Harvest Moon: The Winds of Anthos might be worth keeping an eye on

Consider me mildly intrigued

Ever since the Harvest Moon franchise was forcibly uncoupled from the Bokujō Monogatari franchise from Marvelous, it’s had trouble finding its footing in the surprisingly competitive farm sim genre. Harvest Moon: The Lost Valley and Harvest Moon: Skytree Village attempted to mix the traditional crop-raising gameplay with a Minecraft-inspired voxel world. The results were less than stellar. Harvest Moon: Light of Hope revisited the top-down feel of the original game with mixed results, and the less said about Harvest Moon: One World, the better. While I contend Harvest Moon: Mad Dash is a delightful gem, it’s clear this series needs to turn things around. It may be able to do that this summer with Harvest Moon: The Winds of Anthos.

Announced late last year, The Winds of Anthos takes place in the land of Anthos, where years prior, a volcanic eruption separated the villages of this land. The people of the world were saved by the Harvest Goddess, who cast a magic key into the ocean with the last of that power. It’s unknown what that key will unlock, but what we do know is that, visually, this is shaping up to be the best-looking Harvest Moon since Natsume had to go its own way.

A look at the New Harvest Moon

Natsume started sharing screens of the game in March over on its social media pages. While we’re still waiting for a proper trailer to give us a look at the game in action, these screens are decent enough for me to not write the whole game off right now. Of course, it’ll have some competition when it launches as we’re also getting a remaster of Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life this summer.

We’ll find out if this will be the Harvest Moon to break the series out of its slump when Harvest Moon: The Winds of Anthos launches later this year for Nintendo Switch, PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, and PC.