Stardew Valley: Fleeing the City to Labor in the Field

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Stardew Valley:

Time to Play a Normal Length of Two Years: 92 Hours
Total Earnings: Year 1 - $240,000, Year 2 - $2,377,000

Oddly enough, I can't remember which version of Harvest Moon I played when I was younger. It was either the original SNES version, or Harvest Moon 64. I never owned it, but played it with a friend. It's possible that I played both of those two versions. Though the series, now called the Story of Seasons, still continues in spin-offs and Nintendo handheld consoles, it's met its completion in a competitor's composition. Stardew Valley reviews all aspects of its ancestors and refines them. It may sound incredible, but this was designed and developed by a single person, Eric "ConcernedApe" Barone, who spent four years developing the game, just to hone his programming skills.

Compared against my vague memories, Stardew Valley recreates and surpasses its predecessors.

Stardew Valley begins with a character customization screen. It's all there; a name, a farm name, face and clothing customization. The only relevant decision is that of farm type. Aside from the standard farm (recommended for first time players), the Valley also includes a farm on a river, a farm in a forest, a farm on rocky terrain, a farm haunted by monsters, and a farm for multiplayer mode.

The game opens with a longish, unskippable cut scene. The protagonist is a young adult working at the soul crushing JojaMart corporation in a city office. The monotony of the daily grind, and the despair of the city, leads Socrates to flee to his grandfather's country farm. Abandoned for many years, overgrown with trees, grass, and rocks, the goal of the game is to clean it up, plant crops, raise animals, mine, fish, and become a member of the community. They player can do as much, or as little, as they want, with a gentle scoring element after two years. Though the small village of Pelican Town, situated in the Stardew Valley, seems like it is set in a realistic world (except for the fast pace of time), discovery reveals secrets of magic, wizards, monsters, dinosaurs, and Junimos. The last of these are cute little creatures, who aid the player and feature on the interactive title screen.
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With the basic tools, a few seeds and a pocket of cash, the protagonist sets to work. The introductory tools are the axe, hoe, pickaxe, watering can, and trash can. Each of these starts at a basic level and can be improved to their copper, iron, gold, and iridium versions. Each improved version performs its related task faster and with less energy. The protagonist also has a scythe for cutting hay, but it can only be improved by finding the Golden Scythe later in the game. The local fisherman donates a pole for fishing (upgrades can be purchased at his shop), and a copper pan for panning (can't be upgraded). Marlon, of the Adventurer's guild offers the cheapest wooden sword he has. With these tools the player works their rough fields into a serviceable farm.

Each day begins at 6am with the rising sun. There's TV news to check and work to perform. Clear the rocks with the pickaxe, the trees and stumps with the axe. Hoe the ground, plant the seeds, water them, before venturing into town to speak to the people. Each use of a tool, except for the scythe and the sword, expends energy. Energy is restored after sleeping, but beware working with zero energy. It inhibits current activities, and prevents a complete restoration in the morning. Eating food is entirely optional. The protagonist doesn't need three squares a day, but food restores energy. It also adds to the player's Health Bar (which is damaged by monsters). The day closes at 2am, or when the protagonist climbs into bed, whichever happens first. If the clock strikes 2:10 am the protagonist collapses on the spot and loses a portion of their inventory when they wake up the follow morning. The twenty hours of each day provide an abundant amount of time to accomplish a limited number of goals. Every seven seconds in real life translates to ten minutes in Stardew Valley Time. That's 12.6 minutes of real life time to finish one day, technically. A number of activities pause time, like looking at the menu, inventory, or watching a cut scene. An average day requires twenty minutes. The end of the day is also the only time the game saves. It does so automatically. The player can not save partway through a day. A day has twenty-four hours, a week is composed of seven days, and year has four seasons, but beyond that time in the Valley diverges substantially from real life. Each season is a single month of four weeks, totaling twenty-eight days. Therefore, a single year is four months, a total of 112 days.
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While Stardew Valley allows the player to play as many years as they want, the game judges the player's performance after two years. With only a handful of coins on day one, the first year is about survival and expansion. The best season is the Spring of the second year. It was the first time I owned the resources to necessary to farm at my full potential. In my first year I earned a total of 240,000 gold. In the second Spring alone I earned the same amount. By the end of the second year my total earnings was 2,377,000. While I won't tell anyone how to play Stardew Valley, I offer a general piece of advice: try to use all the time you have. Plan each day before you leave the house, because those twenty hours hours, or twenty minutes pass by fast. Even that advise might be too much. A player might discover that optimization detracts from their experience. Stardew Valley should be about enjoyment first, and if the farm becomes a job, what then? Unfortunately I couldn't obey my own advice. While playing Stardew Valley I suffered a significant number of crashes. The game crashed an average of a day or two a week (in game), causing me to lose all progress for each day. Sometimes it crashed the same day if I tried playing right after a crash. Sometimes it wouldn't crash for two weeks. The worst was four crashes in the same day. The fear of losing my effort led me to go to bed earlier, ending the day sooner than I wanted to. If you experience the same problem, I sympathize.

On the farm, in the woods, along the rivers, and in the mines, the player collects resources by their labor. Aside from seeds and basic cooking ingredients there are few resources the player can purchase. Almost everything has to be worked from the earth; made from scratch. For first time players this leads to a natural inclination to diversify a farm, to try everything, to produce at least one of every product. The Community Center encourages this behavior. It includes 31 bundles for the player to complete. A bundle is a collection of similar objects, normally four or five. For example, there's a summer crops bundle that asks the player to grow and deliver one tomato, one hot pepper, one blueberry, and one melon. Each bundle has a mini reward, and each collection of bundles, of which there are seven, has a mega reward. For the first playthrough bundles are the heart of the game, because it's fun to discover the desired objects and collect them. The Community Center makes one wonder if Stardew Valley is a not a farming game, but a collection game. The menu allows the player to track every type of item they've sold, every type of fish caught, and every type of meal cooked (side note, cooked foods are provide more energy, but are worth less than their components when sold).
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Or is Stardew Valley a money collection game, an economic farming game? Instead of receiving the seven major improvements by completing the Community Center, the player can side with the soulless Jojamart corporation, which has set up their own supermarket in competition with Pierre's local shop. Purchasing a Jojamart Membership destroys the Community Center, and allows the player to pay cash for the seven improvements instead of completing bundles. One can't mix and match between Community Center bundles and Jojamart Membership payments. They are exclusive, and both necessitate different play-styles. In a second playthrough, optimizing for wealth instead of a diversity of product would favor a Membership. But even thinking about abandoning the collecting aspect feels unpleasant, because of the tracking of objects.

To complete the bundles, to collect everything, the player has to do more than farm. Fishing is a mini-game some might find enjoyable. Others will abandon the pursuit after a few attempts at frustrating failure. Of the five skills, fishing is the only unnecessary task, and can be entirely avoided. The trickiest part of fishing is the requirements for finding the right fish. Stardew Valley features 52 different fish, which appear at morning, noon, or night, in rainy or clear weather, in the spring, summer, fall or winter, and in the ocean, mountain lake, river, or a half dozen other locations. Impressively, each fish feels distinct while reeling them in. The other skills are Farming, Foraging, Mining, and Combat. Each skill improves with use, and each improvement, to a max of level 10, makes corresponding tasks easier. For example, chopping wood improves one's foraging skill, which makes it easier to do. Each Skill also unlocks crafting recipes. Level three Farming allows the creation of a Bee House from 40 pieces of wood, eight pieces of coal, one iron bar, and a jar of maple syrup. Crafting items from the raw resources accumulated by the player is a huge part of the game, and higher Skill levels unlock the recipes for more valuable equipment. At the fifth and tenth level of a Skill the player receives an additional benefit, choosing between two specializations. A level 10 Fisher can become an Angler (fish worth 50% more when sold) or Pirate (chance to find treasure while fishing doubled).
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The Skills of Mining and Combat compliment each other, because Combat is used extensively in the three mines. The mountain mine, which unlocks on the 5th day of Spring, Year One, is where the player spends most of their non-farming time. It is infested with monsters, which need to be fought, or avoided, while collecting ores. Stardew Valley includes copper, iron, gold, and iridium ores, which can be smelted into bars. The player needs five ores, a coal, and a smelter to produce a bar, and these bars can be used to craft machines or improve tools. As mentioned above, each tool can be improved, with five bars of the appropriate metal and an ever increasing amount of money. Tools must be improved step by step, first to copper, then iron, gold, and finally iridium. One can't skip steps. Though all metals are valuable, and one might assume iridium the most valuable, iron was the most needed. It is a necessary component for so many important crafts like the keg, quality sprinkler, lighting rod, and stable. Though the Mountain Mine is deep, contains many treasures, and should be explored to the bottom, it doesn't contain much iridium ore. For that the player needs to unlock the Desert Mine, but how to do that is a mystery for players to explore for themselves. In addition to the ores, the mines are full of minerals, geodes, gems, and artifacts. The local museum wants one of each of these, and the owner rewards the deliverer with useful objects, and pointless decorative trinkets.

Once the player has grown a few crops, and acquired some wealth, they can invest in animals. The local carpenter builds stables, barns, coops, silos, and fish ponds for cash and wood, and will improve the protagonist's house as well. At the Ranch the player buys chickens, cows, goats, ducks, sheep, rabbits, pigs and the tools to care for them. Following the tradition of Harvest Moon, all animals produce a resource every day or two, and none of the animals are slaughtered for their meat (though animals can be sold for a profit).

Next week, a second article on Stardew Valley.

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