Franchise: Harvest Moon

While farm animals can die from starvation, disease, or old age in the Harvest Moon series, they cannot be physically beaten, harmed, or killed by the player. This is a specific design choice in line with a recurring concept across Natsume's games referred to as "harmony with nature", or living in harmony with and respecting plants and animals. In a 1999 interview with IGN, Natsume president Yasuhiro Maekawa explained that this concept was used not because they wanted to make games with Shintoist beliefs, but because they wanted to focus on niche markets by doing something different from popular "bloody fighting titles" instead of competing with them.

The Bokujō Monogatari series, as it's originally known in Japan, which translates to "Farm Story", was known in the West as Harvest Moon up until 2014 where it was changed to Story of Seasons. This was because Western localization of the series was handed over to XSEED, a subsidiary of Marvelous AQL who owns Bokujō Monogatari, instead of to Natsume, who had been localizing the series in the West since the very first title. Because Natsume owned the trademark for Harvest Moon and not Marvellous, Natsume decided to create their own series of original games under the Harvest Moon name, prompting XSEED to rename the Bokujō Monogatari series in the West to Story of Seasons.

Harvest Moon was created after series creator, Yasuhiro Wada, moved from the Japanese countryside to Tokyo. After living in the city he began to reminisce about his home, which is where some of the key concepts for Harvest Moon came from.