Stardew Valley Review

Initially people thought that Stardew Valley was just a run of the mill simplistic farming game, but it turns out to be so much more than that. Firstly in your character customization you have little things like hair colour and things like that but you can also choose the type of ram that you start on, one has rivers running through it for fishing, another has woods so you can forage berries on your farm instead of the village and you get hardwood to chop down on the left hand side. This in my opinion is the best farm to go for, a few of your buildings you want to build require hardwood, however there is a limited supply unless you use this farm and then your supply replenishes every day.

For those who don’t know Stardew Valley is an “open-ended country-life RPG. You inherit a farm from your grandfather and you move to Stardew Valley to run it. you start with five hundred gold and you have to start trying to make money. Now since you have no expenses, only the stuff you buy, as long as you can turn a profit, it’s pretty easy to make money. You start in Spring and start by grabbing some seeds from the local store and beginning to cultivate your farm while clearing out trees, grass, bushes, twigs, stones.

It seems to a lot of people that this is all the game is but the game just keeps expanding as you move on. As you move through the seasons, which last 28 days each, you start to make money and can build a coop and a barn. These buildings house animals from goats to cows to chickens to ducks and rabbits, this in turn gives you eggs and milk. As you move along you can then make a mayo machine and a cheese press that you put your eggs and milk into to make mayo and cheese which sell for more.

All while you’re doing this you can interact with all the 27 other people in the village and increase your relationship with them. You can give them 2 presents a week and talk to them everyday. Within these people though there are a few of them that are single that you can eventually start a romantic relationship with and eventually start your very own family with. Each character has their very own little story that you go along with, they have heart events where you get to a certain amount of hearts and you get an event full of story.

The big part of your first 2 years should be to replenish the community centre. In the community centre you find these cute little apple looking beings called Junimos. In order to restore the community centre you have to complete packages, each package is different, and for an area to be restored you have several packages to complete. As you complete packages you get little prizes for each until eventually you finish the community centre. The reason I say that you should focus on this in your first two years is because at the start of the third year, your grandfather’s ghost judges how well you have done and if you have done well you get a little bear statue that gives you iridium ore, an extremely rare substance in the game used to upgrade your tools.

Now, so far I’ve only talked about the farming and interaction with other villages, I haven’t said anything about the extra parts of the game. In addition to the farming you also have mining. At the top of the map you have a mine, in the mine you can take the ladder down to investigate, every five levels you discover you can immediately go back to via the elevator at the top of the mine. Once you finish the mine you can start mining in a desert cave where there really isn’t an end too. Now there isn’t only mining but fishing as well. The cool thing is that the different seasons and different locations give you different fish. The single best thing about this game is how detailed things become. For example, you can upgrade your house and make a cellar. In this cellar you put your cheeses to increase their quality and sell for more. You can make a keg where you put fruit and wheat into it and get wine and beer, this in turn can then be put into the cellar to again improve their quality and sell for more.

It all adds up to an awesome, fun, yet peaceful, game that is easy to play yet never stops introducing new and exciting things.

Review by Dillon Van Der Putten