Stardew Valley

Stardew Valley
Developer(s) ConcernedApe
Publisher(s) Chucklefish Games
Designer(s) Eric Barone
Programmer(s) Eric Barone
Artist(s) Eric Barone
Composer(s) Eric Barone
Platform(s) Microsoft Windows, OS X, Linux
Release date(s)

Windows

  • WW February 26, 2016

OS X, Linux

  • WW TBA
Genre(s) Simulation, role-playing video game
Mode(s) Single-player

Stardew Valley is an indie farming simulation role-playing video game developed by ConcernedApe and published by Chucklefish Games. The game was released for Microsoft Windows on February 26, 2016, and for OS X and Linux at a later date.

In Stardew Valley, the player takes the role of a character that, to get away from the hustle of an office job, takes over their grandfather's dilapidated farm in a place known as Stardew Valley. The player manages their character's time and energy levels as they clear land, plant and tend to crop, raise livestock, craft goods, mine for ores, and engage in social activities, including romances leading towards marriage, with the various residents of the small town, all while earning in-game money to expand their farm. The game is open-ended, allowing the player to take on activities as they see fit.

Stardew Valley was heavily inspired by the Harvest Moon series, with additions by the game's creator, Eric Barone, to address some of the shortcomings of these games while using the opportunity as an exercise to improve his own programming and game design skills. Barone developed the title on his own over four years and interacted frequently with players who were interested in the title to get feedback. Chucklefish Games approached Barone with the offer to publish the title mid-way through development, allowing Barone to focus more on completing the game he wanted to make.

Stardew Valley received positive reception from critics, and was one of the highest-selling titles on Steam in the first few months of its release, selling over one million copies. Barone later identified plans to expand the game to include co-operative play and support for other platforms, among other features.

Gameplay

Stardew Valley puts the player in charge of running a small farm, including growing crops and raising livestock.

Stardew Valley is a farming simulation game primarily inspired by the Harvest Moon series.[1] At the start of the game, the player creates their character, with them becoming the recipient of a plot of land and a small house, which was once owned by their grandfather, in an area called Stardew Valley. The plot is initially overrun with boulders, trees, and weeds, but the player works to clear the fields and restart the farm, tending to crops and livestock as to generate revenue and which to further expand the farm's buildings and facilities.

The player may also interact with non-player characters (NPC) that inhabit the town, including engaging in relationships with these characters; this can culminate in marriage, which results in the NPC helping the player's character to tend the farm. The player can also engage in fishing, cooking, and crafting, and also explore procedurally-generated caves with materials and ores to mine or battle creatures within. The player can take on various quests to earn additional money, or work at completing specific collections of materials offered at the town's Community Center to gain additional rewards. All these activities must be metered against the character's current health and exhaustion level and the game's internal clock; if the character becomes too exhausted, they will be returned to their house restored with energy on the morning of the next day, but having forgone any opportunities to continue in activities from the previous day. The game uses a simplified calendar, each year having only four 28-day months that represent each season, which determines which crops can be grown and which activities can be beneficial. There is otherwise no deadline for completing the game.

A four-player cooperative mode was initially planned to be released in the game at launch, but is currently planned to be released at a later date.[2] In this mode, Barone anticipates that all players will share a common farm, enabling players to all do different tasks related to it, such as one player may be mining while others tend to the farm.[3]

Development

Stardew Valley was created entirely by American indie game designer Eric Barone, under the alias of ConcernedApe.[4][5] In 2011, Barone had graduated from the University of Washington Tacoma with a computer science degree, but had not been able to get a job in the industry, instead working as an usher at the Paramount Theatre in Seattle.[6][7] Looking to improve his computer skills for better job prospects, he came to the idea of crafting a game which would also pull in his artistic side.[6] Stardew Valley originally began as a modern fan-made alternative to the Harvest Moon series, as he felt that "the series had gotten progressively worse after Harvest Moon: Back to Nature".[8] Unable to find a satisfactory replacement, Barone began to create a game similar to the series, stating that his intent was "to address the problems I had with Harvest Moon" and that "no title in the series ever brought it all together in a perfect way".[4] Barone was also inspired by other games, including Animal Crossing, Rune Factory, Minecraft, and Terraria, adding features seen in those titles such as crafting, quests, and combat.[4]

Initially, he considered releasing the title on Xbox Live Indie Games due to the ease of publishing on that platform, but found early on that his scope for the game shifted to be much larger than originally anticipated.[6] Barone publicly announced the game in September 2012, using Steam's Greenlight system to gauge interest on the game.[2][4][8] After the title was shown a great deal of support from the community, Barone began working on the title in full, engaging with Reddit and Twitter communities to discuss his progress and gain feedback on proposed additions.[4] He was approached by Finn Brice, director of Chucklefish Games, shortly after the Greenlight period in 2013, who offered to help publish the game on release.[6] Chucklefish took over many of the non-development activities for Barone, such as site hosting and setting up his development wiki.[9] Barone considered the timing of Chucklefish's involvement fortunate, as Barone was hesitant about using Steam's Early Access system for development.[9] Barone spent four years working on the project, redoing it multiple times, and was the sole developer on the game, frequently spending 10 hours or more a day working on it. He created all of the game's pixel art and musical pieces, while also programming it in C# using the Microsoft XNA framework.[4][8]

Barone aimed to give the player the feeling of immersion in a small farming community.[7] In contrast to the Harvest Moon games, which could end after two years of in-game time has passed, Barone kept Stardew Valley open-ended so that players would not feel rushed to try to complete everything possible.[7] During development, Barone recognized that some players would attempt to figure out mechanically how to maximize their farm's yield and profit through spreadsheets and other tools, but hoped that most players would take the time to learn these on their own.[7] To that end, he designed the cooking aspect of the game purposely to not be profitable, but instead gave the player specific bonuses that aided their exploration, farming, mining, and fishing skills.[7] Barone also opted to not include the butchering of farm animals for meat products, as the player was encouraged to name and tend to each animal individually in staying with the feeling he wanted for the game.[7]

In April 2015, Barone announced he intended to release the game only once he felt it was feature complete, refusing to put the game onto the Early Access program, or accept any pre-sale payments.[4] The game was officially released for Microsoft Windows on February 26, 2016.[2] Following its release, Barone continued to work on the game, taking feedback from the community and patching bugs, and stated plans to add in cooperative gameplay for four players, an expanded combat system, and additional relationship offerings at a later date.[5] Barone also anticipates adding in more end-game content, official support for user modifications, and porting the game to other platforms, specifically ports for OS X and Linux operating systems and evaluating options for console releases.[6][3][9] In May 2016, Barone announced that Chucklefish will help with non-English localizations, OS X and Linux ports, and the technical aspects required for online co-operative play, allowing him to focus solely on the first major content update.[10]

Reception

Reviews
Aggregate score
AggregatorScore
Metacritic89/100[11]
Review scores
PublicationScore
Destructoid9.5/10[12]
Game Informer8.7/10[13]
Game Revolution[14]
Giant Bomb[15]
IGN8.8/10[16]
PC Gamer (UK)80/100[17]
Polygon9/10[18]

Stardew Valley received positive reviews from game critics and journalists. Jesse Singal writing for the Boston Globe wrote that the game was "utterly compelling, lovingly crafted", and provided the player with numerous varieties of activities to do without falling into a cycle of repetitive activities.[19] Elise Favis of Game Informer found that watching her autistic brother play Stardew Valley helped her to understand his condition better, as the game provides enough structure of present events with enough of a view of future events to allow her brother to enjoy the game.[20]

In the first two months after its release Stardew Valley was one of the best-selling games on Steam, selling over 400,000 copies across Steam and GOG.com in two weeks,[2][21][22] and by early April, more than 1 million copies had been sold.[9][23] Journalists noted that the gaming community had shown support for Barone for the game; while there have been some players that have obtained the game illegally, these players have been impressed with the game and stated they plan to purchase the game, while other players have made offers to help pay for those that can't afford the game.[4][24] Stardew Valley has also seen an active modding community, with players creating additional features and texture replacements for the game.[25]

References

  1. ↑ Grayson, Nathan (March 1, 2016). "Steam's Latest Hit Is A Game About Farming And Relationships". Kotaku. Retrieved March 1, 2016.
  2. 1 2 Grayson, Nathan (March 21, 2016). "The Past, Present, And Future Of Stardew Valley". Kotaku. Retrieved March 22, 2016.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Baker, Chris (March 9, 2016). "The 4 years of self-imposed crunch that went into Stardew Valley". Gamasutra. Retrieved March 9, 2016.
  4. 1 2 Hernandez, Patricia (March 3, 2016). "Stardew Valley’s Creator Has Won The Hearts Of PC Gamers". Kotaku. Retrieved March 3, 2016.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 Marks, Tom (March 10, 2016). "Interview: What's next for Stardew Valley". PC Gamer. Retrieved March 10, 2016.
  6. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Singal, Jesse (March 14, 2016). "How a First-time Developer Created Stardew Valley, 2016’s Best Game to Date". Vulture.com. New York Media, LLC. Retrieved March 14, 2016.
  7. 1 2 3 Lin, Amy (February 23, 2016). "Stardew Valley: Pushing The Boundaries of Farming RPGs". The Cornell Daily Sun. Retrieved March 9, 2016.
  8. 1 2 3 4 Dealessandri, Marie (April 8, 2016). "How Stardew Valley won Steam". Market for Computer and Video Games. Retrieved April 12, 2016.
  9. ↑ O'Conner, Alice (May 3, 2016). "Stardew Valley Recruits Help For Co-op". Rock Paper Shotgun. Retrieved May 3, 2016.
  10. ↑ "Stardew Valley for PC Reviews". Metacritic. Retrieved April 8, 2016.
  11. ↑ Hancock, Patrick (March 7, 2016). "Review: Stardew Valley". Destructoid. Retrieved March 7, 2016.
  12. ↑ Gwaltney, Javy (March 24, 2016). "Stardew Valley Review – Your New Home Away From Home". Game Informer. Retrieved March 26, 2016.
  13. ↑ Leack, Jonathan (March 1, 2016). "Stardew Valley Review". Game Revolution. Retrieved March 8, 2016.
  14. ↑ Ryckert, Dan (March 21, 2016). "Stardew Valley Review". Giant Bomb. Retrieved March 22, 2016.
  15. ↑ Plagge, Kallie (March 24, 2016). "Stardew Valley Review". IGN. Retrieved March 26, 2016.
  16. ↑ Lucas, Daniella (February 25, 2016). "Stardew Valley Review". PC Gamer. Retrieved March 8, 2016.
  17. ↑ Velocci, Carli (March 29, 2016). "Stardew Valley review". Polygon. Retrieved March 31, 2016.
  18. ↑ Singal, Jesse (March 17, 2016). "In ‘Stardew Valley,’ you reap what you sow". Boston Globe. Retrieved March 18, 2016.
  19. ↑ Favis, Elise (April 28, 2016). "Understanding Autism Through Stardew Valley". Game Informer. Retrieved May 3, 2016.
  20. ↑ Barrett, Ben. "Stardew Valley, a PC Harvest Moon-like indie game, rockets to the top of Steam top sellers". PC Games N. Retrieved March 1, 2016.
  21. ↑ Marks, Tom (March 9, 2016). "Stardew Valley has sold 425,000 copies". PC Gamer. Retrieved March 9, 2016.
  22. ↑ Frank, Allegra (April 13, 2016). "Stardew Valley tops a million copies sold, two months after launch". Polygon. Retrieved April 13, 2016.
  23. ↑ Hernandez, Patricia (March 2, 2016). "A Surprising Number of People Feel Bad For Pirating Stardew Valley". Kotaku. Retrieved March 9, 2016.
  24. ↑ Marks, Tom (March 4, 2016). "The best Stardew Valley mods". PC Gamer. Retrieved March 9, 2016.

External links

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