Jan. 6, 2023
Jude McElroy
Editor
Stardew Valley is a farming simulator game released on Feb. 26, 2016. Developed almost entirely by Eric Barone, who goes by ConcernedApe online, Stardew Valley took years to create. Bits of footage from the game’s early stages can still be found on Barone’s YouTube channel.
After creating a game save in Stardew Valley, there are a ton of options to make the character personalized. The player character can be given a name and aspect to represent the player, such as accessories, clothes, facial hair, and hairstyles.
After the player is done creating their character, they view a cutscene where they talk to their dying grandfather one last time. The player’s grandfather gives the player a deed to a farm he had owned in Pelican Town and says the player should visit there when they feel bogged down by life. Then, the game cuts to the player in an office building working, when the player is shown pulling out the deed to their grandfather’s farm in Stardew Valley.
The gameplay of Stardew Valley is fun and addicting. Unlike games like Animal Crossing, where you are tied to the real-world clock, Stardew Valley allows for constant progression.
The game cuts to a bus as it passes by a sign indicating that Stardew Valley is closed. After stepping off the bus, the player is greeted by Lewis, the mayor of Pelican Town, and Robin, the town’s carpenter. They show the player where their grandfather’s old farm was, and the player decides to rest for the remainder of the day.
After the opening cutscene is over, you gain control of the player’s character. The game gives you 15 parsnip seeds to plant, 500 gold coins and some tools to start.
The first couple of days is meant to ease you in. On the second day, you unlock fishing, and on Day Five, you unlock the mines and the community center. The community center is the main goal the player is working towards in Stardew Valley. After learning the language of the forest spirits, known as Junimos, that have inhabited the dilapidated building, the player gains access to bundles set by the Junimos. After completing all of the bundles in one of five sets, the Junimos will change something in the valley.
Whether fixing up the old bus or making the minecart system operational again, the Junimos and the community center allow the player to almost always have an objective to work towards. I love that the community center’s goals are never overbearing. They’re not set on a time limit, which means you can do the bundles whenever you want. The bundles contain items only obtainable in a certain season, but those items can always be obtained in the next in-game year.
This would be a good time to explain how time progresses in Stardew Valley. A year is split into four seasons, with each season lasting 28 days. This allows for each month to have four weeks, and many events in the game are tied to this consistent set of days. In terms of time within each day, the player has a maximum of 20 in-game hours each day. The player wakes up at 6 a.m. every morning and falls asleep no matter what they’re doing at 2 a.m. Staying out past 2 a.m. also results in an energy penalty the next day, so the game encourages you to get to bed on time. Energy is what limits how much you can do in a day.
By using tools, you use up some energy, so the player has to plan out what they want to do in a day. The player can recover energy by eating or drinking and can permanently increase the energy cap by collecting one of the seven Stardrops the player can obtain. They are exceptionally rare, with Stardrops being tied to large accomplishments in the game like hitting the 100th floor in the mines or catching every fish.
At Level 5 and Level 10 of a skill, the player is prompted to take on a profession, which gives a passive buff relating to that skill. The level-up and profession system is nice, but the profession options are sometimes too obvious.
Take the farming skill, for example. It holds arguably the best profession in the game called Artisan, which allows for all artisan goods like wine and cheese to sell for 40% more. This makes the other tree of upgrades completely worthless because of how strong this one profession is. But foraging has multiple really good options, one being called Botanist, which makes all foraged items maximum quality, and Lumberjack, which increases the amount of wood received from chopping trees by 25%. If there were better care in balancing the professions, they would be way more satisfying.
The gameplay of Stardew Valley is fun and addicting. Unlike games like Animal Crossing, where you are tied to the real-world clock, Stardew Valley allows for constant progression. Planning out what to do in a day, acting on it and accomplishing those goals is so satisfying.
The music is also top-notch. Every track is so memorable, with each one adding a lot to the atmosphere of cutscenes or regular gameplay.
My favorite feature in Stardew Valley is the Skull Caverns. Unlocked after getting the Skull Key from the bottom of the mines in the Valley and by letting the Junimos repair the bus to the desert, the player can access Stardew Valley’s biggest challenge.
In the Skull Caverns, the player’s goal is to make it down as far as possible. The old mines gave a checkpoint for the player to return to at any point every five floors, but the Skull Caverns resets every run, which is what makes it so enjoyable. Waking up on a good luck day, taking the bus or a warp totem to the desert with luck as well as speed buff foods and explosives in hand and going down as far as possible in the Caverns is so exciting. The Caverns has some of the most valuable resources in the game too, with Iridium ore and Prismatic Shards being the main two items players will be looking for on their dives through the Caverns.
I don’t have any major complaints about the game. The relationship system is kind of repetitive and shallow, but it doesn’t bother me much. Not everything has to be perfect, and the player doesn’t have to befriend the villagers unless they’re trying to get a specific crafting recipe, looking for a spouse or going for Perfection anyway.
Overall, Stardew Valley is a 10/10. It is a phenomenal game on all fronts. Stardew Valley provides some of the most fun I’ve had with a game in a long time. I always felt like there was more for me to do, and there still is because of how close I am to achieving Perfection.
The player walks through a developed farm in the rain.
SCREENSHOTS BY JUDE MCELROY
