Stardew Valley (PC): Harvesting the Moon and then some.

When I was a wee CannonMan waaaaay back when the Super Nintendo has just about lived through its console cycle, I had read in my Nintendo Power magazine about a new game called Harvest Moon. Being a budding young JRPG fan at this age something about its design appealed to me. I knew it was game about farming but that was pretty much it. On more than one occasion I would beg my parents to take me to Toys R' Us to see if I could get a copy.

It was never in stock. I never ended up getting a copy either because by the time that system started to fade and this playstation thing was boasting a small game called Final Fantasy 7 that kinda drew my attention. I always sought it out on emulators but never really sat down with it. Never really motivated to play the later iterations either.

But as I learned with Undertale, the Steam community (how many things am I going to plug here?) tends to be on the pulse of whats hot in gaming right now. I kept seeing articles, reactions, and stories about this game, and in short learned it was a spiritual successor to the game I missed out on so long ago. Well, as I also learned with Undertale if the Steam starts raving about something, its definitely worth a look. So this time, I jumped right into the fire to see what it was all about....

STARDEW VALLEY:(PC)

Stardew Valley starts off simple enough. You are immediately taken to a character generator where you can chose your gender, hairstyle, clothing, accessories, and race with a surprisingly amount of options and detail for a pixel game (yes it has those horrible pixel graphics again, indie games man...). And when I say options I mean if you want to give you character neon pink hair and blue skin you are completely welcome to do so. For the record because I am super mature, my character was Bone Orson and his favorite thing is butts (a decision I came to regret later). 

Once your character is done you are treated to scene of an elderly looking man lying on his bed. From what he's saying, it sounds like he doesn't have a whole lot of time left. He entrusts to you an envelope and says to open it only when things seem to be their most hopeless and you feel life needs to change.

It cuts to a scene of you working in a cubical at Jo-Ja Mart. It is clearly not a fun work environment and your character is clearly unhappy. They open the envelope to find its a letter from Grandfather, saying that if you are reading this its time for a change, and enclosed is the deed to a Farm in the countryside city of Pelican Town. Armed with a new home, you escape your job and travel to start your new life in the country side.

When you get to your farm, you clearly have some work to do.

Simple enough plot, pretty much just a frame to get you going. Once you get to town you are shown to your farm and see that work needs to be done in a bad way. After meeting the mayor and having him explain that if you place things in a crate by your house he will take them to sell, you at this point are pretty much free to do whatever you want. But the game gives you some simple tips to get you going. You start with some tools that you can use to start clearing away your farm land so you have room to start planting your crops. 

The game functions with a pretty simple hud for the most part. You have a calendar in the top right showing what day, date, and time it is, how far into the day/night cycle you are, and what the weather is {just in case being outside wasn't clear enough}. On the lower right you have an energy bar to show you how much work you can do, and on the bottom you have an item HUD that you might see in an MMO rpg really. Scroll wheel moves your items easily, right click uses you tools, left click uses your food and items and it uses the standard WASD controls (although there is controller support which I actually found more complicated).

So you start your first day hacking away at the tall grass, cutting wood debris, and smashing rocks until you have a nice little set of soil to plant your first seeds in. You get a few parsnip seeds to start, but at the behest of the Mayor he invites you to explore the town. So with not much else to do you will set to explore. As you walk you will learn that there is simple forage of wild fruits and veggies on the ground that you can pick up to eat or sell.

It'll take time for your farm to develop. Plant in 3x3 squares or lines of 5.

By following the most easily viewed roads you will be taken to the small village of Pelican City. It's a simple location and you will quickly see that people are bustling about in real time. You will peruse around and find shops to buy more seeds, a pub where you can get food and drink for energy, a bait shop for fishing supplies, and a number of various homes of its many citizens. Most of which are very friendly as they go about their day, so feel free to chat and meet people.

But as you do this, you will note in your menu that there is a tab for social interaction showing how well you have befriended people in town. And what you will immediately notice is that some of them also specify whether or note they are bachelors or bachelorette's. For those of you who have played the original Harvest Moon you have probably started to note a number of similarities from that game to this one already.

Now honestly, I can probably try to continue on trying to explain everything but that would be a difficult exercise since there really is no order to do things and how you unlock them. But what I can tell you for certain is that this game is surprisingly deep, and there is a lot to do and discover in this game. I have been playing it fairly often and have logged well over 65 hours of play into the game already, and I haven't even completed my first run on HotMilk Farm (again, super mature). Since there is so much to do this review is going to be kind of a smattering of experiences rather than my normal structured review.

Getting a horse is a huge kick to movement. Wish I hadn't waited so long.

A big point of contention in the game's community is the fishing minigame. Some people love it, some people hate it and think its too difficult. Since we live in a society that gave life to Neir's dumbfuck shitty impossible fucking fishing minigame that literally halts your progress, I was not intimidated by what Stardew Valley could throw at me.

Basically you have a small power gauge to cast your line, then once you get a bite you have a little bar that moves up and down if you hold or click the mouse button and keep it over a fish icon. Sometimes it can be squirrely, but I didn't consider it difficult and once you upgrade your rod and tackle it gets even easier. I end up doing a lot of fishing in this game, it surprisingly cathartic. This will be one of your primary means of money making during the winter months.

There are hotspots and some fish only appear during certain seasons, times of day,
or locations so you will be bouncing around often to try to fill your quests.

You will also learn that your tools at the onset of the game are kinda shit, but a trip to the blacksmith will tell you can upgrade them if you refine ore into ingots to make stronger gear that affects a bigger area. You could always buy the ore, but more than likely you will find yourself heading to the mine which also happens to be located by the adventurers guild, When you step foot into the mine a grizzled veteran guildsman will offer you your first weapon and send you off in the mine.

Now suddenly, the game turns into a hybrid of the original Legend of Zelda and Terraria/Minecraft. The dungeon appears fairly rogue-like as only key floors seem to be the same every time you come in them. You enter small to fairly large rooms filled with rocks, chests, and crates and you are free to smash and mine for valuable ores, gems, and artifacts for as long as your strength can let you. But its not totally safe down there as monsters are crawling about as well. While there is no real XP system that I can really tell, you can build your adventuring level a bit and unlock new accessories to equip to help you in battle as you balance clearing out the enemies and mining for supplies.

In addition to the things you can do on your own there is a town bulletin board where people will make requests, they aren't mandatory to do but they do make you try new things and helps your relationships, but you usually only have 2 days to complete them. Sometimes they will mail you requests and those appear to have indefinite time tables to do. You will quickly learn which of these you will want to do. Don't sweat ones that look difficult, there is no penalty for not doing it.

The game will also get weird on you, its not really spoilery I guess but I don't want to give it all away. You will start to get some requests from an eccentric gentleman and a group of "inhabitants" in the old town community center. The latter will give a large series of tasks to complete and I regret not getting the start on them sooner, because I believe doing these will unlock more sections of the game faster, and give you access to rarer materials that you need to really get your farm going on a more autonomous level.

Technically, the game runs for two years of time before you get an evaluation. Essentially each month is a season and each season is 28 days. During the course of the months you will find that each citizen has a birthday if you want to give them a gift (which is a fast way to build up with others), and during the months there will also be little village festivals where you can meet people, buy rare items, compete in festival events, and get your little romantic heart completely and utterly shattered by the heartless denizens of Pelican Town.

Stardew Valley, I didn't need to re-experience my the majority of my goddamn high school life. In the early goings of my life in Pelican Town, I made a habit to make sure to give flowers I found to the lovely ladies of the city as I played along. And one of the early festivals of the spring is a flower festival with a big celebratory dance where you can pair with one of the eligible singles. OR SO THE GAME FUCKING SAYS. I got shot down by every single one of the girls, and some of them harshly so. AND one of the guys. So I had to watch my sad little avi sit in the corner while everyone else had fun. And people wonder why I don't leave my house anymore, (It took effort but I did eventually get Abby to marry me, because she is clearly the best choice).

Ice cold, Leah.... Ice cold...

As you can see, the game is true to life becuase I wouldn't bother to dress
up for shit like this. Eat a dick, Sebastian. Abigail is mine.

Gifting doesn't just affect the romances either. You can gift everyone in town, and the more you do so and the more affinity you raise it unlocks cut scenes with each of the people of town at certain points. Doing this gives you a little more context to everyone in town and their life there. Easiest way I've found to do this is at the Pub after 7pm. Lots of people gather there at night, even more so on fridays. People fuckin' love Salad in Stardew Valley and a lot of the dudes love beer. Both of which are sold there. They are 200g a pop but if you dont mind spending its the fastest way to raise affinity, and DON'T forget their birthdays!

So here are some tips that I've learned from the early going: First things first is to collect 300 wood at the onset right after you get your first seeds planted. There is a bridge on the beach that can be repaired and it opens up a little side area where you can find coral, urchins, and other washed up sea treasures you can sell at the bait shop for a quick an easy couple of hundred. There is a lot of forage in this game and the stuff on the beach are some of the best. So start saving up that money.

Storage space. Once you get up to 2000 you'll want to buy a backpack to double what you can carry (and again when you can afford it), and you will want to build a few chests back at your house because at the very least you will want to save one of everything you pick up or grow. Some you will need for festivals, some of them you will need for character requests, and some you will need for the collection missions.

Don't make my mistake and skip those collection missions. I let the whole first season go by without doing any of them and I regret it because completing it quickly is what will open up an area where you can get the best ore for the best materials in the game. Namely, iridium. Iridium is the resource that will allow you to really blow the game wide open with top ranked materials, and more importantly sprinklers. Once you start getting iridium sprinklers in place the plant aspect of your farm will basically run itself, so get that iridium ore and get some battery packs.

If you don't grow those 5 gold parsnips at the start, you have to wait till year
two to try to grow them again. Don't make that mistake, the greenhouse is huge.

It is not worth staying up past midnight so time management is key. Losing all your energy or passing out at 2 am causes you to lose a significant amount of money and have little energy for the next day. Therefore, coffee is your best friend in this game. It's 300 at the pub which opens at 2pm. It's pricey in the early going but when you are scrambling to make it out of the mine or on the far side of town, that extra move speed will save you.  You can eventually make Pepper Poppers which last longer and eventually can get a horse which is fastest, but until then it doesn't hurt to have a few coffees ready.

Berries are eff'n OP. You will want to grow a little of everything for the major requests you'll want to fill but once you hit summer, the game becomes blueberries, blueberries, blueberries. They just print money for the entire summer month, and you'll want to grow as many as you can feasibly care for. Cranberries to a lesser extend in the fall but fruits will make you a killing in the summer and year round, really. Start cramming the low value ones in kegs or preservative jars to give you artisan goods and sell the rest to start making that bank.

This is only like a 4th of what I planted. Blueberries FTW.

Fishing and questing are best done when it rains because rain is basically a free watering for the farm. So use the weather appropriately to get as far down as you can in the mine, or catch those couple of fish for requests that are are tricky to nab otherwise. I smashed through much of the mines very quickly doing this because there is a reward for reaching the bottom and its also where you can find the better ores.

It's usually recommended to hold off on animals until you have a relatively steady money flow to keep them happy and well fed. Most people tend to recommend waiting until around year 2 to start focusing on your farms. Make sure you build a silo before you actually start getting animals because it turns all the grass you cut into hay to feed them, which will save you tons of money. Although personally I don't know how I'm going to find that time between blueberry harvests.

Yes, my animals are just as immaturely named as the rest of the farm.

The honestly I could probably keep going on and on about this, but from what I am learning is that there are a whole bunch of little secrets and things to do and or find as you play through this game. This definitely seems like one of those games that you won't just play one time and be done with it. From a content perspective it just seems much too deep of a game for that. Like I said prior, I haven't even completed a full 2 years of the game, and I already have well over 65 hours of the game logged and I haven't even come close to unlocking or doing everything it seems.

As eluded to above and as you can no doubt tell from the screenshots I have used,  it keeps its roots as a spiritual successor to Harvest Moon by designing it in a 16-bit pixel style of art work. RPG portrait dialog system, mixed resolutions on many of the images instead of one uniform look. I have seen a number of reviewer have mixed opinions on the graphics, but personally I eat these kinda games up.

Kinda gothy, Loves the rain, plays the flute, avid video gamer?
Abigail was clearly the girl for me.

Similarly, the music so also somewhat reflective of that too. I won't go as far as to say the game is chiptune because it's range goes much wider than that. All of the music in the game is charmingly composed for the scenes or seasons at hand. Nothing feels out of place and for lack of a better explanation, I find its soundtrack very cathartic to listen to. I wouldn't say anything is overly catchy or notable I suppose, but it feels right.

I will say though there are sometimes very long straights where the music will just stop. Now when night falls this makes sense because then the game just reduces to just the chirps of birds and animals as you walk through town at night. That's fine, they do a similar effect sometimes in the mines when the music will stop and you will just get the occasional drip of the cave walls. I can dig it, shows how deep I've gone in this area.  But there will be times where I'm working in my field or fishing where the music will just stop outright. Maybe this happens for every area and I'm only noticing it in these sections but it seems very weird when I do notice it.

Oh by the way. Mute the sounds of your footsteps. I tried to ignore them when I started the game but after a few hours of "clomp clomp clomp clomp clomp" I had to pull up the menu to turn them off. I don't think that I could honestly deal with that sound for the whole sixty five hours I have already logged playing this game. It's enough to drive me to madness.

No girl in Stardew Valley is more of an unappreciative snot than Haley.
Elliot is probably a close second. Not everyone in town is nice.

Is the game fun? Well, I guess that goes by what your definition of fun is. By my definition??? Ehhhh maybe? It's one of those games that give you a lot of little menial tasks to do in the hope of having that one big payoff. I won't lie, there were a handful of moments where I was looking for stuff to do between waiting for my next crop to go, but the moment I cashed in I'd be like "WOO! What the fuck to upgrade NEXT?!" It's got a very addictive quality about it that makes it incredibly difficult to put down.

But to give it an even further special mention, Stardew Valley isn't just winning the hearts of the steam community over by just being a charming and entertaining farm life simulation game, it's also generating a lot of good will because this game has just a single creator working behind it, ConcernedApe. He's already put out an update pack, and when people tweet at him with a bug in the game, he pretty much gets on top of it to fix it immediately.

I don't know what causes it, but sometimes a fairy appears and grows some
of your farm for you ahead of time. Thanks fairy!

People are loving it so much that pirates who are stealing the game are regretting it and paying for it legally. People who don't like that pirates are taking the game for free are actually purchasing copies of the game to give away to pirates just so they are using legal copies. The game really is something special if its motivating people to really do the right thing to support a dev like that, and it seems like the goodwill is being rewarded on both sides.

The community itself has also gone buck wild with mods for this game already. Some of them affect the core gameplay some to tailor the experience, some of them are purely aesthetic. Some of them are good, some are great. Some of them are shitty, (Come on, did we really need a mod to make the only two black characters in the game white? God forbid there be a little diversity). I haven't dabbled with trying to mod it yet but I might soon.

Spiritual successor is the term a lot of people are using to describe Stardew Valley, and I think that is a fair description because it really is a successor to the old 16-bit Harvest Moon games. I may not have ever had the opportunity to sit down with one of those like I wanted to so long ago, but I more than made up for it in my time with Stardew Valley. It is only 15 bucks on steam, and it gave me well over 70+ hours of entertainment, I highly recommend it. 

Haley will never love you, the rotten twat.