Project Happiness Is About Making A Wish Come True

Project Happiness, a new game from Harvest Moon creator Yasuhiro Wada, will bring players back to a small village this time as a shopkeeper. This game, like Harvest Moon before it, is inspired by Wada-san’s childhood days where he lived in a small, but charming town in Japan.

Wada-san moved to the big city, but missed the community and connection to a small town. The grass is always greener on the other side, I suppose. “I have been involved developing Harvest Moon for fifteen years, as the ‘father’ of the series and I consider it as if it was my own child,” Wada said speaking to Siliconera. “Now, that fifteen years have passed I consider Harvest Moon has grown up. Looking back fifteen years ago, I wanted to think about the ideas I had before I created Harvest Moon and incorporate them into a new game.”

I watched a short teaser for Project Happiness with Wada and asked what he meant by “what would you choose at the end?”

“There are seven wishes you can make in the game and the player can choose which wish they want to make,” Wada answered.

“Seven wishes, but you can only make one per game,” I responded.

“Yeah, you can play the game seven times,” Wada laughed.

I tried to get Wada to tell us about the different wishes to get a better idea about the game, but he said we’ll have to wait for that information. I hope Project Happiness has multiple save slots, I mentioned that to Wada as well. Making a wish come true is one of Project Happiness’ main goals, but the story also involves a sprite designed by Pokémon illustrator Atsuko Nishida.

“The sprite is a navigator and it has its own story,” Wada explained. “The player, he or she, depending on how you play the game, the Sprite’s story changes.”

Project Happiness is slated for release in 2013 on Nintendo 3DS and mobiles. Natsume, which will publish Project Happiness in North America, also gave us a goodie bag of Harvest Moon plushies to giveaway to Siliconera readers. Anyone want them?

If you’re interested, post a wish Toybox and Natsume should include in Project Happiness in the comments. We’ll pick one winner who will receive the Harvest Moon bag and plushies. (I think there is a llama in there…) Oh, and we’re opening this contest to international readers, too. Check back on June 28th to see who won. Good luck!