Square Enix's farming sim RPG Harvestella has one element that's twice as hard because one of its devs played Elden Ring
Jul. 24, 2024Harvestella’s damage-dealing floors were originally a lot less lethal
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
Now, Harvestella is not a game I would categorize as particularly challenging, but there is combat and you can die. In fact, there are certain areas in dungeons where floors that must be traversed cause damage over time, and you need to use items to heal yourself. Well, according to lead planner and level designer Yuhei Miyamoto, those damage-dealing surfaces were originally a lot more forgiving.
“One tidbit about Harvestella – after playing Elden Ring, I doubled the damage dealt from floor gimmicks,” Miyamoto said onTwitter(viaAutomaton).
Miyamotofollowed upto clarify that this was a very intentional damage increase implemented to “highlight the value of countermeasures” like food and drinks that heal and cure ailments and debuffs. “Personally, I’m glad I did it,” he said via machine translation.
Now, it’s worth cautioning Elden Ring fans who might now be tempted to go play Harvestella that, if it wasn’t clear already, these are very, very different games. Harvestella is a light RPG, farming sim hybrid with cherry blossom trees everywhere and cute, romanceable characters and Elden Ring is… not that. In fact, if these games didn’t belong to such starkly opposing genres there wouldn’t be much of a story here.
The reason it’s notable is that Elden Ring’s influence is so wide-ranging that it significantly impacted a literal farming sim, and the next time I’m watching my fiancée play Harvestella and she takes damage from those toxic floors, I’ll tell her she has only Hidetaka Miyazaki to blame.
After stacking an ungodly amount of buffs, Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree’s final boss can be defeated in a single hit so strong that even its second phase cutscene can’t save it.
Sign up to the GamesRadar+ Newsletter
Weekly digests, tales from the communities you love, and more
After scoring a degree in English from ASU, I worked as a copy editor while freelancing for places like SFX Magazine, Screen Rant, Game Revolution, and MMORPG on the side. Now, as GamesRadar’s west coast Staff Writer, I’m responsible for managing the site’s western regional executive branch, AKA my apartment, and writing about whatever horror game I’m too afraid to finish.
The Witcher 4 may not have Geralt after all: his actor was “slapped by CD Projekt” for accidentally sharing a rumor that he’d be in it, just not as the protagonist
Cyberpunk 2077 is getting a surprise update a year after its once-final update, even after CDPR moved basically every dev to other games: “Sometimes, you want to do it ONE MORE time!”
The Rings of Power’s Gandalf reveal wasn’t decided until writing began on season 2: “It took a while for us to get there”
