Rune Factory[a] is a franchise of fantasy role-playing social simulation games created by Yoshifumi Hashimoto and primarily published by Marvelous.

Rune Factory retains the farming and social simulation portions of the Story of Seasons games, but integrates it into a fantasy setting and introduces dungeon crawling elements into the core gameplay.

Most individual entries have been positively received, the series as a whole has been lauded for its open-ended gameplay, world design and writing, and it has been favourably compared to the aforementioned Story of Seasons games.

[45] It features an ensemble of writers, including Natsuna Morita, Hitoshi Tatsumi, Minato Tonami, Aimi Igarashi, Enya Uraki, and Hiromi Miura.

The player can replenish RP by using Runes created by fully-grown crops or potions, while HP can be restored using medicine or healing abilities.

Crops can be planted in different areas to sell for gold; other activities include mining for metal and minerals, fishing, or collecting food such as milk and eggs from befriended monsters.

In addition to their open-ended gameplay, the games possess a linear storyline, which can be furthered by exploring dungeons and defeating certain monsters.

Just like in the Harvest Moon series, the main character's relationship with the other villagers increase by talking to them or performing actions that please them, like giving items they like as presents for example.

On July 11, 2008, Marvelous Entertainment USA and Xseed Games announced that they were both bringing Rune Factory Frontier to North America.

[58] In September 2020, during a Nintendo Direct Mini presentation the game's release date was slated for Spring 2021 in Japan and later in the same year worldwide.

[59] The Rune Factory series has been well received, with the English region publisher Xseed Games declaring it as their best performing franchise in 2020.