Review: Stardew Valley is a Nostalgic Treasure

A beautiful homage to the Harvest Moon series, Stardew Valley is a modern farming simulator with a retro twist that reminds players of the charm of hard work, friendship, and lots and lots of parsnips.

As someone who has been obsessed with Harvest Moon since I first came across More Friends of Mineral Town , I was surprised by the sudden popularity of Stardew Valley. Somehow a farming simulator has managed to capture the interest of every YouTuber and Twitch streamer. I even caught my brother, a long-time critic of my video game tastes, watching a live-stream of the game.

How did this seemingly random farming sim manage to win over even the most obstinate casual game haters?

After spending 20 hours on the game, it became quite clear that these new farming sim converts just never gave Harvest Moon a chance. From the music to the graphics to the villagers’ personalities,

Stardew Valley IS pretty much a Harvest Moon game. (In fact, the visuals and audio may as well be identical to Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town.)

Giantbomb’s review mentions “Animal Crossing influence[s]” like the ability to upgrade your house and gift villagers on their birthdays, but any farming sim fan can tell you that these features are staples of the Harvest Moon franchise. Even the mining combat can be traced to Rune Factory, a Harvest Moon fantasy spin-off series.

That is not to say that Stardew Valley does not have its own merits; in fact, it is better than any Harvest Moon title to date. With its endless customization options, interesting characters, and hidden secrets, Stardew Valley has tweaked every aspect of the Harvest Moon formula to create a more mature and satisfying farming sim.

STORY

You start as an employee for Joja Corporation, a depressing corporate machine. In order to escape the monotonous grind, you quit and move to your grandfather’s old farm in Pelican Town.

After a few days, the mayor expresses his desire to re-engage the community by restoring the community center. With an encroaching JojaMart right next door (and a smarmy manager to boot), you can either destroy the center and replace it with a Joja warehouse or complete item bundles to repair the building. The game makes it pretty clear which one is “morally right,” but the choice is yours.

Stardew Valley is not a story driven game.

Your daily gameplay will be inspired by own your goals. Maybe you want to build your own winery or maybe you want to conquer the mines. Stardew Valley will let you do both while becoming a multi-million farming tycoon.

GAMEPLAY

Restoring the community center provides a long-term goal for players who want more structure. The bundles consist of almost every item in the game from produce to fish to straight-up money. Theoretically, you can complete the bundles by the end of year 1, but with so many items to collect, you will most likely finish the center by the end of year 2 or 3.

Your main source of income will come from your crops and livestock. Stardew Valley runs on an in-game clock with 30 days per season. Seeds can be purchased in the town, and vary by season, growth times, and cost. Animals can also be purchased at the nearby ranch, and the resulting produce can either be sold, cooked, or gifted.

As you level up your skills, you will unlock item blueprints. Soon you can turn your milk into cheese, eggs into mayonnaise, and grapes into wine. Unlike the Harvest Moon games, Stardew Valley allows you to place your equipment wherever you want on your property. With an overwhelming amount of land to customize, you can spend hours designing and redesigning your farm.

You can also head to the mines to gather ore and other rare items. The mines are separated into randomly-generated levels, and to continue down, you must find a staircase by breaking stones or killing monsters.

Be extra careful of your health and stamina!

If you pass out in the mines, not only will you lose a lot of money, but you will also have to replay several levels.

Fishing is also required to complete community center bundles. While I do not recommend it as an income source, fishing is a great way to find ingredients for recipes and gifts for villagers. When I first started fishing, I was appalled by how hard the mini game was. It does get easier as you level up your fishing skill, but for those who want an easier time reeling in mythical beasts, you can use this mod created by steffjes.

With so much to do, you can never do it all, and that is the charm of Stardew Valley. With the Harvest Moon games, I frequently went to bed at 6pm due to the lack of night time content. With Stardew Valley, I found myself racing back from the mines at 1am to avoid passing out in the street at 2.

While I am nowhere near completing my first year, I have stumbled across complaints about the lack of late game content.

One of Stardew Valley’s biggest advantages is its ability to respond to players’ needs. Players can easily create mods for the game. Stardew Valley’s creator, Eric Barone, has a free update planned featuring more marriage candidates, events, and late game farming mechanics.

For more information, you can visit Barone’s developer blog or NexusMods.

CHARACTERS

Stardew Valley features an eclectic group of characters, some with pretty weird quirks (… Abigail). The characters are more mature than the child-friendly characters from the Harvest Moon series.

Townspeople will go out on weekends to dance, drink, and play pool. Some characters will display symptoms of depression and alcoholism. The town housewives will get together for weekly yoga sessions. There is even a homeless man (a reference to Murrey from Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life) wandering around rummaging for food in trash cans (which you can also do!).

While you could technically live your life as a hermit, there are benefits to friendship. For example, you will have someone to dance with at the Flower Festival. Friends will also occasionally send you exclusive recipes and free food!

As you talk to villagers, you will encounter special cutscenes that reveal more about a character’s personality. Regardless of your gender, there are 5 bachelor and 5 bachelorettes that you can marry. These characters have more frequent and fleshed out cutscenes and need a bouquet to pass 8 friendship hearts.

One thing I wish Stardew Valley included is the marriage rivalry system from the old Harvest Moon games. The marriage rival system gave each bachelor/bachelorette a partner who he or she would marry after a certain amount of time. Not only would it provide an extra challenge for the players, it would also give the town and characters a sense of progression. I still have no idea why the Harvest Moon games decided to drop this feature.

A LITTLE TANGENT: GENRE STIGMA AND INDIE SUCCESS

Genre stigma is a weird thing. Some genres are just “lamer” than others.

I am not referring the stereotype that all gamers are nerds or geeks (this is no longer true anyways). I am referring to the genre stigma within the gaming community. Just like how some people won’t watch animated movies, some gamers won’t play casual games. For example, some gamers are turned off by JRPGs solely due to the anime art style.

The success of Stardew Valley is proof of the powerful ability for indie games to erase genre stigma.

An indie developer can take a relatively unknown game with a hardcore fanbase, repackage it, and make a mega-hit.

Here is why I think Stardew Valley has managed to achieve the popularity that it has:

1. No genre stigma: It is not a Japanese game. It is not a farming game. It is not a casual game. It is the passion project of a single developer. It is a cool, hip, indie game. I bet if X-Seed localized the exact same game, it would not have received the same reception.
2. Indie Game: Excellent communication between fans and developer; mature themes (ex. drug references); retro vibe (2-D grid style and 8-bit music) unavailable in current AAA titles; constant updates; unlimited development time; no DLC; passionate indie game following etc.
3. Timing: In a time when indie games are becoming just as popular as AAA titles, a game as good as Stardew Valley is bound to make the front page of several popular game sites.
4. Simplistic Presentation: Stardew Valley has won over the gaming community with its spot-on throwback to games from the early 2000s. There are no tedious loading screens or overstuffed tutorials. Without the burden of slow 3D models, the characters move quickly and efficiently across the screen. Everything is streamlined to emphasize the relaxing gameplay.

Side note: In the West, the Harvest Moon series has been split into Story of Seasons and Harvest Moon. Due to legal drama, the “Harvest Moon” games are developed by Natsume, the original US publishers of the series, and the “Story of Seasons” games are developed by the original Japanese team. X-Seed is now publishing the Story of Seasons games.