{"id":1199206,"date":"2023-11-02T13:00:06","date_gmt":"2023-11-02T17:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/?p=1199206"},"modified":"2023-11-02T13:00:06","modified_gmt":"2023-11-02T17:00:06","slug":"apple-arcade-exclusive-japanese-rural-life-adventure-is-a-surprising-story-of-rebirth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/?p=1199206","title":{"rendered":"Apple Arcade exclusive 'Japanese Rural Life Adventure' is a surprising story of rebirth"},"content":{"rendered":"

For the third time in less than two years, I have COVID-19. Whenever an illness has forced me to stay in bed, my comfort food has been gaming. In 2009 I played through all of Assassin\u2019s Creed II<\/em><\/a> in a feverish, swine flu-induced haze. When I was sick with COVID for the first time, I jumped into Red Dead Redemption 2 <\/em>blind, and found a story about sickness and human mortality. Now, during one of the most stacked years in recent gaming history, I find myself under the covers not with Starfield<\/em><\/a>, Spider-Man 2<\/em><\/a> or any of the other big fall releases. Instead, my bedside companion is a small Apple Arcade exclusive called Japanese Rural Life Adventure<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

I discovered this gem through an X<\/a> account that tweets about upcoming indie games. I took one look at Japanese Rural Life Adventure <\/em>and knew I had to play it. The game features a beautiful pixel art style, and a pastoral setting evocative of anime classics like Only Yesterday<\/em><\/a> and Wolf Children<\/em><\/a>. What I didn\u2019t expect to find was a heartwarming experience about the importance of community.<\/p>\n

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In its opening hours, Japanese Rural Life Adventure<\/em> plays out much like Stardew Valley<\/em><\/a> or, for that matter, any other farming sim made in the past two decades. When the game\u2019s protagonist first arrives in the countryside, they find their new home in disrepair, nearly every inch of the surrounding fields overgrown with weeds. But following a predictable start, the game shows its true character.<\/p>\n

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Almost uniquely among other games in the genre, Japanese Rural Life Adventure <\/em>doesn\u2019t include any romantic partners for the player\u2019s character to pursue. Nearly everyone you meet is elderly. They complain of aching bones, bad backs and a dim future where there aren\u2019t any young people to carry on their community\u2019s traditions.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was born and raised in the city, in a big town. I have no memories of playing in rivers, climbing mountains, or anything like that,\u201d Takeo Fujita, the founder of Japanese Rural Life Adventure developer GAME START, told me over email. \u201cI have no older relatives living in the countryside. In other words, you could say that the \u2018gentle and simple countryside\u2019 found in Japanese Rural Life Adventure<\/em> comes from a sense of longing that I felt watching and reading Japanese TV dramas and manga.\u201d<\/p>\n

Longing for a simpler life is something that pervades Japanese Rural Life Adventure <\/em>\u2013\u00a0<\/em>not just its setting, but also its mechanics and the scale of its gameplay. For all the time I\u2019ve put into the game, I have not become a farming mogul. At most, it\u2019s possible to plant and maintain four fields for growing rice and produce, alongside a few fruit trees. In fact, there\u2019s only so much \u201cwork\u201d for your character to do in a single day. And the days, compared to those in Stardew Valley<\/em> or recent Harvest Moon entries, are long, adding to the sense of a slower pace of life.<\/p>\n

Japanese Rural Life Adventure <\/em>consistently pushed me to slow down and appreciate everything it had to offer beyond farming: fishing, bug catching, cooking and photographing wildlife, all of which have their own fun minigames associated with them. Sometimes, I would just let my character rest on the front porch to watch a cherry blossom tree shed its pedals or to bask in the sparkle of fireflies at night.<\/p>\n

\"mmm
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GAME START<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

At first, Japanese Rural Life Adventure <\/em>limits players to the small area around their farm. More often than not, advancing the plot or opening a new section of the game involves helping others. Before I could buy seeds to grow my first batch of cucumbers and daikon radishes, I first had to build a bench for an old peddler lady to sit and rest. After completing a few of the game\u2019s early objectives, including the partial restoration of a local Shinto shrine, the nearby town unlocks.<\/p>\n

The town is in a sorry state when you first visit. The roads are weed-ridden and potholed. Nearly every building is falling apart. The young people are long gone. It\u2019s one step removed from becoming a ghost town.<\/p>\n

As it turns out, this town is the heart of Japanese Rural Life Adventure<\/em>. After exploring it for a bit, I meet the village head, who tasks my character with restoring the decaying roads and buildings, including a Buddist temple and schoolhouse, all in hopes of bringing tourists who will help revitalize the local economy.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t expect this from Japanese Rural Life Adventure<\/em>. In Japan, declining birth rates and one of the world\u2019s oldest populations threaten to erase rural life as the country knows it. A 2019 Bloomberg<\/em> article<\/a>, citing data from the Japan Policy Council, frames the stakes succinctly: \u201cIf current trends continue, by 2040, 869 municipalities \u2013 nearly half of Japan\u2019s total \u2013 will be at risk of vanishing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fujita says GAME START didn\u2019t set out to create a game about the plight of his country\u2019s towns and villages. \u201cWhen developing games, we do not consider difficult themes such as vanishing rural communities or population aging. We believe that games should be something you can enjoy and forget about everyday life,\u201d he said. “\u2018Growth\u2019 and \u2018development\u2019 are elements that can make a game attractive to prospective players. So we adopted \u2018village regeneration\u2019 as one of the themes of the game.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Take
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GAME START<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

To some extent, all games like Japanese Rural Life Adventure <\/em>share an interest in community. After all, it\u2019s safe to say part of the reason why so many people love<\/a> Stardew Valley<\/em> is because of Pelican Town and all the weird and wonderful characters that inhabit it. However, in\u00a0<\/em>orienting almost all of the player\u2019s actions towards the betterment of its unnamed town, Japanese Rural Life Adventure<\/em> puts community front and center in a way I hadn\u2019t seen in the genre before. It\u2019s also that focus that makes the game feel fresh and compelling.<\/p>\n

Take the restoration project I mentioned earlier. The village head compensates the player for completing the tasks he assigns to them, but I found the money I earned was often only enough to cover the costs of the next repair I needed to complete. More rewarding was seeing the results of my efforts. The project culminates in a summer festival that requires a significant investment from the player, both in terms of time and money spent. Before I could even start preparing for the event, I first had to repair and repaint the torii gates of the temple where the town planned to hold the festival. It was also up to me to produce the 21 chochin lanterns<\/a> needed to light everything. This task consumed a few hours of my time, but the reward was a beautiful night time celebration that felt like a culmination of everything I had done up to that point. The fact I won a young koi fish to release in the pond in front of my house was a bonus.<\/p>\n

Often, Japanese Rural Life Adventure<\/em> doesn\u2019t feature a lot of mechanical sophistication. Watering plants is as straightforward as a single tap, and most other tasks involve either foraging or buying the right items, but what it has a lot of is heart. That was something I needed.<\/p>\n

Japanese Rural Life Adventure<\/em> is currently available on iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple TV.<\/p>\n

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https:\/\/www.engadget.com\/apple-arcade-exclusive-japanese-rural-life-adventure-review-170006419.html?src=rss
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\nSource: Engadget – Apple Arcade exclusive ‘Japanese Rural Life Adventure’ is a surprising story of rebirth<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For the third time in less than two years, I have COVID-19. Whenever an illness has forced me to stay in bed, my comfort food has been gaming. In 2009 I played through all of Assassin\u2019s Creed II in a … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[99,110],"tags":[98],"class_list":["post-1199206","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-engadget","category-unfiltered-rss","tag-engadget"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1199206","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1199206"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1199206\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1199206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1199206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1199206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}