Harvest Moon: Light of Hope ‘s recent launch for smartphones is quite a milestone for games that are based on the premise of you taking control over a family farm. While this genre certainly saw it’s heyday back when Stardew Valley was popular, the truth is that the mother of all farm games was clearly Harvest Moon all of 22 years ago when it first popped up on our screens. In celebration of this premium launch, we’re making up a list of games that include top notch Android alternatives to Harvest Moon. Time to grab your rake and head out to the country.
Harvest Master: Farm Sim
The name of this game simply could not be any clearer. It is as it says it does, and that’s a nice touch. Against all odds — psyche! — its argument (unsurprisingly) has you behind the controls of your family farm in a desperate attempt to save it from the debts it’s accrued over the years. Financial pressures aside, it’ll also be your job to care for your livestock, rack up food and hay for your animals and get along well with your neighbors — hint: your future sweetheart lives in your very own hometown. This might just be the game on our list that’s the most similar to Harvest Moon and Stardew Valley. [Download]
Tiny Pixel Farm
It’s fairly uncommon to find games with vertical display as their main screen, but Tiny Pixel Farm is here to offer users a much more casual game. Even though you won’t have too many different kinds of seeds to play, you will have a huge multitude of animals to add to your farm turning it into a countryside dreamland. Plus its charming graphics make for quite an enjoyable ride. It’s this marked simplicity and sweetness that will be sure to attract beginners. Even so, it’s still sure to please veterans of this genre and is none-the-less enjoyable despite its simple aesthetics and gameplay.
[Download]
Country Life: Harvest Day
If you really want to get into the full adventure of 3D living on a virtual farm, look no further. You’ll be planting crops, caring for your farm animals, fishing tons of well.. fish? Let’s just say there isn’t much room for boredom in this game. You’ll be busy gathering stones and collecting minerals for that. Plus, its all drawn together through a lovely backstory where you follow along to, along with a social component that adds yet another layer of unique style to this game. No way you’re getting bored here.
[Download]
Island Survival
Many a survival game relies on a heavy load of planting and resource management. And while that’s not its main appeal, there are a multitude of titles where that aspect of strategy is paramount to success. Island Survival is one such game, and in fact you’ll need to spend a whole lotta time on agriculture and resource mining. Thrown into the mix is a nice retro-feel to its pixelated graphics — if that’s your kind of thing, that is (hint: it’s so our kind of thing, so we obviously had to give it a positive write up).
[Download]
Ankora
From time to time we run across a game that actually matches up with realtity — to an extent. This time we’re looking at a game that’s openly inspired by a quasi sci-fi esthetic, which is nice enough, but on top of that, Ankora’s leitmotiv is truly a breath of fresh air: survive a hostile post-apocalyptic world by way of farming. Nice twist, huh? Learn the rules of the game and recreate recipes à la Minecraft by learning from one of the local tribespeople. Starting off, it might not seem too much like Harvest Moon, but you’ll soon find that there are tons of similar tasks like the original game by Setsuko Miyakoshi and Ken Takahashi. [Download]
