One of yours portly’s goals for his long, indolent, decadent, self-indulgent, succulent summer break is to play more video games.  I am happy to report than my reversion into perpetual childhood is progressing nicely, as I’ve already logged nearly twenty hours (rough estimate) in Stardew Valley so far.  This week I am also running my annual Minecraft Camp, so I’m pretty much getting paid to play video games with kids all morning.

Stardew Valley is a farming sim game released in 2016.  It draws heavy inspiration from the Harvest Moon series (Story of Seasons in Japan; Wikipedia offers a good overview of the legal reasons for the different names).  In addition to farming—planting, watering, and reaping crops; raising livestock; clearing land for cultivation; upgrading and building farm buildings—the game encourages exploration and relationship-building.  Your character can spend all day fishing, for example, or exploring a network of caves (with monsters and loot!).  You can chop down trees, plant new ones, hang out at the saloon, romance the local singles, donate artifacts to the museum, and on and on.  You even have the opportunity to rebuild the dilapidated community center—or throw in with the big box chain store in town and bulldoze it.

Well, yours portly has been sinking a ton of time into this game.  I purchased it originally in 2016 or 2017—I can’t quite remember which—and played a lot of the game over one long Fourth of July week.  I believe I was still working my summer maintenance job at school at the time, so I did most of my gaming in short spurts of intense activity (still my primary method of gaming—play the mess out of a game for two weeks straight, then leave it alone for months or years).  I made it midway through the first fall season in the game before heading back to work, and didn’t touch the game again for years.

During exam review week, a student of mine was playing it near the end of class.  We started to chat about the game a bit, and I realized how much I wanted to pick it up again.  I made a note in my planner to play the game, and I reinstalled (but did not start playing it) that night.  Once school ended, I booted up the game and have lost myself in it.

But what of the game itself?  What is it about Stardew Valley that has yours portly sinking hours of his free time into its rustic world?

The game does a number of things well.  It offers multiple objectives—both assigned quests and player-generated ones—to work toward at any given moment.  For example, a typical “day” in the game sees me watering my crops; harvesting and replanting any mature ones; harvesting mushrooms from a little cave on the farm; collecting syrup from trees I’ve tapped; gathering crustaceans from baited crab pots; fishing; smoking fish; heading to town for supplies; taking crops to the community center to complete various “bundles”; giving gifts to townsfolk; spelunking in the caves for loot; felling trees for a building project; smelting various ores to upgrade my tools; and on and on.

That might sound like work, and in a way it is, but there is huge freedom in deciding how to approach that work.  If someone in town is asking for, say, ten pieces of iron ore, I can prioritize going into the mines to fill that request.  If a resident has a birthday coming up and I know that person likes, say, wild blackberries, I can gather some blackberries and gift them to the resident.

Each little slow drip of progress also moves you closer to unlocking new parts of the map or new game mechanics, further adding to that desire to keep going.  For example, I completed all the “bundles” for one of the rooms in the community center, the vault.  Doing so put the local bus service back into commission, which opens up an entirely new area, the Calico Desert.  I stopped my latest session shortly after unlocking the bus service, so I am champing at the bit to get back in there to see the desert for myself.

The game is structured into four seasons—Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter—that each last twenty-eight in-game days.  Days run from 6 AM to 2 AM; if you’re not in bed by 2 AM, your character collapses and you pay a fee (10% of your gold) to JoJo Mart (think Sam’s Club) for dragging you home.  I’ve collapsed at least twice after losing track of time in the mines, or nearly done so when trying to complete one more little task before bedtime.  Each season has its own look and crops and foraging items, as well as festivals and special events.  There is a luau, for example, in which each villager brings something to toss into a communal pot.  I remember during my initial playthrough all those years ago all I had was tree sap, so I tossed it in; when the visiting governor tasted the soup, he got sick!  This time around, I tossed in some smoked tilapia, and things went much better—ha!

That schedule makes the game interesting, because there’s always something new or unusual to anticipate.  The game also throws in several random events.  For example, one day in summer there is green rain falling, and everyone is panicking.  The rain adds tons of moss to the map, as well as weird, tall ferns, but is otherwise harmless.

Therein lies another part of Stardew Valley‘s appeal:  there is a sense of melancholy Romanticism to the whole thing.  Yes, it is a farming simulator, but the world it builds is so much more.  Many of the games “objectives” are concealed, and are only revealed after lots of exploration—and more of that drip-drip-drip of gradual progress.  There are extensive “wikis” dedicated to the game that demystify some of the game’s mechanics, which is useful, but I would encourage first time players to figure things out for themselves.  Some mechanics are a bit too obtuse, so using a guide is helpful, but avoid spoilers as much as possible.  So much of the game’s appeal is the mystery of the world, which only reveals its secrets bit by bit.

Finally, the graphics have a pleasing, 16-bit quality to them that will warm the hearts of nostalgic gamers.  It is remarkable what can be done with those retro-style graphics, and the world of Stardew Valley is quite beautiful.

I have been playing on the PC, but apparently the game is available for the Nintendo Switch, too (that’s an affiliate link, by the way; I get a portion of proceeds from any purchases made through that link, at no cost to you, blah, blah, blah).  I could see Stardew Valley being a very compelling game on a handheld console like the Switch.  It would also be dangerous for yours portly, as I’d probably stay up even later playing it than I already am.

The game is an easy pickup—just $15 on Steam and on the PS4 at the time of writing—and it’s easy to play one or two in-game days (which would probably take 20-30 minutes, depending on what you’re doing) with a limited amount of time.  Indeed, I’m going to try to get in a day or two after finishing this post—and before getting ready for church (I’m writing this review the morning of Sunday, 2 June 2024).

Get to farming—digitally!