At PC Gaming Show 2020, Marvelous and XSeed announced Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town for Steam. The game is already planned on Nintendo Switch. It'll launch on both platforms in the country of democracy and freedom, America, on July 14, 2020. The game launches on Switch in Europe on July 10. The Steam page is live here.

This is historical. Friends of Mineral Town is the first Story of Seasons main game to hit Steam. It follows crossover game Doraemon Story of Seasons, which I personally wouldn't recommend, see my review, even if you were a huge Doraemon fan.

Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town is a 3D remake of the original FoMT, which first launched on Game Boy Advance in 2003. This remake includes two new characters, Jennifer and Brandon.

Personally speaking, I like the original 2D designs more than the new 3D designs, but my favorite characters Rick and Popuri still look cute so everything's fine.

Marvelous is already working on a brand new Story of Seasons game. No platforms were announced yet but it'll probably come to Switch and Steam as well. Rune Factory 5 is scheduled to launch in 2020 in Japan on Swtich. Though I personally expect it to be delayed to 2021 seeing the Covid-19 pandemic slowing down development. If you'd like to know how Rune Factory and Story of Seasons are related, read our introduction of the franchises here.

Friends of Mineral Town is already available in Japan on Switch since October 17, 2019. If you can't wait till July, and want to learn Japanese, it's a pretty good buy. Seeing all the ingame Kanji includes Furigana.

Tencent, in its unyielding move to try and control anime and Japanese games, recently revealed it's buying 20% of Marvelous.