Stardew Valley 1.6 is here to remind you why the game is here to stay
When Stardew Valley It first came out in 2016 and was positioned as a Harvest Moon-esque. The comparison was, at the time, the only way to describe a low-stakes farming simulator where a village of locals met and perhaps got married. It’s hard to remember that now, in an age where ‘fun gaming’ has taken on a life of its own and ‘wholesome’ games have their own showcases with hundreds of thousands of viewers, but Star Dew was released into another world. And then this was made. The latest major content release, the 1.6 update, is a testament to the game’s longevity in the genre it shaped.
Stardew Valley was a huge success when it launched; It sold a million copies in two months, and will continue to do so as of 2024 30 million. Reviewers at the time enjoyed the satisfaction of the tasks and the way they worked toward something greater: letting you escape the daily grind of life by dipping your hands in the soft dirt and making connections with your community. Star Dew was also somewhat ahead of its time when it came to depicting same-sex relationships, allowing players to date and marry any of the romantic NPCs regardless of their gender.
Each of these elements has been criticized over the years: the game’s anti-capitalist framework lies in a crushing pursuit of profit that doesn’t elevate anyone else in Pelican Town, and the player-sexual NPCs only emphasize a lack of diversity wider. But, to put it simply, it’s nice to feel like you have it at Joja Corp. and its equivalents in practice, creating a satisfyingly clean and efficient wine production line and your gay girlfriend (Leah, if you’re wondering), despite these imperfections.
This core to Stardew Valley has never changed, and neither has its appeal. In fact, its enormous success has only increased. Because the niche it once filled alone became saturated with hundreds of other indie farming games and adjacent AAA titles like Harvestella, it began to loosely coalesce under the cozy gaming banner. Although the label is vague and can include games that do not involve farming or other Star Dew staples, they are still included today thanks to their popularity and typical overlap with an open, low-stakes atmosphere with an outdoorsy feel. And Star Dew‘s influence in space has never diminished – it is everywhere, from the banner of the fun games subreddit to the top image of a great newspaper publisher.
But becoming the tentpole of a microgenre isn’t the only thing new and returning players are flocking to Stardew Valley. Over the past eight years, developer Eric “ConcernedApe” Barone has added major updates to the game, keeping it fresh and bringing it back to the attention of potential new farmers. According to Steam graphs, the game received an influx of new players in November 2019, coinciding with the 1.4 update, and in January 2021, with the 1.5 update. Both times, the average number of concurrent players rose and then stayed higher. And 1.6 is also broken Star Dew‘s previous record for concurrent Steam users.
This huge patch was highly anticipated among the community, and yet they were still pleasantly surprised by how much it added to the game: a new area, festivals, NPC dialogue, the ability to have multiple pets, dozens of new items, visual updates, and so on. Barone invited players to start a new farm to see it all, perhaps at the newly added livestock-focused Meadowlands Farm, so that’s exactly what I did.
Meadowlands is the eighth farm type, allowing you to tailor your specific experience as you play the game. It’s here for the farmers who want to raise more animals than plant crops, and comes with two chicks of its own. It is also covered in blue grass, which is apparently a favorite of farm animals. The exact mechanical bonus is not clear in the game here, but that immediately comes into play Star Dew‘s power. Essentially, it’s a fun, cheerful addition, and you can be happy that your chickens are having a good time. If you want to get into specifics, you can dive into the fan-maintained wiki and find out exactly what it doesand spend hours thinking about how to build the best possible farm. This has always been the case Star Dew, but it only increases with each update as it gathers more features and a wider community. 1.6, with its laundry list of additions and modifications, is an example of this.
Image: ConcernedApe via Polygon
It’s been long enough since I started a new farm in earnest that I’ve seen one of the earlier appeals of Star Dew: There is always something that surprises you. This is perhaps what has made modding the game so popular. Mods like Stardew Valley Expanded explicitly try to “capture the magical feeling they had when they first played Stardew Valley‘ and are therefore incredibly popular (Expanded recently surpassed 2 million downloads).
The same applies to Star Dew‘s 1.6 update, keeping the community buzzing with new discoveries, whether they come from people who have avoided reading patch notes and social media posts or from people who have made new discoveries Easter eggs. These moments are paradoxically easier to spot on later storage: When I returned to my farm at the end of third year, I received a flood of letters, visitors, and cutscenes telling me about new things I could do. The update will certainly make the game richer for new players and keep things fresh for the hundreds-hour club.
But the core of the game is still fair Star Dew – and it is that that has kept the game going for eight years. I’ve already got about 100 hours (beginner’s figures according to many) and when I dive back in it’s immediately clear why. That core game loop does an incredible job of keeping you hooked; there’s always just one more thing you want to do, and that leads to another and another thing, until you’ve spent an entire afternoon clicking away at crops and animals and ores.
1.6 is not running Stardew Valley in a new game, and the fact that there was absolutely no need to do so is perhaps the most interesting thing about it. Star Dew was released eight years ago and still dominates the genre it all but created.
It fell into a hole, immediately attracted an underserved audience, kept them on an irresistible loop for years, and regularly refreshed its supply of surprises via major updates like 1.6. Nothing is likely to disrupt that dominance anytime soon.
It’s unclear if there will be a massive 1.7 update in the future. Barone has developed another game, Harried chocolatiersince 2020, and as long as that currently on hiatus to get 1.6 bug-free and available on different platforms, certainly at some point Stardew Valley will be left to his fate. But even if it doesn’t get any more major updates, its unwavering core, long tail, and rooted community ensure that it will long remain at the center of the ecosystem that has grown up around it.