When I got the chance to review Stardew Valley before Polygon in 2016, I had no idea how big it would become. What I found during my review period was a calm, concise, and engaging game about doing chores that didn’t feel so genre-defining. It was a Awesome game, and over the years I would get it on two additional platforms (Nintendo Switch and mobile), but I didn’t consider it a contender for “game of the decade”.
It turns out that people really enjoy doing chores.
It’s always hard to tell when a game is going to cross the desired line between generally great and generatively influential. Sometimes a game is too niche to find a large audience, even if it’s a masterpiece, or might not age well. It’s occasionally easy to tell when a game will be considered a contender for ‘game of the decade’ upon release – usually if it comes from an older studio and wins a bunch of awards – and that wasn’t the case. Stardew Valleyat least initially.
Eight years later, the game created by solo developer Eric “ConcernedApe” Barone, about moving to a small rural town and starting a farm, has become a global phenomenon. It has sold more than 30 million copies, it was released on PC, mobile, Nintendo Switch, and consoles, and it basically kicked off the whole “fun games” genre that’s still thriving today. It has also received six major updates, with the most recent, 1.6, adding new events, new dialogue, a new farm type, and further fleshing out the endgame. More than eight years later, Stardew Valley is still thriving and shows no signs of slowing down.
All this despite the fact that it could have easily disappeared under the glut of massive AAA adventures and seemingly more mainstream experiences. After all, at the time of its release, the farming and crafting sim genre had largely been relegated to Nintendo systems, with franchises like Animal Crossing and Harvest Moon, or to highly accurate PC simulators, like the Farming Simulator series. No one made a game where you just grow crops and talk to people. Worse, while Stardew Valley came out in February – earlier than most major releases in 2016 – that year was truly one excellent years for games, and Star Dew had to compete with some late 2015 releases including Fallout 4, Halo 5And Understory. It still landed on Steam’s bestseller list shortly after release.
Image: ConcernedApe
I and many others continued to immerse themselves in it for hundreds of hours Stardew Valley — growing crops, romanticizing NPCs regardless of their gender (a rarity in games like this at the time), crushing rocks for treasure, and revealing all of the game’s many secrets. That’s a lot to do, making it easy to produce triple-digit hour counts. However, somewhat separated Star Dew of the package is that all these tasks fit together satisfactorily. Your job is to restore your grandfather’s old farm to its former glory so you can grow crops. You then sell those crops to the city or give them as gifts to the local population. You can also use them to make food, which you can use for energy while mining ore, and then convert into farming tools. (Oh, and you can fish, too.) It’s a deceptively tight game loop that ensures that everything you do matters if you want to achieve the goal the game has set for you. And there’s just enough room if you want to play somewhere else.
It’s hard to stick to what you plan to do every day in-game, so I started making to-do lists early on. Go to the mines today; make sure you buy seeds tomorrow; Don’t forget the mayor’s birthday. Then there are all the other things to remember: which of the villagers likes flowers and which likes fish? Where will they be at certain times of the day? At what time of year can you catch anchovies? What does the community center need again? There’s a lot to remember, which immediately makes the simple gameplay more challenging, but not in a way that feels unfair or unnecessary.
That is how Stardew Valley took advantage of the key to his success: player satisfaction. The multitude of tasks can become overwhelming, but completing them all and checking off the old list feels good. Moreover, in the game world you have the feeling that you are contributing to the world around you. As you build your farm and build relationships with NPCs, Pelican Town improves; the citizens become happier and you open up more areas to explore. You also rebuild the community center, which brings joy to the magical creatures that live nearby.
Image: ConcernedApe
People often say that video games are about making fantasies come true, and that’s partly true, at least in the case of Stardew Valley. When I first played it in 2016, I was a freelancer working seven days a week, living in a small apartment with several roommates in an increasingly expensive city. For me, there was no such thing as a life outside of work, so this was constantly running through my mind: What if I just moved to the middle of nowhere and started a farm? It’s a ridiculous dream, but when I entered the world of… Stardew Valley, it allowed me to live out that fantasy, at least for a little while. The game gives its players a sense of purpose, with a world where your work has both immediate and lasting effects.
“(Job simulators) remove the worst of the uncertainty, helplessness, ambiguity, and failure implications associated with real-world jobs and turn them into game systems that are interesting and fun to interact with,” psychologist Jamie Madigan wrote in a post about the psychology of video games in 2017. “They give players clear goals, unambiguous feedback, winnable challenges and predictable rewards. All things that unfortunately most jobs do not consistently offer.”
And that has never changed, even as Barone has added more and more Star Dew over the years. To-do lists still feel satisfying to complete, and the game loop never feels ponderous. Each part of the game has also received additions. There are more farm types to choose from early on, and more areas to unlock and explore. This is especially important in the endgame, and the updates allow you to play with one farm for so much longer.
The game has has become even more fantastic, with more magic, creatures and supernatural events. But Star Dew has always had a bit of magic and your purpose still feels grounded. It was always about building a new life for yourself outside the confines of modern life and capitalism, and that’s what it still offers. Your character worked a boring office job, was given the opportunity to take over their grandfather’s farm, and left their previous life for literally greener pastures, and that has never changed.