Game Review: Stardew Valley
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Put your farming caps on and get ready to relax; we have some crops to plant.
It’s not often one falls in love with a game so suddenly. Some games do it through solid action, like DOOM, and XCOM 2. Some do it through intrigue and horror, like the newest iteration of Resident Evil and the demo for Outlast 2. But sometimes, all we want is to sit back, and watch something grow. Well, ladies and gentlemen: we have something for you.
Stardew Valley, released relatively early in 2016, is a farming game, not unlike Harvest Moon, with literally hundreds of hours of content waiting to be experienced.
You begin the game with a cut scene. As your father lies upon his deathbed, he asks you to live your life to the fullest, to be happy with who you are and gives you a letter, to open when the time is right. Fast forward a few years and we’re stuck in a dead-end job working for JoJa Corp, a huge unfeeling conglomerate.
You pull from your drawer a small envelope, and read it. It states that when your father died, he left his farm at Stardew Valley to you, and you should go to it, and be happy.
So, you get the bus, and are greeted by the mayor, and the local carpenter, and off you go!
You start in spring, growing parsnips and cauliflowers, slowly advancing your farm, and branching out. But the gameplay doesn’t stop at farming.
There’s an entire mine you can explore, and you’ll need to as well to get better tools and better equipment. You can make various other items like a jam maker, a sap collector, furnaces, bee keeping stuff… the list goes on.
Then you have the animal aspect. You can keep up to eight chickens and given the right building, you can keep cows, and even horses.
Honestly, it sounds cheesy as heck but honestly, I’ve never played a game that is better for your soul than this.
Having a bad day? Do some crops.
Stressed? Head into town on the day of one of the various events and cool off a bit.
You can even romance several of the townspeople. And the best part? You can marry anyone regardless of gender.
Apparently, everyone in Stardew Valley is pansexual, which arguably kicks more ass than DOOM ever did.
So yeah, Stardew Valley is a wonderful £10.99 slice of idyllic farming heaven. Check it out if you liked Harvest Moon, or really want a pixelated hubby or wife to come home to every night.