Stardew Valley: A Breathless First Description
(...and a few notes and tips)
Have you ever played or heard of the Stardew Valley game? Its a small, inexpensive game that will run on any computer and even on an Android phone or probably your Kindle. I'll never say this again but just get this game, its life-changing. If you never heard of it, ask Zak about it.
Its a few years old and looks like a Super Nintendo game. I've been playing it off and on for years. Last night, I was having trouble sleeping and just tossing and turning, worrying about a lot of things. I was listening to a podcast and they started talking about this game and at 2am, I thought "Goddamn it, I have to play that game right now." I played it until dawn and have already sank a few more hours into it today.
The game is as simple as you inheriting a small, shabby farm in a small town from your grandpa. You quite your shitty Walmart job, move to that farm and begin your new wholesome, simple life as a farmer.
You now live in this town and can do whatever you want and there's a million different things to do, no matter what you like to do in games, there'll be something here that you'll not just enjoy but LOVE.
You'll usually start by clearing out the overgrown area around your farm (just a small one room house, really). Cut down the trees and stumps, pick-axe the rocks, cut down the overgrown bushes. Keep filling up the dog dish with water every day and you just may get yourself a pet cat.
Once the immediate area around your shack is clear, you'll want to start earning small amounts of money. As you were clearing out all that shit, you've been picking up seeds and wood and rocks and acorns and stuff. Plant some seeds, water them every day and when something grows, harvest it and sell it.
Soon, you'll learn what the different crops are, how long they each take to grow and how much cash can be made by selling each to the nearby general store.
You live near a small town with a bunch of small stores and such. One of your first missions is to introduce yourself to 30 of the townsfolk. Each person has their own backstory and you'll become friends with some, frenemies with others and eventually romance, marry, and have kids with another.
There's a proper day/night cycle, days go by, seasons change and years go by, all bringing exactly the kind of changes you expect from passing days. Nothing grows in winter, the fall is as beautiful as we know it to be and you'll change your schedule and chores based on what each day brings.
Nothing I've said so far sounds amazing and its not but there's dozens of little tasks and mini-games and hobbies and quests that pop up and you'll just keep doing whatever you like doing until you're a stone cold expert at that task. Maybe you enjoy the fishing game here and you'll catch rarer and rarer fish, building up your collection of exotic ones until you got the most respected collection in the world.
It won't take long until you get the hang of farming and you'll incorporate that into your days and without even realizing it, you'll be a master farmer, growing and harvesting the most valuable stuff and making hundreds of thousands of bucks. Or maybe you'll just grow pumpkins and apple trees because you think they're the prettiest.
Between your house and the town, there's a broken down deserted community center and a big chunk of your time is spent building that back up, repairing it and eventually reopening it up for the entire town.
Twice a month, there's special events every month like the flower festival, the tulip dance and Halloween parties. Everyone has their own birthdays and as you give people gifts, your friendship meters will grow and you'll get to know the entire town.
The town has a dark under belly that begins to show itself almost immediately. Penny's mom is an alcoholic. Ghosts drift through the old boarded up community center before you fix it up. There's a wizard living in his tower and a nearby mine that goes down deeeeeep. Every 10 levels down you'll find a valuable treasure but also harder and harder monsters you'll fight in very simple combat.
Without realizing it, you'll sink 100 hours into this and years go by in in-game time. You'll add buildings to your farm, barns and greenhouses and animals. Lots and lots of animals. You'll never kill a living thing but you will make money off their eggs and wool and milk.
There's endless stories of this game helping people with their depression. The whole game was basically built by one guy who's girlfriend supported him while he spent years making this.
Zak might even already have a copy of this you can play but if not, its $4.99 for your Kindle or probably a few bucks more for your computer. Just buy it and start playing it. When you run into something you don't know how to do, just google it "Stardew valley how do i fish?"
Hmm, the game does have multi-player, I wonder how hard it'd be to play with each other? I wish I could play side by side with you and we could answer each others questions as they come up. A lot of the fun is actually figuring out how to do stuff.
Notes:
Gunther, museum curator, has key for sewers.
Your farm comes with a TV that will give you valuable information. At first, it will just broadcast the weather channel. Unlike real life, it will always tell you what tomorrows weather will be and unlike in real life, it's always correct.
Eventually, the TV will broadcast other things. A horoscope channel may sound frivolous but knowing if a coming day is a good luck or bad luck day will be surprisingly important and financially beneficial to you.
