Harvest Days Demo Gameplay Preview

The demo for Harvest Days showed the beginnings of a pretty competent farming sim. The game follows the general formula of a city person moving to the country side to start a new life. You manage a farm, get to know the locals, and participate in the local festivities.

The farming mechanics are pretty standard fare for farming sims. You have multiple tools such as the rake, hoe, watering can, and etc. that you use to grow and harvest your crops. Your farm starts out dilapidated and is in a state of great disrepair. You need to remove the weeds covering the land with the rake, break the ground up with the hoe, and then plant seeds and water them to start growing crops.

You can also use the axe and pickaxe to chop down trees and break down rocks littering your land and to collect resources. At the end of each day, your items and skills level up based on how much you used them.

The farming feels ok. You have a stamina bar that slowly depletes with each action and once fully depleted, you pass out and the day ends automatically. So you need to pick and choose which actions to do for that day. In the beginning of the game, you always have so many things you can be doing and not enough stamina so it does feel a little bit like you are being limited. That should go away once you find ways to replenish your stamina and once you have to juggle the social life aspect of the game.

As for the social sim element of the game, it is a bit on the light side. There are events planned out during certain days where you can go out and interact with the locals. Other times, certain individuals will invite you to visit them or request aid, usually by sending you a letter in your mailbox. The demo was limited to seven in game days so I didn’t get to fully explore this aspect but it seemed like enough was in place to keep the player engaged and provide a nice change of pace from the tedium of farming.

The dialogue and scripting for the events didn’t seem as polished or refined as I would have liked it but considering this is a demo, I can’t say if it’ll get better or not.

Overall, Harvest Days is shaping up to be a pretty ok farming sim. I didn’t see anything outstandingly unique or interesting in the game but it was definitely a competently made game that should keep some farming sim enthusiasts entertained.