Japanese Rural Life Adventure Review

A brand new phone and a 3-month-trial of Apple Arcade introduced me to the cozy world of Japanese Rural Life Adventure. From the creators of Food Truck Pup, Tiny Pixel Farm, and Tiny Island Survival, this game continues their signature style of relaxing pixel art gameplay.

Publisher: Game Start LLC

Developer: Game Start LLC

Platform: Played on iPhone

Availability: Released on September 15, 2023 for Apple Arcade.

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Your journey begins with a simple character creator, followed by a scenic train ride to your new home in a mountain-side village. While your first major quest involves renovating your old, abandoned house, the game offers complete freedom in how you progress by letting you set your own pace and choose your activities. The main storyline revolves around bringing life back into your new village home, with various NPCs to meet and help along the way. To that end, completing a quest for these villagers brings in new tourists to the town, helping that revival. The mechanics of the tasks are straightforward: completing tasks consumes energy, which you can restore through eating or napping. 

Navigation is intuitive, with exclamation points marking tasks and interactive items highlighted by matching bubble icons. The gameplay itself also matches that simplicity, with most activities using only tapping or light interaction to complete. Despite that, Japanese Rural Life Adventure offers a large number of systems to engage with. Farming, fishing, cooking, and crafting are all here to toy with to varying degrees — the game is simple, not shallow.

What truly captivated me was the game's charming pixel-based art style and soothing soundtrack. Japanese Rural Life Adventure is full of Japanese architecture and cultural style, as the name would suggest. Shops, homes, and shrines all carry that visual style to great effect, granting an authenticity to the experience. The perfect blend of peaceful atmosphere and engaging content kept me playing for hours, and while it may no longer be my primary gaming focus, it will remain my go-to choice for relaxation and peaceful gaming sessions for some time.