Japanese magazine Nintendo Dream has published a new interview with the developers of Story Of Seasons: Pioneers Of Olive Town, discussing some new details and interesting trivia about the title.

The interview was published to commemorate the 25th Anniversary of the Bokujou Monogatari series, known as “Harvest Moon” and later “Story Of Seasons” in the west. During the interview, Director Hikaru Nakano, Assistant Director Rika Hoshina, and Producer Dai Takemura shared some behind-the-scenes details about the game’s development, including the origin of the game’s pioneering concept and other interesting features.

You can read a summary of the key highlights below, translated via Fogu:

• Planning for Pioneers of Olive Town started in early 2018, and was developed to be released or the series’ 25th anniversary.
• With the theme of pioneering, they wanted it to feel as though the player is building their farm from scratch. That said, the original concept art (seen above) felt “too overwhelming and dark”.
• Moving from development on 3DS (Trio of Towns) to the Switch allowed them to expand the things they could do, such as adding vast areas of forest. They wanted the player to choose how they wanted to play, whether mining, fishing, or talking to the villagers and expanding their community.
• The game focuses on farming and nature. Like Island of Happiness in its development of the island, this game’s subject is the development of the farm.
  • For example, if you didn’t go to the mountain in previous games of the series, you couldn’t collect ore. In this game, players can do all of those activities within their farm area. The farm is intended to change more than the town will.
• They’ve added some new details, such as the farm’s ground will get muddy when it rains, and if there are too many puddles, the area will become swampy. So the solution is to clear the water with a bucket but make it easy enough that players don’t have to spend all day trying to clear out water from ponds.
  • The treasures found from the ponds are documented in an in-game picture book and exhibited at the museum.
• The camera will let players see a distinct viewpoint that hasn’t been included in a Story of Seasons game. There may be some secrets that players can only see by using the camera.
• There are now maker machines to craft lumber and material stone. They felt it was more rewarding to craft materials rather than buy them.
• The interviewer asked about the addition of perfume, dyes, and bouquets at the flower shop and other feminine elements in the game. It was mentioned that many women worked on the development of PoOT, who shared their opinions regarding such things as dyes and lining up furniture, which is naturally reflected in the game.
• There are no Harvest Goddess or magical Witch characters from previous games, as they wanted to have all-new characters.
• The developers made it a bit easier to get animals and high-level tools in the first season, as they were concerned that if players didn’t do well in their first season, it made it difficult to move forward. They wanted players to have fun cultivating their farm; even cutting down weeds is easy work. Players can even collect items from cutting weeds.
  • Other features to make it easier were adding the number of water units remaining in the watering can and a map that shows the villagers’ current location in town.
• Adding marriage candidates also took a bit of testing, but the developers hope that fans will enjoy the additions. Some elements aren’t typically included in a standard Story of Seasons story line but can be added via the expansion pass.
  • The characters added with the expansion pass are not in order of popularity.

Story Of Seasons: Pioneers Of Olive Town launches 25th February for Japan, and on 23rd March for the West.

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