Rune Factory 4 Special is coming to PC

Rune Factory 4 is almost a decade old, at this point. It first released on the 3DS in 2021, before last year's Rune Factory 4 Special made the jump to the Nintendo Switch. It's also, according to longtime series fans, the best of the bunch—a potent concoction of Harvest Moon-style farming and socializing and action-RPG adventuring. There have been plenty of farming sims on PC in the last few years in the wake of Stardew Valley, but none have so thoroughly blended genres as Rune Factory, which makes today's news that Rune Factory 4 Special is hitting PC a real delight.

In a trailer during the Future Games Show today, publisher XSeed announced Rune Factory 4 Special is headed to Steam (as well as PS4, Xbox One and Series X/S). XSeed also brought a trailer for the upcoming Rune Factory 5, which looks like a huge graphical leap for the series. Makes sense, considering RF4's 3DS origins.

Rune Factory 5, sadly, has only been announced for the Nintendo Switch for early 2022. But if you aim to be a completionist in Rune Factory 4 Special, it may well hold you over until then.

Rune Factory 4 Special releases on Steam this fall.

Wes has been covering games and hardware for more than 10 years, first at tech sites like The Wirecutter and Tested before joining the PC Gamer team in 2014. Wes plays a little bit of everything, but he'll always jump at the chance to cover emulation and Japanese games.

When he's not obsessively optimizing and re-optimizing a tangle of conveyor belts in Satisfactory (it's really becoming a problem), he's probably playing a 20-year-old Final Fantasy or some opaque ASCII roguelike. With a focus on writing and editing features, he seeks out personal stories and in-depth histories from the corners of PC gaming and its niche communities. 50% pizza by volume (deep dish, to be specific).