Harvest Moon: Light of Hope official logo and artwork

In celebration of the series' 20th anniversary Natsume has announced a brand new addition to their country life simulator/RPG series Harvest Moon. The appropriately named Light of Hope will also be the very first Harvest Moon game to appear on both the PC and Nintendo Switch.

The details are currently a bit shaky, but from what is available so far I can tell you that the adventure will begin with our main character washing ashore in a small town after a monsoon destroys their ship. What follows next is the standard Harvest Moon formula of befriending the locals, improving your farm and house (which is apparently going to be a lighthouse), and slowly but surely saving the town from ruin. Its a simple formula, but given that Harvest Moon has been going on for 20 years now I would say that its works pretty damn well!

The one big difference between Light of Hope and all of the previous games in the series is the addition of an actually robust story and clear-cut goals. Natsume hasn't clarified what exactly they mean when it comes to "clear-cut goals", but if its something that adds a bit more depth and complexity to the otherwise extremely simple world I would be more than happy about it. Harvest Moon has and always will be a very relaxing game, but adding a couple of interesting twists to it would definitely improve the gameplay and help stave off the feeling of boredom when you've done pretty much everything there is to do.

There is currently no release date available, not even an estimate, but Natsume will be showcasing Harvest Moon: Light of Hope at this year's E3. So if you would like to learn more I'm afraid you'll have to wait until June 13-15 for E3 to roll around. There might be a teaser trailer ready before that, but I wouldn't expect much in terms of concrete information before E3's over.