Harvest Moon is one of those games that simulator players love. Currently, it’s just a classic, with over 40 games to its credit. Due to its fame, many other games with similar features have come to life. Now, let us introduce you to a list of the best games similar to Harvest Moon.

What is Harvest Moon?

Harvest Moon is a series of video games developed by Marvelous Interactive and initially released in 1996. It’s a farm simulation role-playing game with two major Harvest Moon series: the original, now called “Story of Seasons,” and an alternative that continues with the same name developed by Natsume. This Japanese company has rights to the Harvest Moon name. Now let’s check the best Harvest Moon-type games!  

Farming Simulator 22

The first one on this list, Farming Simulator 22, is a realistic farm simulation game where you take the role of a professional farmer. Unlike Harvest Moon, Farming Simulator contains many of the latest farming technologies and techniques of the real world. This way, you’ll feel like you’re part of the productive chain of crops, vegetables, and several products. 

In Farming Simulator 22, you can focus on the farming operations you prefer, such as agriculture, forestry, or animal husbandry. To do this, you will have the possibility of operating real machines from different worldwide providers, such as John Deere, New Holland, DEUTZ-FAHR, Valtra, and others. Thanks to this, realistic farming mechanics are immersive.

You can choose between three environments located in America and Europe to start with your activities. These are the following:

• Erlengrant (a landscape situated in the Swiss Alps).
• Elmcreek (a small town located in the USA).
• Haut-Beyleron (A reminiscent landscape of the French countryside).

From there, your adventure will begin. You can customize your character and then start your activities with 500,000 euros in your pocket. You’ll have to choose a piece of land, some vehicles, and the seeds. Remember that you can’t sow some seeds in certain types of ground and at times of the year. Study the possibilities and the season system, and start your farming adventure. 

Farming Simulator 22 is one of the favorite farming games of those who like realism, investments, budget management, professional machines, etcetera. And yes, this is one of the best and most realistic farming simulators on the market!   

Farming Simulation 22 Steam CD Key is available on RoyalCDKeys. 

Stardew Valley

Stardew Valley is a role-playing simulation game and one of the best Harvest Moon alternatives. You control a character who returns to their grandfather’s farm, located in Stardew Valley, after his death. Now you’re in charge of the farm, and your mission is to develop its economy, gather resources, harvest plant crops, and interact with inhabitants to make the best of your property.

Like any Harvest Moon game, this farming experience focuses on different farm activities, such as growing crops and raising livestock, mining, fishing, cooking, and socializing with the people of Pelican town. 

At the beginning of the game, you can select different types of farms. Among these are the Standard Farm, the Riverland Farm, the Hill-Top Farm, the Forest Farm, and the Wilderness Farm. Each class has unique game features, benefits, and resources. When you start your adventure, the farmland is full of trees, boulders, and stumps. You must clear it to restart the farm and begin to produce.

Stardew Valley also features many RPG and farming elements, such as the possibility of interacting with NPCs who inhabit the town. Engaging in relationships may reward you with exciting items. 

You can also complete several quests given by NPCs. This way, you can earn money or things like seeds and tools. Completing specific collections, called “bundles,” grants you access to areas and game mechanics. 

Other of the most relevant gameplay elements of Stardew Valley is its internal clock, the character’s health, and the exhaustion level. Thanks to these, the game provides a more immersive experience.

If you’re one of the staunchest Harvest Moon fans, you’ll love this life simulation game as critics and gamers praised it!

Stardew Valley Steam CD Key is available on RoyalCDKeys. 

Animal Crossing: New Horizons

Animal Crossing: New Horizons is a game that any Harvest Moon fan will love. It’s a life simulation game and one of the most successful and best-selling games on Nintendo Switch, achieving 37 million sales.

But what makes this title so unique and successful?

In the first place, this is a video game with a great and cute visual style, which attracts many people who love chibi characters. Besides, since it’s a real-life simulation and survival game, you can do practically everything you desire. Of course, if Tom Nook, the evil Mayor of the tropical island, lets you.

From the beginning, you can customize your character and move to a desert island full of many anthropomorphic animals.  

There you must gather resources, interact with inhabitants, build items, tools, your own house, and complete quests given by Tom Nook. You get rewards and valuable resources to continue improving your lifestyle. New Horizons features hundreds of choices of town and house decorations. These are included in the new outdoor furniture items.

Public Works Projects are also an essential feature in this game since they allow the Mayor to customize the town by adding new buildings, upgrading old ones, or placing landmarks around the city.  

You can also change a hemisphere setting for the season. If you don’t like your current season, you can use this alternative to travel and change your possibilities of getting unique items and resources.       

Animal Crossing: New Horizons is one of the best games on the Nintendo Switch’s catalog and one which integrates many of those Harvest Moon features you want to see. 

Animal Crossing: New Horizons NA Nintendo CD Key is available on RoyalCDKeys. 

Doraemon: Story of Seasons

• Release Date: June 13, 2019
• Developer: Brownies / Marvelous
• Publisher: Bandai Namco Entertainment
• Platforms: Microsoft Windows, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Steam
• Metascore: 75

Doraemon Story of Seasons is a farming simulation role-playing game and a crossover of the Story of Seasons saga, whose greatest exponent is Friends of Mineral Town and the Doraemon franchise.

The game presents most of the features of the Story of Season franchise and combines them with characters and familiar gadgets from the Doraemon series.

In Doraemon Story of Seasons, you take the role of Nobita, the best friend of the Cosmic Cat, while participating in all kinds of farming activities, such as sowing crops, raising animals, and more. Fishing and cooking are other relevant mechanics through which you can get essential items and resources to craft articles and complete quests. Cooking food will allow you to prepare dishes to sell or use to improve your statistics. 

Another exciting feature is the house decoration and interior design. You can use the system to improve your house's and farm’s appearance by buying furniture and pieces of construction. Doraemon: Story of Seasons also features holidays and festivals to enjoy with your friends and perform different activities, just like in other games of the saga.   

Doraemon: Story of Seasons is one of our favorite farming games. It is because Doraemon takes the best features of similar games and mixes them with some of the best anime characters. Harvest Moon’s fanatics will love this game!

Doraemon Story of Season Steam CD Key is available on RoyalCDKeys. 

My Time at Portia

• Release Date: January 15, 2019
• Developer: Pathea Games
• Publisher: Team 17 / Nuverse
• Platforms: Microsoft Windows, macOS, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Android, iOS
• Metascore: 75

My Time at Portia, contrary to other farming simulators, provides your farming sims with a mix of crafting mechanics and role-playing elements.

You control a builder’s child who lives in a world long after civilization has been destroyed. Your mission is to expand the city and become the best builder of the settlement. 

Resource gathering from the lands and surroundings and using recipes will allow you to craft new items and objects. While progressing through the game, you’ll get new tools that enable you to harvest resources faster.

With new items in your hands, you can submit them for rewards, money, or even town favors. The most significant assignments might change the town entirely. Reforming the city is the primary goal, remember? You can expand the city at your own pace and build the settlement of your dream!

But My Time at Portia is one of those few games that contain dungeons you must explore to get unique articles. Here, you will have to fight monsters, dangerous creatures, and enemies, so you’ll have to be prepared for battle and exploration.

My time at Portia is one of the best games like Harvest Moon you can find out there. It contains every farming aspect of the Victor Interactive Software video game plus RPG elements which turn it into a magnificent game you should play. 

My Time at Portia Steam CD Key is available on RoyalCDKeys. 

Rune Factory 5

Rune Factory 5 is a role-playing simulation PC game with a Nintendo Switch port. It’s the new game of the Rune Factory franchise, whose first iteration was released in 2012. 

It is a video game with an exciting anime style and cute graphics, so its characters might be attractive for anime fans. 

You control a hero who loses their memory and joins a group of rangers called SEED, which operates in the town of Rigbarth. As a member of this group, you’ll be encouraged to tend the land and complete tasks for the town’s people. You’ll also be encouraged to battle monsters to keep the peace in the city.

Like the Animal Crossing series mentioned above, in Rune Factory 5, you can form social connections and create relationships with townsfolk. Interactions can even result in marriage in the long run.    

Rune Factory 5 is heavily focused on farming and taming monsters. To farm, you must clean the field and plow the land to plant seeds. You’ll have to take care of your crops, bringing them water and other resources. 

Rune Factory 5 Steam CD Key is available on RoyalCDKeys. 

Graveyard Keeper

• Release date: August 15, 2018
• Developer: Lazy Bear Games
• Publisher: TinyBuild
• Platforms: Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, iOS, Android
• Metascore: 70

As its name suggests, Graveyard Keeper is a graveyard-keeping management simulation game where you take the role of a custodian who must maintain the graveyard in good condition. At the beginning of the game, the cemetery plot is covered by trees, boulders, stumps, etcetera. The only hope to recover it is to do your work and clean it to restart its operations. 

Your primary mission in Graveyard Keeper is to tend the graves and the church as if the cemetery plot were your business. However, your main goal is to open a portal to return to your original world. To do this, you need help and information from NPCs, which you can get by completing quests that involve crafting or gathering items.

Is Animal Crossing similar to Graveyard Keeper? The core concept remains to maintain the ground and relationships with inhabitants. Still, this game is a bit darker. Thus it’s a perfect game for gamers who like mysterious, dark environments and quirky characters.

Graveyard Keeper Steam CD Key is available on RoyalCDKeys. 

Honorable Mentions

Below you will find some alternatives to Harvest Moon worth playing. Most games of this section share some aspects with the classic farming game, but they also feature their own. 

World's Dawn

• Publisher: Wayward Prophet
• Platforms: Microsoft Windows

The third game on this list is World’s Dawn, a social simulation game heavily based on Harvest Moon elements. Your mission in World’s Dawn is to bring colorful life back to a sleepy seaside village by harvesting crops, fishing, mining, building friendships and love, participating in festivals, and much more! World’s Dawn is an indie game with a beautiful art style and more than 30 hours of gameplay. If you’re a Harvest Moon fan, this game is for you! 

Yonder: The Cloud Catcher Chronicles

• Publisher: Prideful Sloth
• Platforms: Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S

Yonder: The Cloud Catcher Chronicles is an adventure game in a vibrant open world. The main goal of this game is to capture magical creatures with mysterious power. 

Is this game similar to Harvest Moon? The answer is yes because while progressing in the game, you must participate in activities such as farming, mining, fishing, and crafting to survive. In conclusion, it’s a fantasy adventure game that regularly receives very positive reviews on Steam.

Staxel

• Publisher: Humble Games
• Platforms: Microsoft Windows, Nintendo Switch

At first glance, Staxel looks like a Minecraft farming mod with similar gameplay as the classic Mojang game. But beyond this, this title is an exciting simulation game where you build your farm using voxel-based editing tools. 

Staxel also focuses on role-playing mechanics, offering combat-free gameplay where you can relax and see how the grass grows. In Staxel, you can raise animals and cute pets and develop relationships with other villagers. A good game for those who like peace and chillness. 

Recettear: An Item Shop’s Tale

• Publisher: Carpe Fulgur LLC
• Platforms: Microsoft Windows

Recettear is a role-playing game with some elements of simulation and dungeon crawling games. In short, you control Reccete, a little girl in charge of an item shop. The game’s main features are bargaining, haggling, and accompanying an adventurer into dungeons to acquire goods. Other activities include paying debts, rebuilding your home, and managing the shop successfully. Recettear will provide you with dozens of hours of fun! 

Voodoo Garden

• Publisher: Liu Lidan
• Platforms: Microsoft Windows

Voodoo Garden is a swamp farming simulator. Here, you’re the owner of a little hut located in a swamp. With the help of mysterious spirits, you can earn gold and power to produce supplies. You obtain leaves, fruits, mushrooms, and other products by planting herbs, shrubs, and trees and crafting goods. You can also catch wild swamp animals to produce occult accessories. But just like the other titles in this list, you’re not alone! You’ll have the company of little pets and little helper spirits.

Final Words