Harvest Moon DS

Feeling disgruntled with spending your life banging keys in a cubicle? Want to get your cuticles mucky? Fancy a real day's graft in the great outdoors? Can't quite be bothered? Join the club. Fortunately, Rising Star has your back with Harvest Moon on the DS.

For those of you uninitiated in the ways of the Harvest Moon franchise, it's pretty simple. Take a management game based around agriculture and wrap it in an obscenely cute RPG, et voila!

You play a whip of

a young farm lad (orphaned, alas) and must raise your crops and nurture your little chunk of the the world in the hope of bringing about world peace and making a fistful of dosh. If only life were that simple, eh? Well, it's not. There's also the harvest goddess to think about. She's been banished by an evil witch's curse to another world where she's stuck. Some oompa-loompa-type fellas (or harvest sprites) have gone in after her, but unfortunately they've got a bit stuck too. Luckily, you can help. Every action you take on your farm could bring another back to you, be it topping up your water pail for the first time or bringing in a stonker of a harvest.

Don't worry though, it's not a life of solitude for this farmer. You'll be able to head into town, attend all kinds of festivities, and even fall in love.

Think of it as The Simple Life, but without a stuck-up young heiress who's determined to loaf off and make you squirm at every turn.