The “game” in Stardew isn’t really about the farming, it’s always been secondary to the village side of things, namely making friends with your neighbours, completing the village improvement quests and generally having a cozy time making your grandfather proud.
A lot of players treat the farming aspect as an optimisation puzzle, which of course it is, but it’s a less important part of the game.
There’s a whole genre of logistics and optimisation games, exemplified by factorio where this is the core gameplay mechanic.
that’s a perfectly valid way to play it, but you don’t have to do it that way either, you can just be an absolute nightmare of a neighbor, regularly passing out in the middle of town after picking all the wildflowers and fishing all night
Stardew is a fairly cosy, casual farming game that you can delve pretty deeply into min-maxing if you want. Usually that profit min-maxing is at the expense of a huge portion of the game’s content - no time to befriend local villagers or experience the story if you’re trying to meet your turnip quota.
So is he saying that players generally ignore the “social” aspect? I played Harvest Moon games and like socializing with the townspeople. I just assumed Stardew Valley is similar (never played it)
Similar to Harvest Moon, with a good dash of influence from the Rune Factory side series specifically. It was originally made to fill in the farming game niche - hard to imagine now, but there was a time period where there weren’t good new farming sims coming out.
FYI: the new Harvest Moon games have zero to do with the people who made the original Harvest Moon. The localizers got the rights to the “Harvest Moon” name and started making garbage slop farming games to take advantage of the name recognition.
The original creators are making games under the “Story of Seasons” name, including Switch remakes of Friends of Mineral Town and A Wonderful Life.
The most recent Harvest Moon I played was, I think, FoMT for the GBA (obviously not counting Innocent Life on the PS2, or Tale of Two Towns for the NDS which I played for like half an hour tops)
If you liked FOMT/the idea of farming games in general, you would probably like Stardew. IMHO, it is really good at balancing things so that you aren’t locked into optimizing anything - you could farm minimally and focus on the social elements and have a good time too. The stuff in the meme doesn’t feel too much like pressure, because you’ll just naturally encounter everything by the end of year one and know how to find it by the end of year two for the community center (the main goal of the game), and if you want to optimize everything for cash you can buy out an equivalent “win.” It’s very sandbox-y.
Unlike the Harvest Moon games, gender doesn’t matter for who you marry, which is something I personally always enjoy in a “cozy” game. There’s even a cute option where you can chose to move in a monster as a friend instead of choosing to get married.
One of the funniest things I’m noticing on my current play through is that the easiest way to romance the alcoholic is to give him alcohol. The quickest way to consistently casually gain a bunch of hearts is to hang out at the bar every night and give everyone there a beer.
I’m not well versed in Stardew Valley, can someone explain?
The “game” in Stardew isn’t really about the farming, it’s always been secondary to the village side of things, namely making friends with your neighbours, completing the village improvement quests and generally having a cozy time making your grandfather proud.
A lot of players treat the farming aspect as an optimisation puzzle, which of course it is, but it’s a less important part of the game.
There’s a whole genre of logistics and optimisation games, exemplified by factorio where this is the core gameplay mechanic.
Stardew Valley is a logistics and optimizing game.
You’re just primarily optimizing social obligations, not some kind of mass, materially productive process.
that’s a perfectly valid way to play it, but you don’t have to do it that way either, you can just be an absolute nightmare of a neighbor, regularly passing out in the middle of town after picking all the wildflowers and fishing all night
Now I understand. Thanks!
It’s a life sim, it’s supposed to be more than just farming. There is a village with several characters to interact with, including potential spouses.
Stardew is a fairly cosy, casual farming game that you can delve pretty deeply into min-maxing if you want. Usually that profit min-maxing is at the expense of a huge portion of the game’s content - no time to befriend local villagers or experience the story if you’re trying to meet your turnip quota.
Ah, got it. Thanks!
Stardew Valley isn’t just a farming game. There is a town with people. You can build relationships with them and each relationship is rated.
So is he saying that players generally ignore the “social” aspect? I played Harvest Moon games and like socializing with the townspeople. I just assumed Stardew Valley is similar (never played it)
Similar to Harvest Moon, with a good dash of influence from the Rune Factory side series specifically. It was originally made to fill in the farming game niche - hard to imagine now, but there was a time period where there weren’t good new farming sims coming out.
FYI: the new Harvest Moon games have zero to do with the people who made the original Harvest Moon. The localizers got the rights to the “Harvest Moon” name and started making garbage slop farming games to take advantage of the name recognition.
The original creators are making games under the “Story of Seasons” name, including Switch remakes of Friends of Mineral Town and A Wonderful Life.
Thank you for the explanation.
The most recent Harvest Moon I played was, I think, FoMT for the GBA (obviously not counting Innocent Life on the PS2, or Tale of Two Towns for the NDS which I played for like half an hour tops)
If you liked FOMT/the idea of farming games in general, you would probably like Stardew. IMHO, it is really good at balancing things so that you aren’t locked into optimizing anything - you could farm minimally and focus on the social elements and have a good time too. The stuff in the meme doesn’t feel too much like pressure, because you’ll just naturally encounter everything by the end of year one and know how to find it by the end of year two for the community center (the main goal of the game), and if you want to optimize everything for cash you can buy out an equivalent “win.” It’s very sandbox-y.
Unlike the Harvest Moon games, gender doesn’t matter for who you marry, which is something I personally always enjoy in a “cozy” game. There’s even a cute option where you can chose to move in a monster as a friend instead of choosing to get married.
One of the funniest things I’m noticing on my current play through is that the easiest way to romance the alcoholic is to give him alcohol. The quickest way to consistently casually gain a bunch of hearts is to hang out at the bar every night and give everyone there a beer.
It’s extremely similar to Harvest Moon.