This bizarre God game is actually going to see a release outside of Japan.
After some speculation to the contrary, it appears that Harvest Moon creator Yasuhiro Wada's next game is going to get a Western release after all.
This news comes to us from publisher NIS America who have confirmed that Wada's latest project, the PlayStation 4 exclusive Birthdays the Beginning, will be released in Europe and North America sometime early in 2017. This means that the Western release shouldn't be too far behind the Japanese release date of January 19th, 2017.
Birthdays the Beginning represents something of a departure from the normal for developer Yasuhiro Wada who has spent much of the last couple of decades working on Harvest Moon titles and that franchise's spiritual spin-off Story of the Seasons(although this is not his first project outside of that franchise). While this new game most certainly doesn't take place on a farm, it does share the Harvest Moon franchise's open-world nature and promises to allow players to explore and create cube-shaped worlds brimming with unique creatures and habitats. It's something of a God game, then, in the sense that players will primarily be responsible for shaping and maintaining their worlds in order to foster their growth and ensure the well-being of all that inhabit them.
While the game will feature many gameplay elements typically seen in this genre, one of its unique qualities is the way it emphasizes climate. You'll need to manipulate certain climate and environmental factors within your created world if you are going to attract, or grow, all types of lifeforms, which means that a great deal of experimenting will be required in order to find the perfect balance across all sectors of your created landscapes.
The games is certainly weird in that "I can't believe that they're actually going to release this outside of Japan" kind of way, but the titles charms are as undeniable as the design skills of Wada who typically is able to turn the simplest of premises into a treasure trove of gameplay. It will be interesting to see what he does with an expanded concept such as this one.
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