While Story of Seasons (known as Harvest Moon in the West until 2014) is mostly known for inspiring Stardew Valley these days, its influence stretches much farther than that. Before Stardew came out in 2016, Story of Seasons was the farming game. Sure, there was Farmville, but for anyone with a gaming console, the name Harvest Moon was what came to mind when asked about farming simulators. Popular both in the West and in its home country of Japan, Story of Seasons surprisingly never really went into any extended media. No anime, no manga, and not much in the way of merchandise beyond pre-order bonuses. However, like so many successful franchises, there were spinoffs. The most successful Story of Seasons spinoff came in the form of the Rune Factory series, which had its first game released in 2007 with the subtitle "A Fantasy Harvest Moon."

Unlike the main Story of Seasons games, which took place in a semi-modern world and had no combat, Rune Factory was a dungeon-crawling action RPG. Growing crops and raising animals (or monsters, in this case) was still a big deal, and getting married to start a family was also another large goal, but the more actionized take on Story of Seasons went over very well. 17 years later, Rune Factory has seven games — and that's not counting rereleases. Rune Factory became so big, in fact, that it actually got its own spinoff in 2023: Silent Hope, a roguelike dungeon crawler taking place in the same universe.

A World Without Words

In Silent Hope, people don't speak. They could speak in the past, but their king stole the world's words before escaping into the seemingly endless Abyss. His beloved daughter, the princess, cried for 100 years, only stopping after her tears encased her in a magical crystal. Even without language, the world kept moving, and eventually, the royal duo was forgotten...until one day, when the princess, still encased in crystal, saw seven colored lights fly out of the Abyss. She wished for the lights to find someone who could bring her father back, and so the lights found seven heroes who could answer her wish. Eventually, each hero found their way to the princess' crystal, where she surprised them with her ability to speak. And so, Silent Hope begins as the new team bands together to find the lost king by venturing through the Abyss.

As a neat narrative choice, only the princess (and the king in flashbacks) have any dialogue. The game's manual reveals some backstory for each of the seven playable characters, but until the world gets its words back, the most they have to say is some standard battle grunting. Even in the game's animated opening, none of the playable characters are shown moving their mouths for anything but facial expressions — the storyboard in the game's artbook even gives the animators instructions not to have anyone speaking.

This is a great way to integrate the main conflict of the story into the narrative — it would've been easy to just handwave things and let everyone talk anyway by saying "the princess' magic lets them talk," but the game doesn't take that shortcut. It has to focus more on animation, expression, the princess' dialogue, and the bits and pieces of backstory from after each boss in order to tell the story. The princess will chime in with her own thoughts as the player runs around base camp, and she has enough to say to make up for the seven heroes being silent protagonists, for better or for worse.

That being said, having seven silent protagonists does have its downsides. As mentioned earlier, the playable characters' backstories are stuck in the manual — which, given that Switch games coming with a physical manual has always been a rarity, players may very well miss out on.

Not a Revolutionary Roguelike

Although it has such strong ties to two influential life sim games, there aren't many simulation elements going on in Silent Hope. Instead, the game is a more straightforward roguelike dungeon crawler. With seven playable characters, there are seven classes to choose from — with an additional two classes that each character can promote to, for a total of 21 classes overall. The base classes — who the cast share their names with — are the Wanderer, the Warrior, the Rogue, the Archer, the Farmer, the Fighter, and the Caster.

Everyone has their own fighting style, with their own weapons and unique skills to match. The game also uses RPG elements through its experience and stat systems: when a character levels up, their stats go up, and their health refills without having to use a healing item. Weapons and gear that can be crafted also have randomly chosen traits that affect gameplay and stats and can be equipped with elemental stones that infuse attacks with an element and increase resistance to another element.

A typical run through the Abyss involves picking a character, choosing what floor to start at, and then running through the randomly generated layouts while beating up monsters. Healing is limited, and once a character falls, it's back to base camp — minus most of the loot they've collected on their trip. Thankfully, certain floors of the Abyss are marked with campfires, meaning that players can jump straight back to that point from the base camp at any time.

This means that the Abyss doesn't have to be conquered in one go — along with warp points that allow escape or character switching without losing anything you've collected, this makes the game much easier than a lot of its roguelike brethren. It's a fairly soft difficulty curve as the game goes on, but there are also plenty of opportunities for risk and reward that might end a run tragically. Difficulty-wise, it's a good introduction to dungeon crawlers for new players: easy enough to adjust to, but not so brainless that it can just be coasted through.

Between dungeon runs, the seven heroes hang out at the base camp they built around the princess' crystal. Each hero has their own job they do at base camp to help prepare the player for the next dungeon run. The Warrior crafts new weapons and gear, the Rogue and Caster refine wood and stone for the Warrior to use for crafting, the Fighter cooks dishes that can be used for buffs in each dungeon run, and the Archer and Farmer collect produce from the animals and garden for the Fighter to cook with. The Wanderer can do any of these jobs and will replace whoever the current playable character is to do their job if the Wanderer himself isn't chosen. Besides crafting and cooking, the rest of the jobs take time to get things done, though they can be sped up by using special items to finish things immediately.

What Silent Hope Means for Rune Factory

There's also the part where this is a Rune Factory spinoff; besides some of the enemies and recipes being from the fantasy farming franchise, the only way to tell the link between the two is confirmation from the developer. The game started off as an expansion of Rune Factory but focused more on the action in order to differentiate it. In a Gamescom 2023 interview with Screen Rant, the game's scenario writer Honoka Moriwaki explained that it's a "fable" in the Rune Factory timeline:

This game's story is told as a fable in the world of Rune Factory. We want the players to imagine or find out in which part of Rune Factory the game might be set.

So it's a "floating timeline" sort of spinoff, which makes some sense — if it was happening concurrently with any of the Rune Factory games or even happened shortly before any of them, there probably would've been more talk among the characters about that time when people couldn't speak. If the characters consider it a fable instead, though, it makes sense why the adult cast wouldn't tend to bring it up — why would they bother talking about children's stories when there are more important things to do?

While Silent Hope is a fun game, storywise, it doesn't really add much to the universe of Rune Factory besides the fact that one time there was a king who made everyone stop talking. With Rune Factory: Project Dragon and Rune Factory 6 both being in development, though, maybe Silent Hope will manage to make a cameo somehow.

Silent Hope's debut was almost as quiet as its playable cast. As of this writing, the game doesn't even have a Wikipedia page. It's not a deep game, and it's quite a bit easier than the typical roguelike dungeon crawler. The lack of dialogue until the endgame won't hook most people on the storyline. While it's addictive in the hands of the right player, if someone had to choose between Silent Hope and Hades, most people who have played a roguelike would pick the latter. Silent Hope is a game for roguelike newbies and fans of Rune Factory. Anyone can have fun with it, but not everyone will fall in love with it.

Silent Hope doesn't try to hide the fact that it's a budget game. It's easy to see this as having started as a 3DS title, only to be shelved and picked back up once Marvelous realized Rune Factory still has a fanbase they need to keep feeding. It's easy to find the game's Day One Edition for less than $40 — in fact, that's the only version of the game that GameStop sells, nine months after the game's release! It comes with an art book, a soundtrack selection CD, and the physical game, though, so it's a good deal for so cheap. For any big Rune Factory fans who just want more of that chill fantasy aesthetic or for people new to roguelikes, Silent Hope is solid. Players who want more of a challenge or a deeper plot will likely want to wait until it's on sale.