Gematsu recently sat down with Story of Seasons series manager Hikaru Nakano regarding the newly announced Harvest Moon: Grand Bazaar reimagining Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar. Nakano talked modernizing the game for a new audience, new content, the theme of wind, selling at the bazaar, and more.
Get the full interview below.
Grand Bazaar is a reimagining of a DS title. What made you decide to revisit this specific entry in the series, and how did you approach modernizing it?
Hikaru Nakano, Story of Seasons Series Manager: “I’d first like to talk about why we chose this title specifically. As a creator, I would like to choose a past title that was an especially good one, so that we can bring that title to a modern audience. There are many different opinions that we take into consideration when we make these decisions—there are the other developers, the business side, our overseas partners—so that we can make sure all of the stakeholders’ opinions are reflected in our decision.
“So while that’s the general approach of how we choose which past titles to recreate, for Grand Bazaar specifically, we chose this title due to the timing of when it was released on DS, as well as some other factors. And it’s actually not as well known of a title as some of our other games in the series. However, we think it has a lot of really great elements that we want modern audiences to experience.
“So when we step back and ask ourselves, ‘What’s important for the Story of Seasons series as a whole?,’ we focus on ensuring that the protagonist arrives in a land that’s withered or barren, where they’ll work to regrow and create a farm. They’ll witness the town grow alongside them, and hopefully, through this process, they’ll grow as individuals, build a family, and lead a fulfilling farming life. And that’s the kind of experience present in this game, and what we want players to experience. And as a last point on that, you can build up a bunch of small objectives to move forward in the game in the way that suits you, while still being able to enjoy the farmer life in the way that we as the creators envisioned it.”
How closely does this reimagining follow the original game? Where have you taken the biggest creative liberties?
Nakano: “This game is based on the original DS title, as you mentioned, but we actually created it from the ground up. When I say that, I mean that while the world, story, and characters all may feel familiar and nostalgic to the players who have played the original title, the gameplay should feel brand-new. From a high-level perspective, you’re growing your crops, living your farm life, and taking your items to the bazaar to sell, but the breadth and depth of the gameplay represented in those systems have been enhanced, and it’ll feel like a big improvement in modern quality compared to the original game. The volume of content is also more comparable to a brand new title in the series—everything from the variety of crops and animals is all vastly increased compared to the original title, so it should feel very different even for players who have played the original.”
Wind is a major theme in the game. Other than gliding and windmills, does it play any other role, such as in farming or daily life?
Nakano: “As you mentioned, some of the key focuses of the game are the gliders and the windmills. But to touch a bit upon how the wind affects those things, depending on the strength of the wind, you can fly further on your glider compared to other days. The strength of the wind will also affect the speed of which your byproducts are processed through the windmill, so there are some dynamic influences in the gameplay systems based on the day-to-day changes of the wind.
“Another aspect ramped up in this game is the weather events, so the influence of events like typhoons, hurricanes, or snowstorms on your farm and daily life has been enhanced compared to past titles. They can of course cause a danger to your farm, but as long as you make preparations to deal with these incoming events, then you can mitigate or prevent any damage that you may face. So there are ways to interact with the wind in that way. It’s also represented in the expression of the game. Like if you go outside on the day that a typhoon or hurricane, it might be quite difficult to be outside.
“One more way that the weather affects the game is that, the day after a typhoon, there are many items that you can find on the ground that have either floated in or been uncovered. So you may be able to find more big rocks and stuff like that.”
Can you explain how the selling system works? And how selling has evolved from the original game?
Nakano: “As with the original Zephyr Town, the setting of this game features the bazaar. But when you start out, the once famous bazaar has fallen on hard times and has shrunk quite a bit. There are only a few stalls, and tourists are no longer coming to the bazaar in Zephyr Town as a result. As the protagonist, the player comes in and brings whatever they want to sell at the bazaar—whatever they have focused on creating at their farm—and can increase the quality of those items the more they create. So if they want to be a milk seller or a vegetable seller, they can do that at the bazaar. And through their sales, the bazaar will prosper and increase in size, tourists will come to Zephyr Town and to the bazaar, and the townsfolk will become happier and prosper.
“So that’s the overarching concept of the bazaar, but to get into the specifics of how the player actually interacts with it—you take all of the items you have at the farm, you display them at your bazaar, you can customize your stall to create your own space, and then you can sell your items directly to customers, attracting them by ringing a bell and directly interacting with them. I believe this is the only title in the Story of Seasons series where the player can directly sell the goods they created.
“As for the differences in the bazaar compared to the original game… I think that if those who have played the original play this game, they will feel like the bazaar does have a sense of familiarity—they’ll think, ‘oh, this is kind of how it was in the original’—so it won’t feel completely different. However, in a sense, everything is different from the original is in this iteration of the bazaar, but the spirit and the basic concept are the same. So users who have played the original game will have a sense of familiarity when playing the new one, but we have improved upon and drastically increased the amount of gameplay surrounding the bazaar.
“So to give just a few examples of that, I mentioned that you’re able to customize your bazaar. So what that can look like specifically is, let’s say you want to focus on becoming a vegetable seller—you create a lot of vegetables—you can customize your bazaar so that your stall actually is better equipped to sell vegetables. You can get bonuses for different things that way. Another instance is that we mentioned that the number of stalls in the bazaar starts out quite small, but as you improve your stall, you can increase the size of your stall, which will result in more vendors coming to visit the bazaar. And so the number of stalls at the bazaar itself will also increase. So there are more varieties and kinds of stalls at the bazaar in this version of the game. And there are also a variety of characters running those stalls, some of which fans may recognize.
“One last thing that I want to bring up about the bazaar, which is a big change, is that there are now sprites. The sprites in Grand Bazaar actually have their own stall at the bazaar, and that’s where you get things like the glider, for example. They have their own variety of things that they sell, and they also help the player at their stall. They’ll even do little dances to excite your customers. And once you fill up something called the ‘Cheer Meter’ to a certain level, then you can enter a state called ‘Cheer Time,’ which is when the sprites will all cheer the player on and continue to do their dance as you’re selling goods. That will excite the customers, which might get them to spend a lot more buying your goods than they would otherwise. So there’s a lot of interactions with the sprites.
“These are just some examples of the improvements we made to the bazaar gameplay that we hope players will enjoy, and we hope it makes the bazaar experience overall more exciting.”
Speaking of overspending, how much control does the player have over the pricing of their items at bazaar? Does everything have a set price? Or can I sell this apple for $100 if I wanted to? (Not that anyone would buy an apple for $100, but you get what I mean!)
Nakano: “So the prices are something that we control on the development side in that they’re fixed within the game. However, I do have an interesting story about that. That was actually a debate we had during development—whether we should allow players to set the prices versus having fixed prices. And what came out of that discussion is that we realized there would be a bit of trial-and-error for the player if they tried to set their own prices. For example, if they wanted to set their apples for $100, it wouldn’t sell, as you said. So then they’d try $50 and it may not sell that much. So then they try $20 and so on before they would maybe get to the right price where they end up selling the most amount of apples. So we thought figuring out the right pricing might become a stress for the player. Because of that, we decided to fix the prices. That being said, there are still ways the player can interact with pricing and have a strategy, or enjoy working with pricing. For example, some items may be priced differently during different seasons, or there may be tourists who buy items at higher prices. So there are still ways that we can have that sort of shop management strategy involved in the game.”
We’ve talked a lot of shop, but can you talk a bit about the romance in Grand Bazaar?
Nakano: “We put a lot of effort into the event scenes for reaching different relationship levels with the NPCs. So that’s something that we want players to enjoy. We started working more on the immersiveness of the event scenes in Pioneers of Olivetown, and we have continued to iterate and improve upon them in Grand Bazaar. So event scenes are more immersive and dynamic. They’re fully voiced now for the first time and can really make you feel like you’re stepping into the character and role-playing in this world. I don’t want to say which character I’m referring to here, but when I watch the event scenes with my favorite character, it’s really immersive and can make you feel like you’re actually in a relationship with that character. I can feel more moved experiencing these event scenes than I have for other characters in previous games comparatively. So, that’s something that I hope players are really able to enjoy in this release.”
Before we go, back in 2023, Marvelous announced that it was developing a “traditional” new Story of Seasons game, as well as a “multiplayer” one. Is this the “traditional” game that was in development back then, or is this something completely different?
Nakano: “Ah, you’re referring to when we put out a video talking about the upcoming Story of Seasons games. So yeah, Grand Bazaar is one of the titles we were referring to at that time. Some of the video that we played during that segment was from Grand Bazaar. So I can confirm that. However, I really can’t say much else about any other new titles!”
*Gematsu also asked for whether there are plans to release Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar for PlayStation, Xbox, or Switch 2, but Marvelous was not able to provide any information beyond what has already been announced.
View a new set of screenshots at the gallery.
Screenshots
Related
