Justin reviews last month's release of Stardew Valley.
Some nights, after a particularly harrowing week
in the corporate world, I think to myself how nice it might be to run away; to
live a simpler life. Maybe sell my house, sell my game collection, gut my 401k,
and move out to the country somewhere to live off the land. Then, I remember
the closest I have been to tilling a field for crops was playing Harvest
Moon 2 for the Game Boy Color during childhood vacations. I have fond
memories of cultivating my digital crops, giving flowers to the nice girl in
the library, and spending the winter fishing up lunkers for fat cash. And all
these fantastic memories, and more, came rushing back to me within minutes of
starting a farm of my very own, in Stardew Valley.
Stardew Valley begins not unlike the
hypothetical story of my own. The camera pans across a cubicle-laden room in a
dystopian exaggeration of the modern mega-corporation teeming with implied
frustration and dissatisfaction, ultimately landing on the player at your desk.
You remember your past, and an opportunity arises that allows to you start anew
by traveling to the small village of Pelican Town to start a relaxing little
farm of your own. After some introduction and story setup, the player is
greeted with some mechanics that will be familiar to you if you have played
games like Harvest Moon or Rune Factory in the past. You
have a house, you have a field of rich soil (that is unfortunately full of
rocks and trees), you have some rudimentary farming tools, and you have small
town full of friendly (well.. mostly friendly) people trying their best to help
you out.
The ‘day to day’ gameplay loop is similar to
that of Harvest Moon: Till the land, plant some seeds, water your crops,
and if you have time and energy left, you have a variety of options for what
you can do. Stardew Valley changes up the gameplay frequently in this sense,
every day there are multitude of areas to explore and things to do that aren’t
just traditional farming activities. If you are a fan of games where you have a
lot of plates to keep spinning, this is a game for you. Similarly to Harvest
Moon you can explore open areas outside of town to gather wild plants,
collect stones, or chop down trees for wood. Additionally, you can also engage
in a surprisingly deep social interaction system that not only allows you to
increase your reputation with the various townsfolk, but also can progress to
relationships and marriage. On top of all that, there is even a compelling combat
system in the game, something that I was not expecting.
While simple, the combat adds a nice means of
changing up the gameplay when watering crops and bringing gifts to the
townsfolk becomes tedious. A few days into the game, the player is allowed to
explore the abandoned mine, and in the process you meet the adventurer’s guild,
and given a charge to explore the depths of the mine. The mine is treacherous,
but you are rewarded with metal ore, expensive gems, and monster bits for cash
and crafting. The mines and the combat have their own respective progression:
you continue to go down floors of the mine deeper and deeper, and in the
process are greeted with new treasures and enemies. You can find loot as
you fight through slimes and skeletons, buy from the adventurer's guild, and
your combat level increases over time as you hack and slash, increasing your
health and unlocking crafting recipes.
This basic progression is not unique to the
combat system. There is some light RPG leveling mechanics with most aspects of
the various barnyard activities. Growing and selling crops increases your
farming level, allowing you to craft more farming accoutrements like sprinklers
for automatic watering or fertilizer to help crops grow faster. Increasing your
fishing skill allows access to creating crab pots and upgrading your fishing
pole. The list goes on with other skills like foraging, mining, and combat,
each having dozens of upgrades as you play. The skills progression all seems
well to do, but to be honest, my biggest problem with this system was fishing.
If I had to have one gripe with the game mechanically, I would have to say it
would be with the fishing system.
After reading some others’ thoughts about the
game online, the fishing mechanic seems to be by far the most divisive of any
portion of the game. It’s not particularly complex; the fish you catch moves up
and down a bar, and you have an area of your own to move up and down to follow
the fish. As long as you are even with the fish a meter fills up, and when you
lose them the meter empties. The fish move sporadically with very few tells as
to what direction they are going to zig or zag, which makes sense as a
facsimile to fighting with an actual hooked fish, but the controls for the
player to adjust quickly are clunky and frustrating. You can go about
controlling it in a few different ways, but seemingly the most effective way is
a controlled button-mashing approach that will allow you to adjust your speed
depending on how quickly you want to move up or down. The majority response
online was just ‘keep doing it and you will get a feel for it’, which isn’t
wrong, I did learn to get much better at it over time, but I still think there
could have been a better way to make it more approachable. It is very easy to
overcompensate when moving in either direction, and the cursor bounces off of
the top and bottom in a way that feels awkward. The ratio of how quickly the
bar fills up when following a fish to how quickly it empties seems similarly unfavorable.
I would even consider increasing the difficulty of the average fish, if in
return smoother controls were achieved or the bar didn't empty as quickly. I
think that would make the system more fun, but still would keep the overall
difficulty balanced. The developer has been quoted as saying how much he loves
the system, and I don’t like to take away from the author’s intent, but it was
really the only problem I have had with the game after nearly 40 hours.
Fervent fishing frustrations aside, Stardew
Valley might just be my favorite game i've played so far in 2016, and at the
very least is the most addicting. It does the ‘just one more level’ hook really
well, and I would be lying if I said I haven’t sat down just to play an in-game
day or two, and realized later when looking at the clock that I had been
playing for six hours. It gives just enough direction to keep listless players
moving forward, but allows for enough variety that people who love games like Animal
Crossing, Harvest Moon, or even the classic Legend of Zelda titles
can all find something to latch onto. Stardew Valley is easy to pick up and
approachable for kids or adults, but still provides enough depth to keep
playing for dozens of hours. If you are looking to quench your thirst for
tranquility, look no further than Stardew Valley.
Kindly, share this review.
Score
Developer: ConcernedApe
/ Eric Barone
Publisher: Chucklefish
Game
Platforms: PC
Release Date: February 26, 2016
Reviewer’s Platform: PC