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Harvest Moon: Frantic Farming
By Alex Porter,
Common Sense Media Reviewer
Common Sense Media Reviewers
Engaging puzzle game about harvesting vegetables.
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Harvest Moon: Frantic Farming
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What’s It About?
In HARVEST MOON: FRANTIC FARMING, players find the island of Sunny Island suffering from a mysterious explosion of vegetable growth. The cute, anime-styled characters must move around a color-coded board to harvest crops. By touching the DS screen, players control a character, or \"sprite\" who must pluck as many crops as possible. The game includes several variations on this basic puzzle, including a multiplayer Survial Mode where you compete with a friend for a high score, Team Mode where several players collaborate, and Mission Mode, in which players pre-plan their moves for maximum points.
Is It Any Good?
The gameplay in Frantic Farming is fast, addictive, and fun. While the core idea of manipluating colored blocks is nothing new, the extra modes and original story are enough to make the game feel fresh. And there's lots of gameplay variation, most interesting being the Mission Mode, where you map out your moves, instead of racing against a clock. Some stages, too, have higher difficulty level, sometimes making for a uneven experience. But overall, a solid, delightful, and compelling puzzle game with broad age and gender appeal.
Online interaction: Multiplayer modes let DS owners link-up and share a single game cartidge.
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Families can talk about how the growth and harvesting of food in this game is different from real life; whereas the object here is to harvest your crops quickly (and yes, frantically), real gardening and farming is a slow process involving care and patience.
There are many different vegetables players must harvest, including corn, tomatoes, cabbages, and eggplant. How are these different? Some grow in the ground, some on vines, others on stalks. How are they different or similar? Have you eaten all these vegetables? Do you have a favorite?
Game Details
- Platform: Nintendo DS
- Available online?: Available online
- Publisher: Natsume
- Release date: August 25, 2009
- Genre: Puzzle
- ESRB rating: E for (no descriptors)
- Last updated: August 31, 2016
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