Haniniwa Seikatsu: Hitsujimura for Nintendo DS

Success, the company responsible for Rondo of Swords, and the Izuna series is again taking gaming as we know it a step further. Haniniwa Seikatsu: Hitusjimura (?????????), roughly translates to Small Garden Life: Hitsuji (sheep) Village. The game is in the same vein as the Harvest Moon series, in that it is about a person who leaves their modern life behind to adopt the “simple life.” Its graphics are 2D with anime style character designs.

The game’s purpose is to show how easy our lives are in the modern world, and boy does it succeed. The only things the game is kind enough to give you is a plot of land, a shack of a house, and the fruits of the earth. From there the player (either a girl or boy) must make it day-by-day keeping himself/herself fed, clothed, and maintain good standing with the towns villagers. All this of course entails the usual: growing crops, raising livestock, and selling both to upgrade to bigger and better equipment.

	The main feature that separates the game from similar titles is the addition of a cooking system. If the player acquires various fruits, vegetables, and spices, he can combine them with slaughtered animal (or not if you wanna go vegetarian) to produce a meal. Producing quality dishes will keep the player in good health and not waste valuable ingredients.
	Probably the best reason to be a good cook, is attracting the spouse of your choice. The player can invite different individuals from town over to cook for them and engage in conversation. Depending on the tide of the conversation and the quality of the dinner, you could end up making a dear friend or miss the chance at forming a connection.

Another benefit of making food if preparing for the change of seasons. Should you keep your bushel of strawberries, or turn it into Jam which goes longer without spoiling? There are a variety of tools necessary to cooking different dishes, which the player will have to buy with money he earns on the farm.

The guys working on this game definitely put their heart and soul into it. If you take a look at their blog you’ll see that they are actually doing some field work by spending some time immersed in the “simple life.” Hijitsumura comes out June 26th 2008 in Japan.

Atlus has been picking up Success games like no-one’s business so I am confident we will (eventually) see an English version. The game’s official Japanese website can be found here.