Stardew Valley
Last week I upgraded to a powerful ATI R390 graphics card and 4k monitor. I’m not trying to brag but want to put into context the fact that the most popular game I’ve been playing subsequent to this upgrade is a game with 2d pixelated sprite graphics called Stardew Valley, released on steam a month ago by a lone indie developer which pays homage to 16 bit Harvest Moon titles but is out on PC.
That such a game would captivate my attention, or immediately bump itself to the top of my must play list over some AAA games Ive had sitting around waiting for said graphical upgrade (as Im beginning to see the 60fps light after putting up with low framerates for too long) should leave you in no doubt of how much I like this game, or indeed the series which inspired it. Also true is that I have so far clocked over 48 68*(and counting) hours on it over the space of a few days, and Im not alone. Since release it has sold well over 400,000 copies and remains on steam’s most played list.
At its heart it shares a lot of similarities with Harvest Moon, the console series that admittedly inspired it. It’s a casual farming simulator with light rpg elements, a relatively free and relaxed take on what you decide to get up to, be it crops, animals, fishing, foraging, mining, simply mooching around town, but it also has a lot of unique touches that stand it slightly apart from Harvest Moon, not least of which is the fact that it is on PC. A fully free form farm is a great difference, allowing you to design your farm however you see fit. Pelican Town is a nice place to visit with lots to explore and do, a fun feature is the games within the game that you can find in the Arcade in the towns Tavern, or the many mini events that happen throughout the year, or even the hat store that pops up.
At this point I consider myself fairly handy with a hoe and watering can. My first experience of the Harvest Moon style games came with the Snes incarnation. Since then I’ve worked my way through the various iterations on Nintendo’s consoles. The last one I have played being A Tale of Two Towns on the 3DS a few years ago, which I found alright, though somewhat lacking some of the spark of the previous games. I have to say Stardew seems to fill that niche nicely, taking what I’d call the core gameplay from the series and refining the parts that needed refining.
I suppose if I had to name a favourite it would be Harvest Moon DS, which I think took quite a few cues from the original but as a portable game kept me engrossed for hours. Island of Happiness has a lot of fond memories for me too. I think I may have missed the Gamecube version, or at least it doesn’t look familiar to me at all (Ive added it to my Gamecube to play list after Billy Hatcher). Stardew seems to have taken the best bits from certainly the Snes version, and N64 version, and original DS version and created a game that has allowed the ideas to shine through brilliantly.
I sort of stopped buying the Harvest Moon games at the 3d version of a tale of two towns, not because it was a bad game, it’s actually quite a serviceable version and interesting take on the series, but because of some confusion over the whole Harvest Moon / Story of Seasons continuation of the game series (Essentially akin to the Championship Manager / Football Manager shenanigans of the early 00s where publisher keeps name, but talent moves elsewhere). I also never played a Rune Factory game, which was essentially the same premise but in a more fantasy setting. Im waiting for the dust to settle, though I think consensus is that Story of Seasons is the true continuation.
To say then that Stardew Valley scratched that particular itch is an understatement, but what I find most laudable about this all is that this is the work of one guy, over the course of four years, everything from the coding, sprites, music to release. It’s a remarkable achievement, and yes it’s not perfect but what Eric Barone has managed to put together is truly excellent and the success he has found with it is justified and credit to love and effort he has put in. Clearly very fond of the games that inspired it, the fact that he is still actively developing the game, helping users with corrupt saves, tweaking the gameplay here and there shows true dedication and possibly is the finest example of Indie development, a moniker that I think has been somewhat misused or misappropriated by some publishers in recent years. This one I think you’ll agree fits that title perfectly.
So I’m up to the fall season of year two (as of yesterday). As these games tend to go I’m now married (courting being the usual assortment of gift giving and chatting), have a reasonable looking farm, some, chickens, ducks, cows, sheep and a pig, as well as a horse and a fledgeling beer business that is paying for it all, some rough edges and trees notwithstanding, I get on well with the wider community though Im still struggling to work out the perfect gift for everyone. I challenged myself not to google anything and just try and work things out on my own, and for the most part I’ve managed it (Admittedly I disregarded a note I received about marriage and had to search the wiki to find out about the pendant, but that’s as far as it has gone). It’s actually been refreshing just working things out and experimenting. I’ve recently unlocked the desert and have been trying to complete the list of things shipped, as well as expand my culinary skills. It’s a game where you make your own path (quite literally also as you’re free to design your farm any way you choose) through it and on a timetable of your choosing, and I guess it’s that level of freedom and escapism that keeps me popping back on, the “Just one more day” effect has seen me run well into the long hours, and I even had to pop a clock on my second monitor just to remind myself to give it a rest. Quite addictive then.
It’s hard to know what keeps drawing me in, possibly like the protagonist’s own corporate boogey-man the JoJa corporation, I see this simple farming life as a comfortable escape from the rat race, though the range of NPC characters own quirks and motivations remind you subtly that it’s a lot more complicated than that. Some will shop at the Joja supermarket and tell you whilst they’d like to shop at the locally owned store, price-wise they simply can’t afford not to go to the mega-mart, others end up there because they’re unemployed. The manager even offers Pierre (the local shopkeeper) a low paid job as assistant grocer. It’s all a clever piece of social commentary that fills out the universe of Stardew Valley and makes the whole experience an interesting one to visit.
If I’m critical of anything it is perhaps a little too similar to the Harvest Moon games in general and so suffers from some of the same flaws, such as what I’d like to call Truman Show syndrome, where conversations and schedules of characters are fairly limited and regular, and I think combat in the mines is overly simplistic, though there is a sense of progression there with the health bar and enemy strength the further you go. I think the quality system of crops and goods needs a bit of work (perhaps into the artisan goods as well) but other than that I don’t have too many complaints. There’s talk of the developer adding co-op multiplayer in the future as well which would really set it apart from the series that inspired it, and there are certain nice touches that I think raise the bar and surpass the Harvest Moon series, not to mention the possibility of modding the game, which has already happened.
Overall I thoroughly recommend this game. I think it fills a niche that has been sorely under-represented on the PC platform, or possibly I’m just a sucker for 16bit style farming life sims, who knows? I guess the morale of this story is “If you build it they will come”.
Now all I have to do is work out how to get a truffle from my pig and Im golden.
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Cropdate 18-3-16 (Portmanteau of Crop and Update, I don’t think it’ll catch on)
So as year two drew to a close I had a sprog with Penny, affectionately named him Pip, I started a plan to go full Martian and get 300 potatoes grown in Spring for the Monoculture achievement and ran into a slight problem friendship-wise, in that I was aiming to get 8 or more friends to full for that achievement, but I believe if you’re married all the other potential suitors max out at 8 hearts regardless of how much I plied them with their favourite things. To that end Ive moved on to other villagers. The ghost of my grandfather came back to say a few words, which was fun. I think Im going to attempt to complete the crop shipped list and give it a rest though, it has steadily reached the point of addiction really.
I’m starting to regret calling this a ‘casual’ farming simulator in my original post, it’s starting to feel for me like something else. For the life of me I want to know what on earth Marnie likes, I had figured since she’s the livestock lady she’d be into at least one animal product from my farm but frankly nothing has worked. Ideally I’d like to complete the Town hall also but struggling to catch a couple of fish and so I’m trying to rely on the weird caravan lady on Fridays to provide me with them. In all I feel like Ive achieved a lot in two years, enough that I could retire in knowledge of what Id accomplished, but the completionist in me is spurring me on, and whilst Ive never quite been one for spreadsheets when doing these games, if I ever roll another playthrough I may just have to try that. Casual indeed. Still the beer business is in full swing now that I have the greenhouse. Skill Ale is a winner.
