Interview: Preparing Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar

Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar is coming back, giving us a chance to once again start a new life in Zephyr town and balance farming and selling. It’s been quite some time since it debuted on the DS as Harvest Moon: Grand Bazaar, and already a number of changes like new romance options and a glider appear. Siliconera spoke with Story of Seasons Manager Hikaru Nakano to learn more about what went into preparing this latest remake.

Jenni Lada: What Made you decide to return to Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar? 

Hikaru Nakano: Out of all of the titles in the Story of Seasons series, Grand Bazaar is one that is particularly characteristic or unique in the content that it has in the game. It’s also one that we think is quite easy to play as well. So it’s easy to pick up and enjoy for players. Those are the reasons that we decided to choose this title. 

But, looking at it from a wider lens, from the perspective of the player walking through the town and [by] the townsfolk, understanding their environment, and also interacting with animals, this was a title that we thought was good in those aspects in particular. So in our goal to make an easy to play and enjoyable experience for players that they can enjoy for a long time, we decided to go with Grand Bazaar.

Given this entry originally appeared on the Nintendo DS as Harvest Moon: Grand Bazaar, what challenges did you encounter when preparing Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar for new platforms like the Switch and PC? 

Nakano: Yes, we did face various difficulties when bringing the title from the DS to these modern Switch and PC platforms as well. In particular, all of the art and graphics on the DS were in 2D, so we actually recreated everything from the ground up for this title. It was completely remade graphically. 

One example to dive into there is not just the art, but even animations for the various, like their eyes, their mouths, and that type of thing. The ways and styles of doing that back in the DS era were a lot, let’s say simpler, than they are in the modern area just because of the limitations of the time. Now we have the ability to create a lot more detail in those kinds of animations and expressions. So we took great efforts into making sure that the expressions of characters were more detailed and filled with feelings so that we could create a more immersive experience for the player in the modern era.

What kind of quality-of-life adjustments did you come up with when creating this new version of Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar for modern platforms?

Nakano: There really are so many improvements that we have made that it is difficult to talk about all of them, but maybe one example that I can bring up as a representative is the way that we handle animals now. So first, I want to talk about maybe the graphical improvements with some of the animals and the gameplay as well. 

We wanted to make the player feel closer to their animals as they raise them and help build relationships between them. We put a lot of effort into the way that the animals, the livestock and pets, will react to you when you interact with them. Whether it’s like petting them, brushing them, or milking them. There are a lot of animations and interactions between the player and the animals in that way. 

But specifically with quality-of-life stuff, an example that I can give is in the original Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar, you had to push them or corral them yourself to get them to go outside for the day. But now you can employ your pets, your dogs and your cats, to herd the livestock, the cows and the chickens, outside so that they’ll go graze in the pasture on their own. 

There are many examples like that [where] we endeavored to decrease the stress for the player and improve the gameplay experience. 

There’s one more related to animals that I thought of that I wanted to share as well. You may recall from that older era of Story of Seasons games that oftentimes you would need to, in other titles, put only the amount of feed that the animal would eat in the feeder each day. So you would have to put the feed out for them every single day. In the original Grand Bazaar, one thing that we thought was very good and was a quality-of-life [feature] at the time too was that that you could put feed in for multiple days at once so you didn’t have to add the feed for the animal every day. So in that way, there are also things that we kept from the original title that we think were good for the time too.

I noticed one of those gameplay elements that you kept is that there is still no shipping bin in Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar. What made you decide to maintain that decision and not bring the shipping bin box. 

Nakano: I mentioned at the beginning of our talk that Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar is, among other things, quite unique and characteristic in some ways. Building on that, all of the titles you play as this farmer and you raise your cows and your chickens, you harvest your milk and your eggs, or perhaps you go to the field and you harvest your vegetables, or you go to your tree and you harvest your fruit. That is something that is shared, but what is unique about this title is that once per week you gather up all the things that you have produced and you bring them to the bazaar and then you interact with your customer directly to sell them and turn all of your hard work into your earnings that you can then use going forward. 

We did actually consider adding the shipping box during development to this title as well, but we decided instead, that it would be best to maximize  what is the unique point of this title. You know, we put a lot of work into making the bazaar very fun for our players, and we definitely want them to experience that aspect of the game to the fullest. Because of that, we decided not to add this.

In the original Harvest Moon: Grand Bazaar, you were able to experience cooperative multiplayer with other players and they could see your farm, so is it still possible to have that online or multiplayer experience in Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar?

Nakano: There is no multiplayer in this version of Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar.

Is multiplayer something that you would perhaps explore in future Story of Seasons games?

Nakano: Essentially, yes, I would like to consider that kind of multiplayer again in the future, but with the caveat that we do want to make sure that it is chosen for the correct game and implemented in the right way so that it is a good and fun experience for the players. 

There are certain games that are fun as single-player games, and certain games that are more fun as multiplayer games. We would like to consider the possibility of multiplayer on a title-by-title basis. It might be a little more complicated with the caveats that I just mentioned, but in essence yes. I would like to consider it for the future and would love to see how we can make that happen. 

When it comes to romance and marriage elements, in the demo it seemed like there were no restrictions. So no matter what kind of character you play, you can romance everybody in Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar?

Nakano: Yes, that is correct. That is something that we have implemented in our past few titles, like [Story of Seasons: Pioneers of] Olive Town. The way it works is that no matter the players’ characters’ gender, they are free to choose [whichever] marriage candidate that they would like. We don’t want our players to have to worry about that kind of thing when they are enjoying the romance in our games. 

Arata is one of the new romance options in Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar. How did you come up with his personality and what made you decide to make a connection between him and Samir? 

Nakano: From the planning stages [when] creating this game, we knew that we wanted to add new marriage candidates. The way that we looked at it was looking at the current cast, as well as the setting of Zephyr Town. What kinds of characters would increase the overall appeal of the cast, as well as fit in well and exemplify the world of Zephyr Town. You know, with the connection with Samir, he is a student studying from abroad. So we knew that we wanted to create some kind of connection there to further build out the world of Zephyr town and make it feel more robust and alive. 

As far as the kind of characterization that Arata has, he’s got, compared to the other characters, more of like a wild side. When I say wild side, I don’t mean crazy. I mean like outdoorsy. We also added like a mountain area in this game as well. So we thought Arata’s outdoorsy side would fit with that kind of setting too. 

Overall, we look at the whole picture and think of what will further exemplify the world and what will make the whole cast shine.

Likewise, when creating Diana, what was the inspiration for her and how did you decide to make her tied to the Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar bazaar?

Nakano: To explain her case, I actually need to talk a little bit about the original Grand Bazaar game. So in that game, just as in this one, the bazaar starts very small and it’s run down. You work to make it bigger and prosper, and grow the bazaar. However, in that older game there really isn’t a reason or explanation for that. There are no cutscenes. There’s basically not a real story surrounding it, and that’s something that we wanted to add and improve upon in this title as well. 

So we knew that we wanted to create the story around the bazaar, and one way that we’re doing that is improving upon Felix’s character and his motivations too, drawing out his emotions as well. He has motivations to [build] the bazaar too, but we couldn’t do it with just him. We also needed to have this other organization that would be pushing the story along too, so it wasn’t just Felix as well. Putting [in] a character that could be like the face of that committee makes it more relatable.

We thought that it would be great to add a marriage candidate as the person that was involved with that committee so that we could better tell the story, then tell the story of the marriage candidate within that committee as well.

In the original Harvest Moon: Grand Bazaar, you were only able to have one child, and the child had a default look to them. In Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar, will it be possible to have more than one child? Will they be able to look like you and your partner? 

Nakano: I believe that it is only one child in this title as well. However, the appearance is affected both by the appearance of the player character’s avatar, as well as the partner. That’s something that we’ve been doing in [Story of Seasons: Pioneers of] Olive Town and A Wonderful Life as well. We try to take in some elements of both of the parents.

Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar will come to the Nintendo Switch on August 27, 2025. 

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