Saturday 9 February, 2008

GAMEPLAY

The customizable aspect of the game got a bit more interesting in this session, since I made enough money to start purchase some land and a chicken coop. I probably cared a bit too much about naming chickens, as this managed to stall the game a bit. I managed to establish a method for getting through a given day, though it occasionally got interrupted when new people move in. (I tried to move in a particular circuit so that I kept backtracking to a minimum and was at each building when it opened.)

I realized that I chose relative easy girls to woo (Jamie and Maria), in the sense that I was able to access their preferred gifts without too much trouble. I cheated a bit in that I looked up what they liked, since trial and error is a bit of a pain with this aspect. Apparently, giving someone a present that they dislike but isn’t intrinsically bad is enough for them to immediately become less friendly with you. (This doesn’t, however, stop characters from taking the item anyway and depriving you of a shippable resource.) This was probably intended to add to the challenge of befriending characters, but there are enough characters that it takes a while anyway.

DESIGN

The story in this game is pretty clearly a way to include some extra rewards into the otherwise standard Harvest-Moon-style gameplay. Most musical notes end up appended to some task or event that you would normally participate in anyway, like going to festivals, wooing/befriending eligible singles, and using tools. Apart from collecting notes, the game is mostly built on goals that aren’t exactly required by the game, but are necessary to keep the game interesting. The player doesn’t need to get married, buy all of the property, get fully-upgraded tools, or reach the bottom of the mines, but without doing at least some of these, the game would likely feel boring and pointless.

One thing that disappoints me in this game is the interaction with other characters. The dialogues isn’t particularly varied – the characters only have one line associated with a location, and will spend the rest of the day telling the player “goodbye” after speaking together once. A couple of these lines change whenever the player jumps whenever the friendship goes up a level, but this is gradual enough that it doesn’t really keep the day-to-day interactions from being monotonous. Little of the dialogue expands the character much, particularly when it’s used as an in-game tutorial, which happens relatively frequently.

This is perfectly acceptable, though a little short on the analysis. One thing to consider is that this game, from what you say, sounds a bit repetitive. It might be good to go into if it is repetitive or not, and how the game tries to offset that repetition. But besides that it could stand to be a little longer, this is fine.

Amy Leek (grader)