Stardew Valley

Stardew Valley is a sandbox RPG inspired by the extremely popular Harvest Moon farming series, known mainly from Nintendo's portable consoles. The game was created by Concerned Ape, an independent, one-man studio founded by Eric Barone. Production was initially created for PC, but its extraordinary success prompted the creator to prepare console and mobile versions of the game as well.

Story

The plot of Stardew Valley tells the story of a young man, leading a typical life as an employee of a large corporation. In the past, he received a mysterious envelope from his grandfather, with a recommendation to open it only when he feels that his life has become monotonous and no longer gives him happiness. Deciding that this moment has just come, our protagonist opens it and finds out that he has received an inheritance from his grandfather in the form of a small farm located somewhere outside the city. Without thinking long, the man leaves his old life and boring job to face new challenges. Upon arriving at the place, however, it turns out that there is no idyll awaiting him, and the farm, badly deteriorated, is in fact a small house surrounded by a patch of land covered with thick bushes and weeds. The hero's task is to restore the farm to its former glory.

Mechanics

The general principles of gameplay in Stardew Valley are almost a carbon copy of the solutions known from the Harvest Moon series. The starting point here is an economic game, during which we deal mainly with the management and development of our farm. We start the whole game from restoring it to a usable state - digging up stones, cutting down trees and weeding out weeds. Then we start planting plants, watering them and harvesting crops, the income from which is our main source of income. With time we gain the ability to grow newer species of plants and even breed animals, and we can invest the earned money in developing the farm.

The above described realities of the classic economic game have been framed in Stardew Valley as a sanbox RPG. The title gives us a lot of room for manoeuvre, offering an incredible variety of activities and tasks, to which we can devote ourselves depending on our preferences. In addition to farming, our protagonist can, for example, go fishing, pay a visit to the nearby mine and look for useful resources, and even venture into the dungeons, where dangerous monsters and valuable treasures await him. All this is complemented by an advanced crafting module, typical for sandboxes, and a character development system, thanks to which we can improve various skills of our hero as we advance to subsequent levels.

Another important aspect of the game is integration with the local community. In the breaks from the field work, our farmer can go to the nearby town, take part in various events, as well as interact with encountered characters and accept tasks commissioned by them. Similarly to Harvest Moon, the game also offers the possibility to start a romance, and in the long run, to get married and raise children.

Multiplayer

Stardew Valley is a game created initially only for single player. After the premiere of the title, however, the author didn't stop working on its development, introducing a number of new elements in later updates of the game, including the possibility of multiplayer game in co-op mode. It is worth noting that the multiplayer mode is absent on mobile platforms.

Technical issues

In terms of setting, Stardew Valley strongly refers to the first installments of the Harvest Moon series, offering simple 2D graphics in a top-down view, reminiscent of productions from the era of 16-bit consoles. Despite the apparent simplicity, the game offers an extremely complex model of gameplay, as well as a whole bunch of flavors and additional capabilities, which we discover gradually as the game progresses. The developer didn't forget about such details as the day and night cycle, dynamically changing seasons, and even the hero's fatigue system, thanks to which he loses energy as a result of "sleeping" at night or performing more demanding farm tasks.