(Written April 1st 2024)

A game that I both cherish to death, and yet still haven't 'officially' made it through the end game before.

As a small bit of preface, I grew up with a fair bit of Harvest Moon titles, namely More Friends of Mineral Town, Harvest Moon SNES (via emulator), and DS Cute. All of these share in common a vibrant pixel art style, that familiarly addictive gameplay loop,

and also have that s l i ght tinge of w e i r d

like creepypasta level surrealism where it's just obtuse enough of a secret in the otherwise comfy and grounded gameplay loop, that it just makes your head turn a little bit.

And I a d o r e that kind of content.

Any game that's otherwise very chill and up beat on the surface but sneaks surrealist and mystery elements under the hood, or random chance experiences like the Ghost Girl of Pokemon X/Y- or 'FUN' value events in Undertale, gives me such an excited thrill that's always hard to explain.

So the fact that Stardew Valley has that in spades, I think is one of the reasons it is so high up for me, even despite trying to explore and play around with other more recently released farm sims. I just keep wanting to come back to this instead.

(Recent 1.6 spoiler content below!)

Nevermind you how much the game still gets substansive updates (I was only scratching the surface of end game 1.5 content last time I played, and now 1.6 has just dropped about a week back as of writing), or the obscene wealth of mod content that's equally engaging to explore. I've still not properly tapped into everything in the Expanded mod, and have recently wanted to give the Ridgeside Valley mod a try too~

I do have a somewhat bad habit of falling off from the game whenever it gets past the first fall (heh). Something about the halt of the crop growing loop throws me off enough, combined with the amount of hours usually being around 30+ by that point on any given file, that I start getting easily distracted into wanting to pick up other games. Even still, the gameplay loop anytime I start a file fresh is so obscenely strong, it's something that consistently pulls me back time and again to want to play.

I also have a habit with the more new files I've made, wanting to try and roleplay a little into what character of my own I'm playing as and how they might either actually run a farm, or (more funny for me) how they might canonically choose to play the game itself. My current file I'm picturing a bit of a mix, with my character Jango being a demi-god character of sorts, and has a habit of seeing mortals and the like as though they're toys. So him having an actual 'farm' would be more akin to a giant Playmobil toy set.

Like my other favorite game 'reviews', this is more of a ramble into fond memories and experiences than it is on the technical side of things, but to that end, I do want to compliment just how phenominally this game does with controller support. I've run into so many minor quirks with other indies when it comes especially to controller movement and inventory management, but Stardew does menu navigation and organization so eloquently that I never have to think about it from how naturally it flows. Probably an easy comparison I can use is Terraria, which has similar functionality to how it's navigated, but with the larger amount of items and finnicky sorting tools, it winds up easier more times than not to still switch back to the touch screen or mouse. (Speaking of Terraria I know there's some new easter eggs snuck into the game to be found? Still have to try it out!)

Stardew's also improved with every update its had I feel toward making all seasons, winter included, feel equally engaging. With a nicer balance of events to look forward to without as many gaps in between, as well as larger goals to keep working towards regardless if you have crops growing or not. Like mentioned earlier I still have a habit of falling off around then, but that's more on the time sink at that point than the game itself.

I'm really excited to be doing this reflective write up around the time that I am, as last weekend I had the amazing opportunity to attend the Festival of Seasons concert with my partner together. There were so many cute costumes folks in the audience attending had on that we saw (an older gent in the row we'd sat in had a spot o n Mayor Lewis cosplay, with what I assume was his wife or another friend dressed up as Marnie). We'd even gotten free Junimo pins from a really sweet fan just handing them out to people all waiting in the lobby together.

The Stardew Valley OST is one of the few I can say I adore in its entirety, being able to listen to it start to back without any desire to skip around tracks. I still have some favorites I hold higher than others (the summer season in particular holding some of my favorites), but to attend a concert that encompasses it all in a symphonic orchestra, had me genuinely tearing up at both its start and finish. I can only hope they release the orchestral soundtrack in print or digitally sometime in the future, since I'm otherwise tempted to grab tickets for the showing coming closer to my own area in the summertime if they're still around, just to experience the songs in that style again.

Stardew Valley is a game all in all, that for what handful of flaws it does have, they're so nondescript for me that I never tire of coming back. I'm incredibly thankful for this game to exist.

For being able to take the era and aspects I loved most from the Harvest Moon games I grew up on and execute them perfectly in my eyes for modern day. For being able to make a game so accessible to controll, and open for any person's play style. For being able to bring me and my partner together for an experience I'll now never forget.

Also I STILL in all of this haven't even brought up the friggin Stardew Boardgame either that fans have made viable in Tabletop Sim alongside the physical version?? And it is so cute? And also incredibly addictive to play since it ALSO has a single player campaign mode?

This is a very incoherent ramble of an article, but that's what I like about doing these reviews sometimes too. Cause it's not even a 'review', just more of an archive of feelings I get when thinking about a game be it past tense or present. I do think some of the more substansive ones like this though I could go for setting up their own dedicated shrine pages.

Or maybe at least give Krobus one.

best boy