You’re shipwrecked! Luckily no one was hurt and most of the passengers set sail for their destinations, but you found an abandoned homestead on this remote island. With hard work and skillful farming, you will prosper and help your adventurous shipmates establish a new village with roads, bridges and exciting places to visit. There’s a lot of farming to do, people to date and animals to care for, it’s a new beginning and a chance to raise a farming family of your own!In Harvest Moon: Island of Happiness players’ plans to start a new life are drastically changed when the ship you are on is destroyed by a tropical storm. Now you find yourself stranded on an isolated island with a family of four from the ship. However, it seems that the island once was inhabited before…what happened to the people that used to live there? As you develop the island by growing crops, taking care of animals and expanding your farm, others will start to move onto the island and this mystery may be solved. The better you do, the more the island will grow. Though it was not your original dream, now is your chance to create your very own paradise.
 Create your own paradise |
 Farming provides food and prestige. View larger. |
 Find happiness with the perfect mate. View larger. |
 Track character status and assets. View larger. |
 Enjoy farm-flavored mini games. View larger. |
First Things First: Farming
Working with your fellow refugees, your first order of business is to create a farm. With what you grow you will soon be able to feed yourself and your fellow castaways and eventually will graduate to raising animals (some of the animals included are: cows, sheep, chickens and ducks). As you build up your farm, people who have an interest in the farming business move on over to the island and seek you out. These people open up shops and facilities, contributing to the island’s development, and provide you with new areas to explore and new people to speak with.
Getting Married
What good is paradise without someone to share it with? Once players have established themselves on the island by building and maintaining a farm and successfully raising animals on their homestead they will begin to notice that there are quite a few more people on the island than they initially suspected. Like yourself, many of these new faces are looking for someone to share their lives with. In addition to success on the farm, marriage also requires a few other requirements, but once satisfied you are free to play the field, go on dates and search available profiles for that special someone. But be careful. You will not be compatible with everyone you meet. Just a few or the bachelors and bachelorettes you will run into are:
 | Name: Natalie Gender: Female Bio: Natalie is one of the people who is shipwrecked on the island with you. She can be rather rough, a tomboy and competitive, and usually makes fun of her brother. |
| Name: Vaughn Gender: Male Bio: An exotic animal dealer, Vaughn has a very serious, almost emotionless attitude. He comes to the islands on Wednesdays and Thursdays and carries a lot of money. | |
| Name: Sabrina Gender: Female Bio: Sabrina came to the island with her father, who is president of the mining company. She is a quiet, shy girl who helps her father with his work and is very interested in ores. | |
| Name: Shea Gender: Male Bio: Shea is the adopted son of the witch doctor, Wada. He helps Wada by guarding his hens, ducks and birds from the Demon Bears. Unlike other bachelors, his heart is invisible. | |
| Name: Witch Princess Gender: Female Bio: The Witch Princess grew tired of living in Forget-Me-Not Valley and so moved to the island in hopes of meeting new people. In addition, she heard that the Harvest Goddess is here. She keeps 21 small teddy bears and one large one in her house and has an invisible heart. | |
| Name: Denny Gender: Male Bio: Denny is very familiar with the sea. He heard there’s a lot to be found on the island, so when his mother told him to meet new people he came to check it out. Though normally cheerful, he has quite a temper when mad. |
The island is full of challenges, but with hard work and skillful farming, you will prosper and help your adventurous shipmates establish a new village with roads, bridges and exciting places to visit. There’s a lot of farming to do, people to date and animals to care for. It’s a new beginning and a chance to raise a farming family of your own.
Product Features
- Play as a boy or a girl
- Attract settlers by building your farm
- Fall in love and start a family
- Explore the biggest portable Harvest Moon ever
- Compete against other ranchers via online with Nintendo Wi-Fi
A more challenging Harvest Moon I actually had the opportunity to play this game months ago via a Japanese copy. Past Harvest Moon games revolved around the same premise: grow crops, raise animals, fish, mine, etc.. This does too, but there are also noticeable differences. To start off with, most other games already have 90% or more of the people you interact with there. In Island of Happiness (IoH), you start off with about 4 other people. By certain dates and certain achievements more people arrive. In the past, you used ores to strengthen your tools, now you have colorful spheres called ‘wonderfuls’ that modify your tools in some very nice ways (imagine adding orange wonderfuls to your milker and receiving and extra milk for each orange wonderful attached). You will get wonderfuls for winning competitions (which can’t start until you build the East bridge. You will also be extremely exhausted (and hungry) for the first season and until you can get enough people to move to the island to open up the diner and cafe (so don’t over do working the crops). In HM IoH, there are more things to spend your hard earned money on. And sheep, before took 1 week before you could shear them again, now take only 3 days. On a down side, you cannot use the old cheat to change the weather. I’ve tried many times. It is more challenging because of the limitations early on and very little chance of actually getting married in the first 2 years – but even your rivals don’t seem too rushed to get married. Things will improve after you get the West bridge build (the East bridge has to be build first – so you are looking around $80,000 total for the first two bridges), but the West bridge will give you access to the mine and help bring in enough people to open up the diner and cafe. If you were easily bored by the second or third years of other Harvest Moons, this will give you more to do even well past the fourth or fifth years (I’m in Summer Year 4 of the Japanese version).
Solid addictive game but pure time waster Like many of the reviewers that gave average scores, I’m a veteran HM player. I’ve played Harvest Moon DS: Island of Happiness for over fifty hours now (almost to year 5) and have been quite disappointed. It’s addictive, but it’s no fun and frustrating.Pros:1. Includes both boy and girl main characters in one game. Huge plus.2. Use of touch controls compared to HM DS. People complain about poor controls, but one just needs to get used to it. Note that you can use the D-pad/buttons to select and use the tools.3. Almost no typos and glitches. Very solid.4. Rebuilding an entire island town is a refreshing approach.5. Tool upgrading thru wonderfuls adds a nice RPG element.Cons:1. Frustrating randomness. Crops only grows depending on weather conditions, which makes sense. However, you can go a whole season without profit cause it rained too much or get a series of cloudy days.2. Cheap events and cheap festivals. The elements that really made the HM games great are neglected once again. The festivals have no activities, just participation crap. Where are the tomato fights, chicken sumo, horse racing, etc?!? There aren’t even any mountain top romance scenes.3. Mining is still no fun and is a huge time sink, and you can’t avoid it if you want to progress. Mining sucks.4. A lot of corner-cutting design decisions: several villagers have the same model, no wedding dresses/tuxedos for marriages, repetitive dialogs.5. You’re forced to socialize occasionally to prevent people from moving out or from refusing your gifts. Note that this game can reach up to 99 villagers.6. So many tiny and costly upgrades meant to just slow you down.7. Animal care mini-games are no fun and just gives you blisters.8. Harvest Sprites no longer help you with the farm work!Update – Forgot some major cons:9. Separate spouse beds…what an awkward relationship.10. Growing trees is terrible. Over a year to grow and addition 1-2 years to make the profit over just the cost of seeds.11. No mayor, no clinic, no library (would be helpful to explain all the complications), etc. Just farm stores, 2 restaurants, and 2 hotels. What a lame town.