Harvest Moon: Grand Bazaar PostCarden Diary, Part Four

A few days ago, the nice folks over at Rising Star Games sent over a rather unique goodie - a pop-up desktop garden, to celebrate the upcoming launch of their farming-come-life-simulators, Harvest Moon: Grand Bazaar, and Rune Factory 3, which both launch at the end of the month. While it certainly wins the award for the most random thing we've ever had through the post, (beating the (fake) severed finger from a few years ago) we decided to try our hands at farming in real life, running a diary of our progress with the desktop PostCarden (do you see what they did there?), and a diary of our time with the upcoming Rune Factory 3, to give you a bit of a better idea of what it's like to actually play the game..

For those of you who don't know, Harvest Moon and Rune Factory make up a rather unique genre of farming/life simulation games – you play as a person who's trying to make a life for themselves by farming various crops and looking after animals. And when you're not busy farming, you'll be run off your feet socialising with the various villagers and helping them out, whilst looking for a spouse to eventually start a family with. While Harvest Moon is solely about farming and making friends, Rune Factory likes to mix it up a bit by adding a sort of role-playing game element – there are also dungeons to explore and monsters to fight alongside your farming.

Don't forget to check out Part One, Part 2 and Part 3 here!

Part 4, In the PostCarden...

With Harvest Moon: Grand Bazaar and Rune Factory 3 launching today, we have the forth and final part of our PostCarden Diary – and as you can see, our Maxwell has been rather busy...

For starters, the cress has swallowed up the fence and canes – and it's a good job Maxwell bought that top hat a few days ago, or he'd be being dwarfed by some giant cress. And as the cress is doing so well – and Maxwell has made a killing selling the mushrooms, herbs and random rocks he found wandering around town – that he's decided to branch out from growing cress and get himself a little sheep. Sheep, like Nigel here, are rather good in the world of Harvest Moon, as they can produce wool and milk – although not every single day, unlike the chickens, which can lay eggs and cows produce milk like there's no tomorrow.

Meanwhile, In Rune Factory 3...

Talking of sheep, today was the annual 'Wooly Festival', a rather strange celebration involving a giant 'Wooly' – or sheep, as they're more commonly known outside of Rune Factory. Wells, the mayor of the town, explained that one of the residents, Sherman, had acquired a giant Wooly, who “must be hot and miserable in this heat!” (if he doesn't like it in Harvest Moon, he wouldn't much like the heat here at the moment either - it's sweltering), and it was up to us to help it out by trimming it's wool. Apparently, it's completely safe and doesn't hurt the Wooly – although over the course of the next few minutes, I begin to doubt this more and more...

First, Wells gives me a choice of 'weapons' for dealing with said Wooly – some weapons are faster than others, or some are slower but give you more points per strike:

• Spoon (60 Points)
  
• Dekash (110 Points)
  
• Safety Lance (22 Points)
  
• Toy Hammer (110 Points)
  
• Lollipop (110 Points)
  
• Acutorimass (55 Points)
  

Seeing as I was a bit peckish, and didn't really know what some of the other weapons were, I went for the trusty lollipop. Now I'd chosen my weapon, I needed to run around and hit the Wooly with it to knock off as much fur as I can, scoring points in the process – to hit the Wooly, you just need to press the B button near him. After a while, a smaller 'naked' Wooly appears to help defend the big one by attacking you. I don't know about you, but I'm not sure I want to eat the lollipop anymore...

After I'd done smacking up the sheep (and was feeling rather guilty about having been misled), it was time for the results. In first place was Sofia, with 5880 points; second was Blaise, with 4680 points; and in third place was me, with 4460 points. My prize was three cooking breads, which when eaten, will teach you a random recipe – on top of that, I also managed to scrounge three small fleeces, five medium fleeces and a large fleece that had been knocked off the Wooly.

With the rest of the afternoon to spare, I decide to check the bulletin board to see if any of the villagers needed my help. Sure enough, Marian was looking for some patients to practice on, so, being the ever helpful guinea pig I am, I headed over to The Witch's Cauldron, where I'm told “This new medicine can cure colds, sore eyes, shoulders, backs. Anything. So just bring someone back with you! I don't even care if they have symptoms!”. Right then...

I went round town, and no-one seemed especially keen to be Marian's next victim – and who could blame them, after the whole exploding medicine fiasco with poor Collette, where Marian had got the medicines mixed up. Collette seemed like the fail-safe person to try, as she always seems to get roped into Marian's schemes – and when asked, she tells me that when she had a cold, Marian “made me take weird stuff and gave me this big shot to stop this cough I had, that just made me laugh non-stop...”. She didn't come either.

Heading back to Marian, I tell her how I couldn't find anyone – to which she says “What are you talking about? This is plenty. As long as you're here! Now, here's my new formula! Go on, drink up!”. Uh oh – I refuse to drink her concoction, on the basis I'm not sick. “You don't know when to give up...” Marian says, “I guess I have no choice.”. Cue the sinister music and Marian saying “If you won't swallow anything, then I'll just inject you!”, as she launches herself at me with her strange trumpet-syringe, and the screen fades to white... I wake up to find myself lying in a bed, with Marian's mother Marjorie standing over me – Marian shuffles in and apologises, promising to cast a more powerful healing spell next time. She gives me a pair of Piyo sandals for my trouble – which make a squeeky noise with every step you take.

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Harvest Moon: Grand Bazaar, and Rune Factory 3 are both out in the UK and Europe today! If you enjoyed this, why not check out parts one, two, and three of the PostCarden diary, or check back later on today for our full Rune Factory 3 review!