Square Enix's 'Harvestella' Is a 'Final Fantasy'-Styled Farming Simulator

If you’ve enjoyed your experience with Stardew Valley or Animal Crossing: New Horizons and are looking for your next farming-gathering adventure, you’re now in luck: Square Enix has just announced Harvestella. Featured in the trailer above, the upcoming title throws players into a fantastical world largely reminiscent of the studio’s Final Fantasy franchise, with plenty of magical elements to interact with.

Aside from the regular farming processes of land tilling, seed sowing, and crop watering, you’ll also be able to collect items to cook and craft with. Other activities include fishing, owning pets or even fighting off monsters and venturing through dungeons to find better loot. A world map allows you to travel to different regions and towns, each with its own unique traits and residents that you can interact with, while a series of jobs such as fighter, mage, or shadow walker will give you quests and tasks to complete. You’ll even get to traverse the ocean with a submarine.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a Square Enix game if everything is smooth sailing, so the developer added a seasonal cycle to make things more interesting. The world carries four crystals known as the Seaslight which usually govern the changes in season, but as you start the game, a series of issues have led to a break in seasonal stability, creating a period in between each transition is known as the Quietus, where crops simply cannot grow and villagers all take cover indoors. The effect escalates as you progress, becoming longer each time you cycle through the four seasons. It’ll be up to you to restore stability to the land.

For those interested, Harvestella will arrive on the Nintendo Switch and PC via Steam on November 4. You can learn more about the game over on Square Enix’s website.

Elsewhere in gaming, Netflix will be releasing a new sci-fi strategy titled called Into the Breach.