– Uses the touchscreen capabilities offered by Switch

– Seamlessly transition from normal joystick and button inputs to touchscreen inputs with no trouble

– Water plants in a more mapped trail with the touchscreen rather than a straight line

– Return to the more classic form that the series developed in the early years

– A monsoon has shipwrecked you on an island that’s suffering from deterioration and depopulation

– Need to save them with your powers of gathering materials and building things

– It’s up to you to revive this town by improving it as you build up your own prosperous lifestyle

– Juggle your objectives, your relationships, and your story

– One button can accomplish anything you need to do on your farm

– Aiming for the end of 2017 for a release date

Source

Update: More Details

– 2.5D style is meant to evoke the very first Harvest Moon game

– 16-bit Super Nintendo sprites have been replaced with 3D-rendered models

– The flat perspective and grid-based, limited range of motion are all straight from Harvest Moon on SNES

– Natsume is emphatic that the studio is doing its own thing with Light of Hope, not borrowing anything back from Stardew Valley

– There still aren’t same-sex relationships available

– Natsume will introduce these “when the time is right”

Source

I love the old ones, maybe they can capture the essence of the first titles.

Really wish I could find some gameplay, I've tried to find some but all I've seen are people talking about the game but not showing it.

need gameplay and release date..this game announcement is what held off my purchasing stardew valley as i have an itch to play a harvest moon type game

As others have said it would've been really nice to see some gameplay come from this. Oh well, hopefully soon.

This is an entirely different franchise. The original Harvest Moon franchise (1997 to 2013) is now published under the title of Story of Seasons, and has a spinoff called Rune Factory.

It's a weird trademark thing. Marvelous/Victor Software/Amccus lost the trademark in a dispute with the company that localized the game to the US, Natsume.

To give a little more in depth history on the franchise.

In 1997, Amccus developed and released Bokujo Monogatari. They didn't have the resources to publish the game outside of Japan, so they delt with a third party for the US release, and Nintendo released it in Europe. The problem occurred here, they didn't have enough foresite to see that the little farming game at the end of the SNES's lifespan would become a wildly successful franchise, and so they allowed the localizers to acquire the trademark. So if things ever broke down between the two companies, Natsume could retain the trademark and slap "Harvest Moon" onto any game series they pleased.

From 1997 to 2013 this arrangement remained. Amccus was wrapped into Victor Software, and then rebranded as Marvelous in 2011 as the result of another merger. The game series continued to become published outside of Japan as "Harvest Moon"

Rising Star became the main publisher, but in the US it was still published by Natsume, or at lease licensed by Natsume.

In the end, Natsume just collected the royalty paycheque on the title "Harvest Moon" and had little to do with it as XSeed took over all localization efforts.

Things broke down, I am not sure the exact details, either Marvelous wanted to stop paying Natsume, or Natsume wanted to slap the "Harvest Moon" name onto a bunch of poorly developed garbage games, causing the rift.

Marvelous and XSeed had to rebrand their games as Story of Seasons and Rune Factory.

The Harvest Moon games that are released by Natsume now are NOT the same franchise as Harvest Moon from 1997 to 2013. It is like when Activision briefly owned the "Civilization" trademark, and released two Civilization games that had nothing to do with Sid Meier's Civilization.

damn I did not know this..this certainly makes me skeptical about this game now..now to go see if there is a story of seasons game on ps4 or switch lol

Update: More Details
– 2.5D style is meant to evoke the very first Harvest Moon game
– 16-bit Super Nintendo sprites have been replaced with 3D-rendered models
– The flat perspective and grid-based, limited range of motion are all straight from Harvest Moon on SNES
– Natsume is emphatic that the studio is doing its own thing with Light of Hope, not borrowing anything back from Stardew Valley
– There still aren’t same-sex relationships available
– Natsume will introduce these “when the time is right”

For the record, Natsume's "Harvest Moon" games are garbage (the ones since 2013). For example:
http://www.metacritic.com/game/3ds/harvest-moon-3d-the-lost-valley - Natsume's last Harvest Moon game only has a meta critic rating of 46%

Natsume are trademark trolls, and are taking advantage of people's confusion over branding, and making sales on cheap Bokujo Monogatari knock-offs.

Here's some more info from Wikipedia on the situation.

If it's like the mobile one they introduced for the Wii U, I'm out for sure :p

Lost Valley and the sequel looked interesting, but wasn't enough for me to actually buy it.. probably will stick with Story of Seasons, but will keep an eye out for this one too