The game play consists of daily tasks, and strategically using your time wisely for the best outcome in the end. For vegetables to develop, they must receive water each day; lack of water does not kill crops, but does keep them from growing. Animals must be fed once a day to keep producing. While the only care that chickens require is feeding, cows must be continually talked to, brushed, and milked to retain their health. A cow may become sick and even die if not fed for a day. The only way a chicken can die is to be left outside and allowed to be blown away in a storm or eaten by wild wolves. After dark, the only business in town that the player can access is the bar, where a number of non-player characters gather to drink and talk.


~Progression
The player has various means of progress:

Preparing the fields. Before any crops can be planted, numerous weeds, rocks, and tree stumps must be cleared from the ground. The player must till the soil before it can be cultivated.
Planting turnips, potatoes, tomatoes and corn on cultivated land, watering it, then harvesting the vegetables and selling them for profit.
Raising livestock: chickens and cows, which produce eggs and milk. By planting grass and harvesting it as hay, the player can feed these livestock. Cows can also graze on fields of mature grass.
Enlarging the farmhouse. By using the axe to gather wood, the player can chop up enough tree stumps to build a larger house. This requires money as well as wood.
Getting married. Five girls in town are potential brides. By giving gifts, visiting on appropriate days, and fulfilling specific "missions" for each specific girl, the player can get married and have his wife move onto the farm with him.
Having children. Within the game's timeframe, it is possible for the player's wife to bear two babies. Given enough time, one child will develop into a toddler.

[~Overworld
There are three different areas that the player can go to: his farm and its buildings; the local town and its houses and shops; and a local forest, where the carpenter lives. North of the forest is a mountain.

The house can be upgraded twice. Additionally, wood can be used to construct fences around the crop areas. While rain releases the player from having to water crops by hand, it usually damages the fence. After winter, no matter how well the player takes care of the land, much of it and the fence is destroyed.


[~Seasons
Each year has four thirty-day seasons, and the player has limited time each day before it becomes dark. The clock stops at 6 p.m. Unlike in later Harvest Moon games, the player can effectively stay outside as long as he wants without penalty, as long as he does not run out of energy. However, when married, the character loses a few affection points with his wife if he comes home at 6 p.m.


~Farming
Crops, eggs, and milk can be placed in collection boxes, from which a shipper will collect them at 5 p.m. each day, the player being paid the next morning. The player can also gather herbs and wild fruit in the forest for sale. A small pond can be fished. The player can farm vegetables only during the spring and summer. During fall, the only thing that grows is the hay grass. In winter, nothing grows.


~Tools
The player starts with basic tools, such as a watering can, axe, hoe, sickle, and hammer. All these tools can be upgraded if the player completes certain side quests (although the watering can's improvement must be purchased). Only two tools, (or in combo a bag of seeds), can be carried at a time.


~Animals
At the beginning of the game, the player adopts a dog, though it requires no special care and its only contribution to the game is barking to warn the player that the farm's fence requires fixing. Although the dog's default name is Koro, it can be changed to whatever the player wants. In the winter of the first year, the player also adopts a horse, which is helpful at harvest.

The barn and henhouse are each capable of holding up to twelve of their respective animals. All cows are purchased from a livestock dealer in town, as is at least one chicken. Additional chickens can be hatched by placing an egg in an incubator instead of selling it. Cows, when first purchased or born, require time to grow before they can be milked; afterwards, they grow larger and produce greater quantities of milk. Fully developed chickens and cows can be sold for profit.


~ Town Girls
There are five single young women living in town that can be married:

1.Maria, the mayor's daughter, spends her time reading and tending the grounds of the local church, where she plays the organ.

2.Nina, the daughter of the flower-shop owner, enjoys nature.

3.Ann, a tomboy and the daughter of the tool-store owner, works as an inventor, though not very successfully.

4.Ellen, the daughter of the cafe owners, enjoys animals. Her father is the town drunk; her mother tends the restaurant.

5.Eve, a waitress at the local bar, tends tables nearly every night.

Each girl has her own tastes and preferences, and a diary, which the player can regularly check to see how attracted the girl is to him.

After marriage, aside from their hair color and particular phrases, they tend to look alike, and the player's activities are severely curtailed: he is expected to come home by a specified time, and not doing so may result in a divorce. If the player arrives home at the proper time to go to bed with his wife, she will eventually get pregnant, later giving birth in the farmhouse.


~ Special Events
At random points in the game, the player has the opportunity to take part in side quests that provide benefits. There are a number of events (some scheduled, some not) that break up the gameplay:

1)Festivals. At set dates, the townspeople gather at certain places to celebrate an event. Examples include a harvest festival (revolving around a communal stew), an egg festival (which features an Easter-like colored egg hunt), and a flower festival. Certain days, such as New Year's Day and the winter solstice, are celebrated more solemnly. Otherwise, festivals usually allow the player to engage in mini-games, and to dance with girls.

2)Hurricanes. During the summer, it is possible that the area will be struck by a hurricane. If this happens, the player loses a day of work while barricaded in the farmhouse, and many of the crops, large sections of the fence, and even cultivated land itself will be destroyed.

3)Earthquake. While less common (and unpredictable), these have some of the same effects as the hurricane.
Some of the game's special events require one of the above disasters to allow the player to access it. After an earthquake or lightning strike, for example, the player can meet the "Harvest Sprites" who live in tunnels under the farm. They can also gain access to a pond where the "Harvest Goddess" lives. Doing these things allows the character to upgrade his tools without paying money.

There are also minor secrets hidden throughout the game, mainly related to "power berries," which increase the player's overall energy. These range from digging in a particular place to planting a rare flower on a certain day of the year. The farm has a flower garden on its north side; for each of the twelve berries the player finds and eats, a special flower blooms.

A wandering peddler makes appearances on certain festivals, and on Sundays. The peddler sells the "blue feather" required to propose to a girl, as well as other rare items. There is also a hawker who sells and, if the player tries to sell livestock on certain day, is willing to trade them for unusual items.

The player takes on the role of a young farmer (age not specified, although he is able to bear children) whose parents left him in charge of his late grandfather's farm. Over two and a half years, the player must develop the decrepit, weed-choked farm into a money-maker, and, if able, get married and have children. At the game's end, the player is evaluated on a number of factors to determine his success or failure. Post Harvest Moon games could also be never ending.

~Festivals
Most games in the series feature annual festivals which the player can attend. Some of these may just be simple social events, while others may be contests with prizes available to the player. Sometimes festivals are akin to real life holidays, such as Thanksgiving and the Starry Night Festival, which seems to be reminiscent of Christmas Eve. Livestock-themed festivals often take place, where the player can submit their animals to compete against other farms. Animals who win these contests often receive benefits; for example, a cow that wins might gain the ability to produce gold milk.

Players can always choose to not attend these events, but all stores also close on these days and shipped items are not picked up either, leaving few choices available outside of attendance.


~Getting married
The Harvest Moon games offer many choices for potential love interests. As the player spends time with the various potential love interests, he or she learns his or her likes and dislikes, showers him or her with gifts, and eventually proposes. If a player fails to marry a character, then there are usually rival characters who will marry whoever the character didn't. Developers of the series have taken to producing both male and female versions of Harvest Moon games in recent years, allowing for different lineups of potential spouses. More recent games have begun offering a gender choice when starting a game. Only one Harvest Moon game has yet allowed players to pursue the possibility of living with someone of the same sex, the Japanese version of Harvest Moon DS Cute. The feature is rumored to have been removed from the US version and Natsume refuses to comment on the matter. A special friendship ceremony can be performed between the main character and another of the special girls instead of marriage with one of the men in the game.


~Children
In many versions, it is possible to have children, but usually only a boy, with the exceptions being Harvest Moon, Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life Special Edition, and Harvest Moon 3. In Harvest Moon: More Friends of Mineral Town, when a girl is played, a baby girl can be born. This event occurs usually about a month after marriage. Harvest Moon and Harvest Moon 3 are also the only versions where the player can have multiple children. "Harvest Moon:DS", Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life and their spin-offs are the only games in the series where the player can experience a child's growth from toddler to full-grown adult.


~Features
Many Harvest Moon games fanciful content as well, such as Fairies, Harvest Sprites, a Harvest Goddest, a Kappa, a Witch, a Mermaid and various forest guardians. In some games, special events such as solar eclipse and legends about a red lake were included. In the older series players increased their stamina by eating Power Berries which are around the valley, this feature is replaced in later games by using various jewelry and clothing to reduce stamina loss.


~Defeating monsters
The first time the player can fight monsters is in Harvest Moon DS, in the mines, but it is not advanced or a major part of the game. Your character could possibly live their entire in-game life without knowing that the monsters even exist. In Rune Factory: A Fantasy Harvest Moon you can also fight monsters. A player could use farming tools, or swords and axes. In Harvest Moon: Back to Nature the chickens are able to compete and fight each other in a festival. Also in Back to Nature, wild dogs will attack livestock, the player must fight them off with their tools and dog.

~Growing produce
This is the central aspect to all the games. The player must find optimal planting, watering, and harvesting patterns. Finding the most profitable plants, clearing space for planting, and harvesting the crops before winter rolls around are key to gaining money. In the games, each season has different crops available for planting, except for winter, when crops cannot grow and the player must rely on foraging, mining and livestock for income, though in some versions, a greenhouse can be used during the winter to protect crops. Crops can be grown year round in "A Wonderful Life" and "Another Wonderful Life." Some crops, such as turnips and onions, only grow once, while other crops, such as corn and sweet potatoes, can be harvested several times, until the season ends.

Turnips, potatoes, tomatoes and corn are staple crops of the series, introduced in the first game. Since then, other games have introduced new crops, such as cabbage, carrots, onions, strawberries, sweet potatoes, pumpkins, rice, pineapples, Cucumbers, and more.


~Ranching livestock
An increasingly large part of the games is purchasing, caring for, and raising your own livestock. Livestock can bring about profits on a daily basis (e.g., the player can milk cows each day). Giving one's animals’ attention will increase their affection towards the player and after a certain amount of time, will begin producing higher quality products. On the other hand, neglecting the animal's needs can lead to sickness and even death.

The first Harvest Moon only allowed cows and chickens and provided a barn and chicken coop to house them. Milk and eggs could both be sold, as well as the animals themselves. Later titles introduced sheep and chicken feed (a new food that is used to feed chickens), as well as machines that could change milk into cheese, eggs into mayonnaise, and wool into yarn. Planting grass is also required before you purchase an animal in the old series. The more recent games allow the player to also raise ducks (which lay eggs every two days), goats (which have more profitable milk), Silkworms, Ostriches and different colors of cows.

Animals are also able to reproduce. Eggs can be placed in an incubator to hatch a chick in a few days, while giving a cow or sheep a miracle potion will impregnate them.


~Pets and other Animals
In every Harvest Moon game a player is given a dog as a pet. Later in the series, the two animals are able to attend competitions (e.g. Horse race and Dog race) to win prizes. In GBC 3 a player was allowed to choose a pet from a list of animals, all of which had different abilities (eg. the Pig increases the money a player will earn). In the newer titles, cats are given as pets. In some games, dogs and horses can be fed, and the horse is able to be ridden in town. The player is also able to keep wild animals as pets. In HM: BTN the player can raise fish and Bees.


~Gathering materials
Many Harvest Moon games require the player to gather materials for home improvement, tool improvement, cooking, or simply selling. The most common resource at earlier stages of the game (in older games) is wood; the player is able to chop up tree stumps to gather wood to add buildings to his or her farm, or add fencing to keep wild dogs out of the farm. Mining has also become an important feature, and most of the minerals found while mining in caves are required to upgrade tools to better, more manageable forms, as well as craft gifts for girls or, in later versions, boys in town. Cooking has also become a side activity in some games and foraged foods, crops and livestock products can all be used to create different dishes.

Harvest Moon (牧場物語 in Japanese, pronounced Bokujou Monogatari, Farm Story) is the name of a series of farm simulation/role-playing video games produced by Victor Interactive Software (acquired by Marvelous Interactive in 2002). Yasuhiro Wada is considered the father of the Harvest Moon series. English translation and distribution of the game is done by Natsume. The object of the game is to maintain a farm over a period of time, tending the crops and livestock through the seasons, while befriending the nearby townsfolk and getting married in some games. The first game was Harvest Moon, released for the SNES in 1997. Games in the series have also been produced for Game Boy and GBA, Nintendo 64, PlayStation, PlayStation 2, GameCube and Nintendo DS; with new titles for PSP, Nintendo DS, and an upcoming release for the Wii.

Most Harvest Moon games are permutations of a central formula. The game generally takes place over a set period of time (generally 3 years), in which the player is charged with the task of running a successful farm, getting married, having a child, and becoming friends with the townsfolk.

Most gameplay in the Harvest Moon games consists of planting seeds to grow fruits and vegetables in the spring, summer, and autumn, and collecting items, making home improvements, and building personal relationships in the winter. A successful farmer must weigh the cost, selling price, number of harvests, and growth times of the various types of produce in order to pick the best product for each of the seasons.

The player must also balance their physical resources; if players over-exert themselves, they might not have the energy to perform needed activities, or might even get sick and miss a day of farming.