➤ Japanese Rural Life Adventure, the review of a relaxing rural adventure 🕹

Apple Arcade offers its inevitable sandbox adventure in a rural setting with the excellent Japanese Rural Life Adventure.

The desire to escape from reality pushes us more and more to take refuge in situations closer to nature, but paradoxically this happens more in a simulated way than anything else, generating a strange logical short circuit. There japanese rural life adventure review, exclusively on Apple Arcade, is one of the many examples of video games that take advantage of the charm of rural life to drag us into its mechanics, made of dense, well-oiled gears whose perfect movement we find ourselves following. "More and more young people choose to live in the countryside," the somber owner of the land tells us as soon as we set foot in our new house at the beginning of the story, "but few resist," just to welcome us. The best way possible. The gruff knight perfectly summarizes the main concept of this game: in search of tranquility in nature, we find ourselves trapped in an enormous number of activities that mark the day and channel us towards a slow pre-established progression.

It is ironic that the desire for freedom and return to nature is represented as a rigorous organization of work times according to the inflexible mechanics of the micromanagement of many activities, including domestic care, repairs, missions and field management , but this opposition of funds works perfectly, as we have also seen in other similar titles. Everything is based on the melancholic charm of the environment that immediately captures the player and drags them into irresistible gameplay.

In this case, in addition to rural beauty, the game can also count on the particular Japanese atmosphere, which inexorably immerses us in this magical world of "tranquility" and good feelings. The effect of this mix can easily be seen in games like Harvest Moon, Stardew Valley and Animal Crossing, which have become huge hits. Japanese Rural Life Adventure certainly lacks a touch of originality and that extra something in terms of gameplay that can really make it stand out from an increasingly large and fierce competition, but the atmosphere of the Japanese countryside can make up for these shortcomings.

I want to go live in the countryside

Japanese Rural Life Adventure, the review of a relaxing rural adventure — The house and its surroundings are the first thing to fix in Japanese Rural Life Adventure

The story, barely mentioned, follows the typical plot of the genre in question, with the protagonist child who suddenly decides to retire to the countryside in search of greater tranquility and a healthy life, finding himself faced with a series of commitments and things to do. which immediately force you to jog between one activity and another. He game everything centers on this need to meet linked and progressive objectives, ranging from the initial repair of the house to helping neighbors in various situations, to restoring the original beauty of the place we are in, repairing damage, reviving businesses and breathe new life into bucolic relationships and activities. It is essentially what we have seen in the other most famous agricultural sandboxes, in this case also a little simplified to make it more usable on mobile platforms, where presumably Apple Arcade titles should have a larger audience.

Precisely this context represents a strong point of Japanese Rural Life Adventure: its extremely fragmented structure, which requires continuous short movements and frequent "taps" on the screen to carry out the numerous repetitive activities that fill the protagonist's day, adapts perfectly to the rhythm . Continuous gameplay style that is typical of games. mobile.

Although it can be played perfectly even on Mac, It is clear that the best size for the Game Start title is an iPhone, pushing us to return continually and in small doses to the magical world of the Japanese countryside wherever we are. Taking your phone out of your pocket and immediately launching into one of the many adventure activities in rural Japanese life is like taking a quick trip to a timeless Japanese countryside, adorned with a graphics in pixel art that, for once, also has some character and is functional when it comes to creating an aesthetic identity for the game.

For the rest, the action remains typical of this type of management software focused on "micromanagement": each activity requires several steps between the collection of resources, the use of tools, possible crafts and other small interconnected activities, extremely repetitive but also irresistible. If you get into the right environment, as it is easy to happen.

Conclusions

Tested version iPad 1.0.90 digital delivery App Store Holygamerz.com 7.5 Readers (4) 6.8 your vote

The gameplay is physiologically attractive but in an almost compulsive way, ultimately resulting in repetitive and mechanical. However, what really matters in Japanese Rural Life Adventure is the atmosphere that permeates each screen of the game. The fact of being able to take an iPhone out of your pocket and be instantly transported to a magical Japanese-style bucolic world is truly the strong point of this title, which otherwise does not offer particularly innovative solutions but manages to easily capture us in its very tender but inexorable reels. .