Everyone has their guilty pleasures; for some it’s a type food that’s bad for you, or a cheesy romance paperback. As gamers, we all have games that we secretly have love affairs with that we’d sometimes rather not let on about. Whether it’s a game that you shouldn’t like based on some demographic stereotype, or is just plain horrible for other reasons, we enjoy the time we spend with it anyway, even if it would raise the eyebrows of our fellow gamers. For this writer, who loves his complex and deep role playing games and fast paced shooters, one of my  guilty pleasures is Harvest Moon.

Harvest Moon was released in 1997 for the SNES. In it you play as a farmer on a struggling ranch. Gameplay consists largely of performing daily chores that are necessary for running a farm, such as watering crops, collecting eggs, feeding livestock, and milking the cows. A year is divided into four thirty-day seasons in which the player is to do their best to improve the farm, make money, and lead a “happy” life. At the end of the third summer the player is evaluated on how they did and given one of many endings based on their evaluation score.

Aside from the basics of raising crops and livestock, players find a variety of activities to do in the surrounding town and forest. The town consists of a few shops to buy farming supplies in, and a bar the player can visit at night. In the town, the player can attempt to marry one of five town girls and later have a child. The player will have to visit the town at minimum to get farming supplies, and while the marriage aspect is purely optional (a special ending is actually given for raising all of the girls affection ratings to maximum without marrying any), it raises the players overall score and unlocks a complete separate ending tree. The town is also the focal point for various festivals throughout the year, and while you are not required to attend these, doing so raises the players overall score. The forest and mountain are where the player goes to gather wood to upgrade their house, and additional various special events take place here that allow the player to upgrade their tools or raise their score.

Harvest Moon best fits into the simulation genre – more like a personal version of SimFarm, since you control the actual rancher instead of a more ‘god game’ overhead view. The game was targeted mostly toward a female demographic, much like The Sims, but due to the oddity of its base gameplay, it was picked up by other gamers looking for a unique experience.

As a connoisseur of deep role playing games that ‘make you think,’ this normally wouldn’t be something that would appeal to me; the FPS gamer in me should think it’s ‘too girly,’ and I’ve generally steered clear of games that have a lot of grinding to them. Everything about this game, from its simplistic nature to the grind of daily chores  screams “don’t play this!” to me.

Yet, I played it. Worse yet, I liked it enough to play and purchase both the original SNES version and the N64 sequel. Despite the game’s nature, I have an affinity for any game where you start out with essentially nothing and are given the task of building something from it. With a set of tools and an overgrown ranch in disrepair, the game leaves the rest up to you.

There’s something to be said about building your life outside of the ranch too. It’s the same basic grind, but instead of tending to crops you tend to your relationships with the townsfolk. In the earlier games this just meant marriage to a particular girl, but in the later ones you could get special items or other bonuses from befriending the rest of the townsfolk.

The series is currently ongoing, with the most recent release being on the Wii, as well as a fantasy themed spinoff that incorporates combat. Overall, I think the best release was the N64 version; the later games, while getting a more flowery art style, try to do way too much at once, which I think detracts from what the core gameplay was in the original releases. When there’s too many things to do the player finds themselves more and more on a race with the clock to fit everything in one day rather than trying to accomplish a planned number of tasks each day to advance.

While I’ve spent many hours playing all of the games, my best memories are of the times I spent playing the N64 version. It seemed to strike a good balance between extra activities and not feeling like there was too much to do in a single day. My favorite part was that the time limit was removed – players their first time around in one of these games will find it difficult to properly create a plan to utilize all of their resources and time to properly do everything needed to achieve the highest score. While a player would get an evaluation at the end of two and a half years, the game would continue going so players could keep improving their ranch and raising their family.

Despite how it may look on the surface, I feel that Harvest Moon has an inner appeal that almost any gamer could come to enjoy. Even if you don’t have an SNES and a desire to find the semi-rare cartridge, it’s available on the Wii Virtual Console for 800 points, a small price to pay for a bit of country living, even if it is done in complete privacy without ever telling your friends.