If you’re a Harvest Moon fan, then no doubt you have a vision in your mind of what you expect the franchise to offer. This likely includes the words farming, planting, relaxing, and chilled. If this is you, then get ready for Harvest Moon: Mad Dash to take those expectations and stomp on them, hard.
Living up to its name, Mad Dash sends players on a frantic farming race, requiring them to plant and farm crops against the clock, in a match-3 style game of frantic fun.
A Change Of Pace
This title is a huge change of pace for the franchise. Instead of giving you time to plan and play, you’ll need to match up sections of plants in a Tetris-style match-3 puzzle game. Once enough are linked together they will sprout, allowing you to harvest them.
Plants are in random shapes scattered across the field. Your job is to group together the matching colors in order to harvest them. You can move and rotate each section, allowing you to create bigger patches. If you create larger squares, then the crops will grow larger. However, you need to keep an eye on them, as once they are grown they will begin to rot.
Along the bottom of the screen, orders will appear. Harvesting the crops to fulfill them will give you points. The more points you get the more stars you receive, up to a maximum of three per level. While you don’t need to max your stars on every level, there are gates along the path which you’ll need a certain amount of stars to unlock.
As you progress, you will also need to match up ponds to catch fish and feed the cows to collect milk. There are also hazards that come into play, including bulls and even lava. These additions, especially when different things are combined, stop the game from feeling stale and dull.
Frantic Family Fun
This game is aimed squarely at a family market, so I decided to test it out with my kids. I wanted to see how easily they could pick it up and if they enjoyed it. I can tell you now that letting your children play this game seems to pretty much guarantee chaos and laughter. The other thing to note is that two-player mode for some reason appears to require two Joy-Cons per person, meaning I now need to go and buy extra Joy-Cons (thanks, Natsume!).
While we, unfortunately, couldn’t test the multiplayer version because of this, the single-player version is still incredibly fast, fun, and frantic.
The controls and mechanics are easy to understand, but difficult to master. This led to lots of panicking, laughing, and some increasingly crazy back-seat gaming. I can only imagine that playing with two people at once only increases this chaos, so you may want to bear that in mind.
A New Spin On An Old Franchise
When a franchise takes a new turn, the most important thing we need to look at is does it work? In this case, the answer is an absolute yes.
From the youngest to the oldest in my family, we all enjoyed the simple, but increasingly challenging mechanics of the game. The difficulty level is not a steep curve, nor is it impossible, but it does get difficult over time.
Once bigger and more bizarrely shaped pieces begin to appear, you often have to move other pieces out of the way before you can complete them. You may also need to throw some extra pieces in the basket at the back of the field in order to have them replaced by useful ones.
These tiny changes keep the game feeling more fresh and fun than many match-3 puzzle games. The addition of the timer mechanic adds another layer of enjoyment for those who love a fast-paced challenge.
Familiarity In The Chaos
Despite the genre change, this game still has the heart of Harvest Moon, beating in its graphics, sounds, and music. As you battle through the fields, you’ll feel like you’re in familiar surroundings, even if farming life appears to have taken a turn somewhere along the way.
If you want the slow pace of those regular titles, then this isn’t the game for you but anyone who wants a fast-paced, family-friendly game would be wise to seek this out.
A Switch copy of Harvest Moon: Mad Dash purchased by TheGamer for this review. Harvest Moon: Mad Dash is available on the PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch.
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