Puzzle de Harvest Moon is a Harvest Moon themed er… well, puzzle game. Made for the Nintendo DS, it makes use of the stylus and touch pad to tap and drag instead of pushing buttons. I heartily approved as it meant I wouldn't have cramped hands and sore thumbs playing this game, I thought, before trading out the tiny, skinny stylus that came with the game for a fat pen shaped one that I use on my PDA, an hour or so into the game.
Players of Harvest Moon: Boy Girl will instantly find the characters familiar although they are static characters used for player differentiation rather than actual characters that move around in the game. Puzzle de Harvest Moon is set on the farm field. A seven square across by five square down field is where you plant seeds, water and fertilize the cops and harvest the fruits of your labor (and steal the fruits of your opponents' labor), pitting yourself against other AI characters.
The colorful instruction manual shows you the various game modes available and how to play the games while the in game tutorial shows you the actual game moves, actions and also reminds you what the animals that show up occasionally on the action bar on the right of the screen does. A progress bar on your left will show you how far you are ahead or behind your opponents.
The challenge is to plant and harvest more crops than your opponent - AI or multiplayer - in one year (four seasons). The animals either hinder your opponents or help you. For example, the Dog protects a 2 x 2 square for a short period of time, preventing your opponents from harvesting your crops; and the chicken if dropped on an opponent's 2 x 2 square with seeds will eat them up. Special Gold animals sometimes show up in a match and usually towards the end. These animals cover the entire field instead of just a 2 x 2 square and can seriously tilt a match your way.
A strategic move in this game is to flank a row of seeds or crops with you own seeds. Like the game of Othello, that changes the crops in the squares between yours to your color. The moment your crops mature, you have the first few seconds to harvest them exclusively before they open up to being stolen. Harvest by rubbing your stylus quickly over your fruit or if the basket is available, drop it on the icon and it automatically harvests.
There are four game modes: Normal, 2 vs. 2, Quota and Survival. In the normal mode, you play against three others. The crops you grow and harvest are worth twice as much as your opponents crops, but don't let that stop you from stealing their crops as every little bit helps. The Horse is useful here, as it turns a 2 x 2 square into your crops.
2 vs. 2 is self explanatory. In Quota, a different vegetable is shown each season and these vegetables are worth more points when harvested, even if you didn't grow the crops, and in Survival, you must finish in first place each round to move on to the next challenge.
To use any item on your Action bar, you can tap to select and then tap to drop on the field. You can also drag and drop the item. Instead of double-tapping an item to get rid of it and lose points, you can always use it on a bare patch of land, or indeed on your opponents' crops. After all, you can always steal their crops.
The games are short and you select their match duration (four, six or eight minutes) when you start the match, and the high score is recorded. There are six female and six male characters to play, so unless you play the same characters each time, you could load your high score chart with different characters. If the AI gets the high score, that will be recorded as well.
The real fun in this game is the multiplayer mode. Where you know you are actually playing against another human being, the game can become challenging and fun. Only one copy of the game is required. Players without the game can download from the host game to their own DS machines.
As a puzzle, there's no real depth to this game, just a bit of fun to while away a bit of time in a queue or during a short commute. However, bring it to a games convention and you could get some real fun going, knowing that it isn't an AI you are trying to beat but a real opponent. Me? I'm still playing the 2 vs. 2 because *grumble* the AI keeps beating me.
The former head of developer relations for the Stratics Network, Carolyn Koh has years of experience covering the MMORPG genre. Carolyn first started playing games such as Pong & Moon Buggy on the 8086, and arcade games like Ms. PacMan, Centipede, Red Baron and Joust before graduating to text muds through University computers and Doom on the LAN in the Engineering department after office hours. She claims she didn't frag the guys. Carolyn enjoys reviewing casual games and children's games for us. She also maintains a staff blog commenting on the emails crossing her desk that touch on the gaming industry in one form or another.
