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While ArtePiazza are best known for their work on the Dragon Quest series, the studio also helped create one of Marvelous’ Harvest Moon games a few years ago. Innocent Life: A Futuristic Harvest Moon was developed by ArtePiazza for the PSP, and unlike other games in the series, it took place in a sci-fi setting.
When we recently spoke with ArtePiazza, I couldn’t help but ask CEO Shintaro Majima how they settled upon the sci-fit setting of the game.
Majima replied, “The Marvelous Entertainment producer at the time came to us asking, ‘Don’t you want to create something?’ There was already a large fanbase for Harvest Moon, but their request was to create a game that would use a completely different approach, so it was decided to use a sci-fi setting that hadn’t existed up until then, as well as to make the main character execute farming work in total loneliness.”
“That was [Planning Director] Sugimura’s suggestion,” Majima explained. “In order to enjoy lonely farming, we were very picky about the operability of the farmwork, and challenged ourselves by creating things like a robot appearing to help with the farmwork, an automatic Bas&Ket trolley system, the main character’s vehicle [a buggy] and other tools.”
Innocent Life was originally released for the PSP and was later ported the PlayStation 2. Both versions of the game have been released in North America, while the PSP version is available in Europe as well.
