Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma director says the cozy RPG series’ “final form” is a game you can “keep living in forever,” but “whether we can actually pull it off is a completely different story”
By Jordan Gerblick
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Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma director says the cozy RPG series’ “final form” is a game you can “keep living in forever,” but “whether we can actually pull it off is a completely different story”
Jordan Gerblick
18 September 2025
“I believe that Rune Factory was originally supposed to be a fantasy world you could just keep on living in”
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(Image credit: Marvelous Inc.)
Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma director Shiro Maekawa says the end goal for the long-running cozy RPG series is a game you can “keep living in forever.”
Talking to Automaton, Maekawa shared his vision for the future of the Rune Factory series, although he also expressed some skepticism about whether it’ll ever come to fruition.
“Mr. Yoshifumi Hashimoto, the original creator of the Rune Factory series, once said in an interview that part of the inspiration came from the idea of ‘getting to live in an RPG world even after you’ve beat the Demon Lord’,” said Maekawa.
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“In other words, I believe that Rune Factory was originally supposed to be a fantasy world you could just keep on living in. I do think it’s good to keep adding new features over time, but from another perspective, I imagine Rune Factory’s ‘final form’ would precisely be a game with a world the player could keep living in forever. Though, whether we can actually pull it off is a completely different story (laughs).”
Guardians of Azuma released in June 2025 as a spinoff of the mainline Rune Factory series, with the next numbered entry having been announced in 2023 with no release date or window.
As someone who still plays Ultima Online and Diablo 2 to this day, I think Maekawa is selling Rune Factory short here. It’s definitely admirable to keep pushing forward as a developer and striving to make better and better games, but I’d argue there are almost certainly people still playing the original Rune Factory: A Fantasy Harvest Moon on Nintendo DS.
Essentially, it just sounds like Maekawa is pushing for a more robust, even self-sustaining endgame in future Rune Factory games, which is hard to argue against.
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Jordan Gerblick
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After earning an English degree from ASU, I worked as a corporate copy editor while freelancing for places like SFX Magazine, Screen Rant, Game Revolution, and MMORPG on the side. I got my big break here in 2019 with a freelance news gig, and I was hired on as GamesRadar’s west coast Staff Writer in 2021. That means I’m responsible for managing the site’s western regional executive branch, AKA my home office, and writing about whatever horror game I’m too afraid to finish.
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After 92 hours with Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar, I can safely confirm 2025 is indeed the year of the cozy game and the beloved farming sim series that inspired Stardew Valley is so back
“I felt like playing 30 hours of story mode was actually the tutorial”: Too many RPGs and JRPGs end after their combat really gets good, Vampire Survivors creator says, which is where the roguelike formula is so great
Dragon Quest 1 & 2 HD-2D Remake reminded me why I love turn-based battles, but after 40 minutes with the game, I’m desperate to know what “really big surprise” the devs are hiding
Octopath Traveler 1 and 2 are two of my favorite turn-based RPGs, but I’m not sure how I’m going to go back to them after falling in love with Octopath Traveler 0’s town-building mode
How do you make an impossibly dense MMO friendly to new players? Warframe dev says you just keep trying: “I don’t think we’ve ever quite got that 100% right”
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