Anyone else playing Stardew Valley? Came out on the PC early last year and was released last month on consoles. I have 15 or so hours in and have barely scratched the surface. There are so many ways you can play the game and outside of being judged after the second year, you can go on farming, mining, savaging and romancing till the cows come home. Get married, have kids, get divorced or wipe their memory. Tired of the kids, for a price you can turn them to doves and be gone from the farm forever.
It is a farming/love/mining simulator that pretty much copies the Harvest Moon formula. Only this one was made by one guy. It borrows from Minecraft and Terraria. The instructions on what to do are basically, "go find a wiki because no tutorial in the world is going to cover what lies ahead." It is a serious grind as everything you buy is a bit overpriced and mistakes you make will be numerous, costing you a bunch of money. The land itself is not that big and a few areas can be unlocked but the amount of things to do within the combined space is simply mind boggling. The mini-fishing games is quite fun yet frustrating at first and while fishing is optional there are numerous reasons to level up in this area. If you are a completionist there are well over a couple hundred hours ahead and a few more just viewing online guides to figure out what to do/not to do. I played it blind going in and it has cost me. You can grow animals and barns and silos but to do so early on is far too expensive to feed. Had to restart and get some tips on the best way to start the first two seasons and it has made a world of difference. Mining and Fishing with a focus on crops seems the safest route. Holding off on building relationships because they all like pretty shinny things that are better spent on building up the farm. Just getting a kitchen add on is a pain due to the price but in the long run you save a bunch of money making your own food with the ingredients than buying dishes at the local pub to refill your energy, which is in very short supply (provided you do not have consumables to raise it back up). Even fishing requires some energy so you can't sit and fish all day, without having consumables. At first I did not like how little energy you have but once you are in a week or so it makes sense and forces you to prioritize every action. There is one tool that uses no energy that allows you to run around chopping weeds, collecting fiber to sell while you look for special plants to sell or worms to dig up to uncover treasures. During the four season you will grow different crops, catch different fish and find special plants and items limited to the time of the season. No crops in the winter so you have downtime from growing to focus all the other things to do.
I am not even mentioning a couple of extremely big parts of the game to avoid spoilers. The fact that one guy made all is this is beyond me. He put everything he had into this game and deserves every penny that comes his way.
How many one man made indie games have their on Guide for sale, in Hardcover no less (200+ pages)? Just look at the images to see how much there is to do in that game.
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Originally Posted by Rudy
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