Stardew Valley (The Latest Steam Success Story of 2016)

[Speederino]

HI BILLY MAYS SPEEDERINO HERE FOR STARDEW VALLEY ON THE PC!

ARE YOU TIRED OF THE LAST SEVERAL-YEARS WORTH OF HARVEST MOON GAMES GENERALLY NOT BEING THAT GREAT? DO YOU LONG FOR THE CLASSIC DAYS OF THE FRANCHISE THAT FREQUENTLY DELIVERED HITS LIKE HARVEST MOON 64 AND FRIENDS OF MINERAL TOWN!? THEN HAVE I GOT AN OFFER FOR YOOOOOOOOOOU!!!

*clears throat* Blech how can anyone stand yelling so much? Anyways, Stardew Valley is, obviously, a love letter to Harvest Moon as well as the latest big Steam success story, having already sold over 450,000 digital copies in just a couple weeks. Its user reviews are “Overwhelmingly Positive” and it’s so far been receiving critical acclaim.

Stardew Valley was actually created by a single man, Eric “ConcernedApe” Barone. As a fan of Harvest Moon, he began working on this little game just to practice programming in C#, only for it to grow into something more. He reportedly worked 10-15 hours a day on Stardew Valley for four years, single-handedly programming it, developing the gameplay, making the artwork, writing the story and dialogue, composing the music, literally EVERYTHING in this game was made by him and him alone. In fact, he’s still working diligently on bug-fixes and updates.

I can’t stress just how damn impressive that it. I’ve played about 8 hours-worth and I keep having to remind myself that this is NOT a full-fledged Harvest Moon from around 1998-2003. It captures the spirit of the older titles so well and delivers so much content that it seems impossible that there wasn’t at least an entire small development team behind this.

That’s not to say there aren’t any differences between Stardew Valley and Harvest Moon. The first and most obvious is that it’s for the PC, so the game is made to be played with a mouse and keyboard (although there IS support for Xbox 360/One controllers). In the few weeks since its release, its even already garnered a pretty big modding scene. Stardew Valley also incorporates more Rune Factory-esque dungeon-crawling and combat elements, albeit a bit more basic. Finally, whereas in Harvest Moon you can generally feel the influence of eastern/Japanese culture, this game definitely has a more western vibe; with your character going to a decidedly less-anime-ish small town (although I’ve already seen a mod that aims to change that) to get away from an office job working under a Wal-Mart-esque mega corporation.

Also worth mentioning is that Stardew Valley is generally bigger than most Harvest Moon games, and is also a bit more inclusive if that’s your thing. There are five bachelors from each gender available, and you’re not limited to just boys or girls depending on what you chose to be during character creation (speaking of which, character creation offers waaaaaaaay more options than any Harvest Moon game ever has).

I think that about covers it. Anyone else played it yet?