnomes! They're not very skilled copy editors..." I think I redeemed myself with the third and final question though, where I was asked how I like the water to feel on the skin - crunchy, of course - at which Pia proclaimed "You've got great taste in water texture! That's my favourite, too!". For my time, I got an 'I VOTED' sticker and a special prize from the Bath Census Bureau, a glass of grape juice.
I wish I had a shoulder monkey...
With a bath census under my belt by midday, I decided I could do with a new look, and headed over to Evelyn's clothes shop, where I had a choice between a green version of my usual outfit, and a pair of swimming trunks. Seeing as I was rolling in gold from killing I'd made on the lucrative cabbage market, I decided to treat myself and bought both, promptly changing into the red swimming shorts. Heading back to my tree house, I decided to spend the rest of the afternoon de-weeding one of my fields, pulling up the various different coloured grasses, bamboo shoots and branches - lobbing them all in the shipping bin to sell, of course.
For the rest of the Rune Factor 3/PostCarden diary, why not read the first and second instalments. As the cress keeps growing, so too will our stories - so make sure you check back for more!
