life aspects of the game. At the same time, you will find a mysterious force at work in the nearby dungeons that is in need of investigation, with some monsters turning into humans upon their defeat. You may also date a bachelor or bachelorette, get married, and have one child. There are six bachelors and six bachelorettes, each have their own charming points and back stories which you will learn through series of events before marriage. You can equip other villagers, even your child, with battle gear and have maximum two person to fight alongside you. Characters from Rune Factory 2 and 3, Barrett and Raven, appear as cameos and can be recruited into a players party for dungeon exploration. Characters Rune Factory 4 features many characters residing in Selphia. If playing as the male protagonist, the player can choose to marry one of the following female characters: If playing as the female protagonist, the player can choose to marry one of the following male characters: Development Producer Yoshifumi Hashimoto said that the main theme is "passionate love, sweet marriage". This led him to greatly expand the types of dating events and their dramatic nature, and creating scenarios where players can go adventuring with their families. This was done to create a world that is not purely combat or farming driven, but gives players a choice. Another focus of development was to make farming, though repetitive by nature, a satisfying experience for a player. Drawing inspiration from games such as Pikmin, where Captain Olimar would pull Pikmin from the ground with a pop, and DokiDoki Panic, he decided to make the game's framerate run at 60 so that character responses to controller input would be felt immediately. It was announced in January 2013 that publisher Xseed Games would be localizing the game for North American audiences; they had previously localized Rune Factory Frontier for the Wii. On September 12, Xseed Games announced that the game would have a release date for the North American audiences, which was announced to be October 1, 2013. Xseed would later release the game in Europe and Australia via the 3DS eShop on December 11, 2014. An enhanced version of the game for the Nintendo Switch, titled Rune Factory 4 Special, was released in Japan on July 25, 2019, in North America on February 25, 2020, and in Europe and Australia on February 28, 2020.