CGMagazine recently travelled to Los Angeles for a preview of the latest Rune Factory game from developer Marvelous, Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma. The game has evolved from simple farming mechanics to village building and has introduced a new adventure aspect with brand-new tools to help players progress. You can build relationships for romance and recruit allies for battle, rebuild entire villages as you see fit and explore the vast new world known as Azuma.
Hisashi Fujii, who is known for his previous work on DEADCRAFT, is producing the project. This is his first time tackling the Rune Factory series, but he seemed genuinely excited to be part of the project. CGMagazine had the opportunity to speak with him about some of the biggest changes in the game, what players can look forward to, how they expanded the gameplay while streamlining tasks and what goes into creating a balance between an RPG and a life simulation game.
Okay, so the first thing I would like to ask is, what are you most excited for the players of Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma to experience that hasn’t existed in previous versions?
Hisashi Fujii: So the biggest change compared to past games in the series is that more than just creating your own farm, you’re able to completely create your village from scratch. So, that sort of customization is what I’m really excited for players to experience.
By creating the village, you can use the different buildings that you place and different elements that you place to actually improve your parameters and essentially level up different elements of your character. So, I’m really excited to see how they customize both to improve their characters and the designs that they come up with for their own villages. Very good.
Now, did the expanse of the things that you can do in Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma inform how some of the workflows were streamlined in terms of how things are customized within the game?
Hisashi Fujii: So in previous games in the series, the fundamental gameplay cycle was that you would farm and then harvest your crops and then sell them to get money, which you could use to then, of course, upgrade equipment to buy things.
What’s different in this game is that the scale, as you said, has changed. In this game, you can, for example, build a restaurant and then assign a villager to run it, and then you will earn money, sort of passive income from that. Basically, like, I mean, the sort of fundamental game cycle of earning money through your actions is the same, but sort of the scale and the things you can do is different from past games.
How do you strike a balance between that portion of the game, the farming and the raising money, and that with the adventure side of the game, which is taking on enemies and exploring more?
Hisashi Fujii: So in terms of how the elements interact, for example, with farming, you can grow crops that can then turn into food through recipes. And that food is something you can take with you when you adventure, and it can be like a healing item or a stat boost item.
Then, the village building, as mentioned before, depends on what buildings you place and what elements you place, and your stats would change. So basically, the two elements, or I guess you could say the three elements, the farming, village building, and the adventure, all sort of complement each other in this way, that by investing into one, you’ll be able to have benefits in the other.
And kind of elaborating on that with the sacred treasures, was there much difficulty in finding a use for them on both sides of that?
Hisashi Fujii: So, in previous Rune Factory games, for example, if you wanted to get better seeds higher-quality seeds, you could use the sickle to chop down crops, and that would yield better seeds. And that function has been replaced with the sword, one of the sacred treasures in Guardians of Ozma.
So it’s, I think the functions themselves are similar to in past games, but basically, the tools are different. And that’s kind of the main thing, the main answer to your question, is that the functions are similar, but we had to think about how to use those sacred treasures in the farming context, and that’s one example.
Regarding relationships within Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma, can you just talk a bit about how cultivating those relationships rewards your character in the game?
Hisashi Fujii: When you first start interacting with them, you’ll just have a few different conversation options. And as your bond level goes up, you’ll be able to have more kinds of conversations. You’ll be able to do activities with them, like going places. And then, of course, if you actually start dating them, then even more options will come.
Unlock, such as holding hands. And I guess from a gameplay perspective, outside of that, you can, of course, take up to six people with you into battle, six NPCs, and as your bond level with an NPC goes up, that NPC will unlock new abilities that they can use in battle. So you’re rewarded in battle for raising your bond level in the game.
So it’s safe to say then that the story that you kind of go through can change pretty dramatically depending on the relationships you build and who you build them with. Not the storyline itself but just how you play the game.
Hisashi Fujii: That’s exactly right. Basically, who you choose to befriend and how you befriend them will change what they’re able to do with you in battle and so your experience will change based on that.
You mentioned that villagers can be assigned to specific tasks, and I got a glimpse of how individual traits play a role in that process. Could you elaborate on how these traits might benefit or potentially hinder progress, depending on whether the right person is placed in the right job or the wrong person in the wrong role?
Hisashi Fujii: Villagers, the NPCs in the game, and just to be clear, the romance NPCs cannot be assigned tasks. These (other) NPCs, they have traits and they’ll be suited to certain tasks, like you have NPCs who are good at farming, and within farming, they may be good at planting seeds, raising plants, some are good at taking care of trees or collecting lumber, mining. So, which NPCs you assign to which tasks can have serious benefits for you.
And in terms of, I guess you might say like negatives, there are certain NPC traits that essentially, of course, you’re assigning them to tasks, so you have to pay them to feed them. And there are certain NPCs who, for example, may eat more than others, so they essentially cost more to pay because they’re eating more. I get this very much. Yeah, so that’s pretty much it. There are situations in which you may be paying your NPCs more for the work that they do.
In my demo, I was able to pick things up very quickly. How important is it in the process of making a game to have all of the tasks and everything that you have to do, how do you make sure to make them as easy to learn as possible, especially when you have new functions, for returning players? Just so they can get into the game.
Hisashi Fujii: So speaking specifically about the village building because that’s a new element that won’t necessarily be familiar to series fans. When we first started working on it, we had people outside of our team play it and give us feedback. And the initial feedback was that it was actually pretty difficult to understand. So we really focused on the kinds of tutorials that we were implementing and making sure that it was something that would be easy to understand and to pick up naturally. And we are confident that, even though it’s a new element, that it will be very approachable for series fans and new players.
Well, I’m really excited about the launch of this game. I want to thank both of you for your time, and I am excited to see more.
Hisashi Fujii: Thank you very much.
Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma is due for release on May 30, 2025 for the Nintendo Switch and on PC. For more about the game, check out our coverage of the preview.
