After that Micah will make a new festival uniting the Village and Monster Settlement. To do that you need to beat the fourth and final boss, Death Wall. Rune Factory 4 is headed to North America this Summer, and Xseed will be publishing the game.Well, first you need to get the Sharance Blossoms to bloom. The latest game in the series, Rune Factory 4, was released last year in Japan for the Nintendo 3DS. That, he says, got him thinking and naturally became a core component of the storytelling in Rune Factory. Another thing-and perhaps, Hashimoto suggested, this is a Japan-specific situation-the developers would get letters from fans who felt like they could have a conversation with in-game characters and wanted to build a relationship with them. Part of his approach, he says, is trying to do something different. Prior to Rune Factory, Hashimoto made action and fighting games, which were about the setting and who your opponent is. Hashimoto was also asked about how relationships came to be in Rune Factory. As of now, the sales divide is about half-and-half-half of Rune Factory players are existing Harvest Moon fans while the other half are new players. However, he says, once the first game hit shelves, Harvest Moon fans read reviews and found themselves interested in it because there were enough elements to catch their interest. “When we first announced the title I’d say we had new users who were keeping up with the news,” Hashimoto replied when asked who buys Rune Factory games these days. Now, however, the Rune Factory games are played both by existing fans of their parent franchise, Harvest Moon, as well as completely new players. He had just a few allies that understood his plan for the series, which made for an awkward situation. Rune Factory is a consistently successful franchise for Marvelous AQL now, but Hashimoto reveals that when the first Rune Factory was in development, he didn’t have a lot of support. He compared this to the Hobbit village in The Lord of the Rings. Hashimoto says that one of the ideas behind Rune Factory was to make a game where you aren’t from a notable background. Adding bits of real life to an RPG makes it resonate with players. However, going into battle doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll come away with treasure-you’ll still have to raise crops to earn your livelihood. While skilled players can skip this entirely, having the option available makes it easier for more people to clear the Rune Factory games. The equivalent of this in Rune Factory is being able to grow your own crops within dungeons to revitalize yourself. Hashimoto compared this to marathons where runners would get water stations to recharge. However, the road to reaching them lets players take breaks along the way.
On the subject of saving the world, though, while combat isn’t the main focus of the Rune Factory games, the series still has dungeons with bosses in them. If you want to go off and save the world, you can.” In summary: “If you want to live a simple life together, you can. The games are designed to be widely accommodating, and in Rune Factory 4 (3DS), the developers added the option to play as a girl. Once you have a kid, they become part of the story. These are the people you form relationships with, and the Rune Factory games allow you to fall in love with them, get married, and even have children. Your fellow villagers in the Rune Factory games do more than just go about their daily lives, though. Here’s something you may not know-in the world of Rune Factory, tattoo-like symbols are used as a form of sun block, since the characters don’t want themselves getting overly tanned. Hashimoto says he discussed the matter with actual farmers and they agreed with his views. This is why the characters of Rune Factory tend to look fashionable. Since everyone in the village has the same daily grind when it comes to jobs, Hashimoto felt that they would want to stand out despite this. A surprising amount of thought is put into the villagers in these games. Instead of creating simple NPCs, the characters in Rune Factory are designed so that everyone in the village has their own opinions and stories. Like in Harvest Moon, you raise crops to earn your livelihood, and there’s a heavy focus on relationships with the supporting characters in the games. Adventure is not the main theme of the games, and combat is not the main focus. The concept of the Rune Factory series, Hashimoto says, is “living the fantasy life”. At the talk, which Siliconera attended, Hashimoto discussed the Rune Factory games and the thinking behind their design. This morning, at the ongoing Game Developers Conference, Marvelous AQL’s Executive Officer/CCO Yoshifumi Hashimoto, producer of games such as the Harvest Moon and Rune Factory series, gave a talk titled: “RPG Development: Inspiration and Perspiration”.