No one understands why I stopped playing DOTA 2 in order to experience the country life. Never before have Blueberries been of such value to me. I also named my cows after fast food restaurants. This is Stardew Valley.
Stardew Valley takes what appears to be a simple farming simulator, to a whole new level. Hatching chicken eggs and planting Strawberry seeds may seem trivial to most of us on the outside, but what truly makes the game special is the calm and heart-warming experience it brings to the table. The seemingly endless content, features and possibilities the game has to offer is only the tip of the iceberg. It’s basically an open-ended RPG game fashioned after Harvest Moon with a dash of dungeon crawling thrown in. There are skills to master, items to collect, animals to adore, people to date and people to hate (I’m looking at you Shane).
I spent 27 hours of my weekend playing this game the week after it came out. Over the span of two days, I managed to stop playing every other game, put every show I was watching on hold and spent zero time outside the house. Aside from that one time the pizza guy forgot my cheese sticks. 48 hours in and I still don’t think I’ve even scratched the surface of what this game is capable of.
All this was made possible by one guy – Eric Barone aka ConcernedApe. It took him four years to make Stardew Valley, including all the sprite art, soundtracks and programming. And even as I write this article, he’s out there in his apartment fixing all the bugs in the game, adding more features (taking in suggestions from the community) and probably scoring mad points at the annual Egg Festival.
The game came out on February 26, 2016 under the publisher Chucklefish Games (Starbound and Risk of Rain) and few expected the game to shoot up the ranks of Steam’s Top Sellers as fast as it did. As of the first week of March, it had over a million copies sold, which is an incredible achievement for most indie games of this genre. In no little part, due to its addictive gameplay mechanics and lack of toxic MOBA community.
The story of Stardew Valley is a familiar one to those who have played Harvest Moon games in the past. You are handed down a farm by your grandfather and it is up to you now to develop it further. The options are opened up to you, whether you want to focus on harvesting crops, fishing all day long or running a town of ducks. There are five skill areas where your character can grow: farming, mining, combat, fishing, and foraging.
Aside from your own farm, your interactions with the various townspeople influence how your game progresses, from quests and challenges to relationships and awkward encounters. One of the best features of the game is its crafting system, which gives you access to a multitude of useful items like fences, scarecrows and processing machines. Apart from those, there are a ton of items you collect along the way, both useful and… not so useful.
Taking a look at the mechanical aspects of the game itself, the controls are mostly simple and take almost no time to get used to. The soundtrack and ambience sounds lets you in on another sense of immersion into the game, from the welcome rains in the spring to the rustle of leaves in the fall. The music beautifully ties together everything and I enjoy just randomly putting it on in the background sometimes while I’m browsing.
Although the game does feel like a wholly complete experience and can be considered an absolute success what it aims to bring to players, there definitely is room for improvement. It mostly revolves around adjusting the town characters and making them more involved in your story, but due to the fact that the developer is constantly updating the game with new interactions and features, I would have to be hard-pressed to bring that up as a negative.
With a highly dedicated developer, expansive community of modders and the promise of multiplayer in the near future, the potential Stardew Valley has is enough to keep me hooked for ages. Now, back to my game. I forgot my golden hoe at the Blacksmith’s place.
