Chapter 1.0 ~ Returning Home // A Harvest Moon: Back to Nature Lets Play!

Hello there, Folk of the Hollow, and welcome to my very first blog-style let’s play!

I’m very excited to share one of my all-time favorite games with you guys! I have been playing Harvest Moon: Back to Nature for a long time, ever since I was a little kid with my PS1, and have been a live-or-die harvest moon fan all of my life. I’ve been playing this game a lot on my own lately, and decided that it would be a lot of fun to share it with you guys!

Before we get started I wanna make some stuff clear right off the bat, because if I don’t I feel like the whole rest of it might just look stupid. This chapter will be the only one being told from Toan’s perspective (3rd person pov). The others will be told through my own personal commentary. This one is just told different because, well, there’s not really a whole lot going on except setting up backstory lol.

Keep in mind, I’m still working out the correct feel for this kind of post—so your patience with me is appreciated! Also, if you have any suggestions for a way to improve later posts, let me know in the comments!

I don’t want to linger too long here, so lets get started!

The game starts out with us needing to answer a few preliminary questions: What is our name, birthday, farm name, and dog’s name.

I try to make sure whatever birthday I pick doesn’t coincide with a holiday or another villager’s birthday, so I often have to take to Google to figure out what days work best for that. If you pick a birthday that’s on a holiday, nobody will really celebrate it. Also, if you pick a birthday thats on another villager’s birthday, theirs will change and that’s just a very mild pain in the but for me to remember.

Also for the farm name, I like to try and keep it sounding appropriate for in-universe. Sometimes I’ll use what I imagine my farmer’s last name would be, but this time I found a farm name generator and decided on one that sounded good without sticking to my usual picks. So for this playthrough, I decided the farm name would be Oak Wood because it seemed very neat (lol). It’s got a nice, mellow, forest-y vibe to it that I really enjoy!

The dog name is the hardest for me to figure out sometimes, and much like the farm name I found a random name generator to help me with it. A lot of duds came up at first, but I thought “Pax” had a vibe that I really liked for this playthrough. You don’t see the dog’s name too often except for the stats screen but it still makes me feel more connected to him when I give him a good name 💜 .

Once the game gets started, Toan finds himself walking in on a completely dilapidated farm. The fields are covered in weeds and stones, and the house has been reduced to a single-room cabin. This is hardly the farm he remembers from his childhood—where is the cozy cottage where he and his grandfather had dinner with the windows wide open to let in the breeze to fight off the summer heat? Where are all the animals, and the crops, and everything that made this farm so special in the fringes of his memory?

Just when Toan’s confusion begins to grow into a whisper of despair, Mayor Thomas joins him on his grandpa’s old property.

Memories of his happy childhood summer at Grandpa’s farm come rushing back. Toan wasn’t even supposed to go to Grandpa’s farm that summer: he was supposed to go on a family vacation, but one of his parents (presumably Toan’s father, but that’s never specified) couldn’t rearrange their work schedule. So instead, he found himself begrudgingly shipped off to Grandpa’s farm.

It’s not so bad though!

Spending the summer at Grandpa’s instead turned out to be one of the best times in Toan’s life: there was so much he got to experience surrounded by nature. Growing up as a city kid, Toan had never experienced what it was like to be around so many animals and insects. Though it took a good few days to get used to the smell of the country—much worse on the farm than in the mountains, though before long he hardly noticed the pungent odor of the barn—Toan immersed himself fully into the joys of rural childhood. He got to play on a cow, get assaulted by a flock of foul (ba-dum tss) chickens, and was even able to make a new friend!

Look at that cow’s stupid dumb face lol, there’s not a dang thought in that head.

The Cluckening

I’ve always thought the childhood friendship angle of this intro was incredibly sweet. It’s something that I feel like was aggressively missing from the girl version of the game—there was no emotional connection to the village like there is in the boy version. It really makes me feel something for the world we’re going to be living in for the next however many hours of gameplay. It makes the story and the village feel so much more tangible.

Yes, the summer Toan spent at his grandpa’s farm was so much more fun than he expected—but the summer couldn’t last forever, and the time came at last for him to say goodbye to his grandpa, those spiteful chickens, and the new friend he made. It’s a bittersweet goodbye . . . but one that couldn’t be avoided.

It’s hard for Toan to believe the fields he stands in as an adult are the very same ones he played in when he was a kid. Years of neglect following his grandfather’s death have left it a shadow of its former self.

The mayor and the village of Mineral Town have an ultimatum for Toan: Either he can restore the farm to it’s former glory within the time limit of 3 years—in such case, he will become the rightful owner of the farm in the eyes of his neighbors—or he can’t, and he will have to leave. The legacy his grandfather once built would have to continue to deteriorate, neglected and alone. It’s a huge weight to put on Toan’s shoulders—but one that he was ready to shoulder. This place was too special to let go. He knew he had to do something to save it.

By the way, this has always seemed pretty shitty to me on the part of the villagers. Did none of them ever think to help out to keep the farm from getting this bad in the first place?

Flooded with a sense of undefeatable determination, Toan knew that although it would be a long road ahead he was willing and ready to do whatever it took to bring his grandfather’s farm back to the way it was.

Phew! Okay! Here’s the Prologue chapter of our new Harvest Moon: Back to Nature playthrough!

What do we think of the formatting? I thought about doing it a bunch of other ways but none of them seemed quite right for what I wanted to do—and I don’t know, this way just seemed like the most fun. Especially since I’m a real sucker for imagining the thoughts and feelings of otherwise completely silent protagonists lol

See you in the next one! ~ 💜