Taken from the latest update:
"It’s with great excitement that we announce our plans to partner with Natsume-Atari to create an Town Creation RPG. Natsume is known for the Harvest Moon series. Natsume Atari has done some great pixel based games like Ninja Warriors and Wild Guns.
So what is THIS? We are still very, very early in the planning stages so there is a lot we cannot commit to. However, these are the current thoughts:
- It will release before the main game, which will hopefully hold you over during the excruciatingly long 2 and a half year wait.
- It will feature a variety of different “lifestyle” mini-games that will allow you to gather a wide variety of different materials to build up your town/farm/house.
- The goal is to allow these materials to transfer over to Eiyuden Chronicle allowing you a head-start at crafting some of the different items/armor/etc in the game.
- You will get to meet a few of the characters that appear in Eiyuden Chronicle and get to know them a bit earlier.
- There may be some kind of battle mechanic, but we are still talking it over.
Some production points of note:
- Allowing a partner like Natsume-Atari to work on this game helps us make something we love without worrying about too much wear and tear on the team.
- The goal is to share as many assets/designs/etc. so that it will be an efficient production.
Now the hard part:
While this is a separate title and not really DLC, we want to give this to our backers as bonus content for all the support they’ve given us. However, there is a rub—Console platform holders will charge us 30% of the base price of the game to purchase DL codes so that we can give you the game for free. That means we’d be out a HUGE amount of money if we didn’t charge something to at least cover that cost.
Based on the content of the game, we are expecting whatever publisher we end up working with to charge around 15-20 dollars for this title. 30% of that would be between 5-7 dollars. It’s a cost we can't do anything about, so we are asking backers to up their pledge by 7 dollars if you want this companion title.
It’s a hard decision to make but making the world of Eiyuden Chronicle bigger and providing people with an early taste is our last dream. It will still be much, much cheaper than the retail price, so thank you for understanding."
TLDR: A Mini Harvest Moon spin-off like/lifestyle game by Natsume rereleasing before Eiyuden Chronicle
