Day 95: Stardew Valley

Hi again everyone!

Today, I'll be talking about Stardew Valley. Like with Slime Rancher, I haven't actually "finished" this game-I'm only partway through year 2, if memory serves, with around 39 hours of play time. I don't know all of the story, or any of the later-game content, but I'm pretty well acquainted with the basic game mechanics, which will be the topic of this post.

Stardew Valley is a very good-looking game. It's not too graphically complicated- for the most part, the pixel art looks like generic RPG art. That said, it's clear there was a lot of work put in to making it look nice. Just little things, really- the rustic style of the buildings, the variety of plants and animals, the changes between seasons- they're not much, but they really help with the atmosphere. It's clear that this game is aware of the quality of its art, too- there are a number of events in the game showing things off, like the festival with the glowing jellyfish.

One thing I quite like about the game is how relaxing it can be (though the keyword is "can"). You can spend hours doing little more than farming, strolling around, fishing, and talking to people around the town, and it somehow manages to stay interesting. On the other hand, if you want a more involved game, you can go mining (which involves a surprising amount of combat), or exploring and solving mysteries, or even grinding to finish the bundles at the town hall. It's very fun to play, and quite fun to watch (I say that having had my friend watch me play for most of those 39 hours, and also from me watching a series of live streams of the game).

I think my favourite thing about the game is just the variety of activities you can do, like with Terraria. I listed some before, but I'll go into more detail. Farming was a slight hassle for me, but that's mostly because I didn't know you could upgrade tools, and I was too cheap for sprinklers. It is still neat though- there's something very satisfying about harvesting all of your crops when they grow. Fishing is fun, but surprisingly challenging- you control the bobber by either clicking or not clicking (to go up or down, respectively), and it takes a bit to accelerate up to speed, so it can be quite tough to control. I spent a lot of time mining- both because it's a fun pastime, and because it takes most of an in-game day to accomplish anything significant in a mining trip.

Stardew Valley is a very fun game, and I'm sad to say I haven't played it in some time. I would highly recommend it to anyone who enjoyed Animal Crossing- it's a very similar concept, but feels a bit more developed (though, to be fair, I haven't played an Animal Crossing game in years). If I find the time, I would like to get back in to this game some time, though that likely won't be until I've had my share of Slime Rancher, since that's new and exciting to me (relatively speaking).

Anyways, that's it for today. Hopefully you enjoyed this post!