Harvest Moon: The Winds of Anthos

While saving is not an issue that many players have to worry about these days, there are still some games that require players to pay attention to how saving works. This is especially still the case for many single-player games. In some games, saving is not something that players can do right out of the gate.

This can be frustrating, as if players do not have enough time to progress far enough into the story they can risk losing what little progress they have made so far. For Harvest Moon: The Winds of Anthos, there is no auto-saving, but luckily it doesn't take long before players can ensure that they don't lose any progress.

Minor spoilers beyond this point, so players should proceed with caution.

How to Save

Despite being a modern game, Harvest Moon: The Winds of Anthos does have a somewhat archaic means of saving. In order to save, players will need to progress through the first day of the first year. This teaches players simple mechanics like farming. At the end of the day, players return to their house.

When players interact with the bed, they will see two options. The first is to simply sleep, and the second option is to save and sleep. It is not clear why there is an option to sleep and skip saving, but it is there if players want to do that for some reason. Since the tutorial takes place over several in-game days, this allows players to periodically take a break and save their progress if they don't wish to rush.

While this does allow players to save, it isn't very convenient as having save points is an outdated mechanic. Fortunately, it is possible to save anywhere. But players cannot do this right away. When pausing at the start of the game, the option to save/load is disabled. Fortunately, this is only a temporary inconvenience.

In order to unlock the ability to save and load anywhere, players must complete the entire tutorial for Harvest Moon: The Winds of Anthos. The tutorial concludes on the fifth in-game day once players leave the village. Time does not progress in-game until players complete the required objectives, so there is no way to skip ahead to the end of the fifth day by letting the clock run. Once players can explore beyond the village, they will be able to save anywhere. Of course, saving at the end of the day is still an option as well.