Stardew Valley

Stardew Valley is a farming simulator with role-playing elements, an open-world sandbox with an isometric camera and the visual style of 90s arcade games. After inheriting an abandoned farm, the player begins restoring their lost paradise, rebuilding the farm and making it even better. Get ready to grow crops, raise animals, chop down trees, craft new tools, build structures, and do much more to create the perfect farm. Later, you’ll be able to join forces with the villagers and fight back against the greedy megacorporation Joja. You can do all this alone or with a group of up to 8 players.

Developed by Eric “ConcernedApe” Barone, the game has received over 600 updates since its release in 2016. These include new content, NPC dialogue, cosmetic items for decorating a cozy homestead, game mechanics, maps, modes, balance fixes, and support for user-created mods.

The world of Stardew Valley is an alternate reality that combines magic and technology in ways that make the game more enjoyable, without trying to tie everything together or explain it all. For example, you can watch TV to get the weather forecast, news, and useful tips. There are modern, practical gadgets for farm work, too, such as recycling machines, sprinklers, mayonnaise machines, and a farm computer. There are also fantasy elements: wizards in pointed hats, dwarves, mermaids, goblins, and more. Each type of creature has its own story and place in the world.

The game itself takes place in only a small part of this world: a place called Stardew Valley, or simply the Valley, located in the Republic of Ferngill. This is where the protagonist inherits their grandfather’s farm and becomes part of a quiet rural community.

At the center of the Valley is Pelican Town, where you’ll find shops, a market, the town hall, and other important places for developing your farm. The Beach lies south of town. To the north are the Mountain, the Mines, the Adventurers’ Guild, the Railroad, and the Quarry. As you play, you can learn about—and even visit—other locations: Zuzu City, Castle Village, Grampleton, the Fern Islands, and Prairie Island.

Stardew Valley’s lore is a little deeper than it first appears. From the villagers’ stories, you can learn about the Gotoro Empire, a mysterious and hostile nation that has been at war with Ferngill for a long time. Although the war stays offscreen, its effects can still be felt. Religion adds another layer of mystery, with the ancient guardian deity Yoba at its center. The lore also features Joja, a megacorporation seeking to dominate the Valley.

Stardew Valley’s open world is arranged as a two-dimensional grid of square cells. Each cell contains tiles—pixel-art blocks. Each block has its own set of properties and textures and forms a particular part of the environment—soil, trees, water, stone, and so on. A cell can contain several tiles stacked on top of each other in different layers. For example, one cell might contain a soil tile (bottom layer), a plant tile (middle layer), and a decoration tile (top layer).

The finished landscape is formed from many cells that combine to create an environment that reflects the real world. For example, you can only plant things in soil; nothing will grow in sand or stone because those are unsuitable ground tiles. Soil is also divided into subtypes that affect plant growth and yield. It can also “absorb” water, allowing plants to grow.

Stardew Valley has a variety of locations: the player’s farm and farmhouse, a town with buildings and paved roads, meadows and forests, rivers and lakes, beaches and islands, underground caves (dungeons), and even the crater of an active volcano with boiling lava. The size of the cells can vary between locations. A farm may have more cells than a town or cave, while a greenhouse may have even more than the farm. This is how the game creates a sense of scale and lets locations and scenes fit inside one another.

The game features different times of day, changing weather, and four full seasons. These affect both the look of the world and the gameplay. In winter, everything is covered in snow and nothing grows; in summer, the world is full of bright colors, while golden fields of crops appear in autumn. Sunny and rainy weather affect plant growth, while the time of day affects how active the characters are.

Despite being two-dimensional, Stardew Valley has a simple physics system that handles basic actions and gravity. Interacting with objects—digging soil, harvesting crops, building, and talking to characters—is done with a simple button press and gives an immediate result. Sometimes, simple QTEs are used, for example, when fishing.

After inheriting a farm from his grandfather, the protagonist continues working as a clerk at Joja until one day he feels that corporate life is suffocating him. He then quits his job and moves to the countryside. After years of neglect, the farm has fallen into ruin: it’s overgrown with weeds and trees, the farmhouse is falling apart, and it’s unclear how to farm the land. The premise of Stardew Valley is simple, but there is still a story to follow.

The protagonist arrives in the Valley hoping for a fresh start, a chance to relax in nature, and connections with the community. Luckily, the gameplay lets you take part in town events and explore the Valley’s mysterious corners, uncovering its secrets and legends. The player can choose whether to help the Valley prosper or take the path of corporate exploitation, adding depth and a moral dimension to the story.

At the time of its release, Stardew Valley was a pure farming simulator. Tilling the land, planting and tending crops, harvesting, looking for places to sell your produce at a good price, raising animals, fishing, gathering resources, expanding the farm to build new buildings and cultivate new fields, and other tasks typical of the genre. Health and energy determined how long you could stay active each day.

The game was tough on you at first: you had to scavenge for food, search the forests for resources, and somehow earn gold. The protagonist gradually learned different mechanics. They started fishing to get food for each day and ingredients for crafting. They learned to cook and could restore their health and energy. They learned to produce seeds, fertilizers, and tools for running the farm.

The inventory has a limited number of slots, so you can only carry the most important items. Everything else has to be stored in chests on the farm. For this reason, crafting is handled through a separate menu in the interface, so there’s no need to put everything in your inventory or on a workbench. At first, the player knows ten recipes, and can learn the rest by leveling up, befriending the townspeople, or buying them in a shop. Items and their components come in different quality levels: normal, silver, gold, and iridium.

As updates came out, Stardew Valley’s interactive and exploration elements grew. A relationship system was added, letting you get closer to the locals and find a partner among them. You could take part in various events and festivals, give gifts, and spend time with NPCs. Some questlines could lead to abandoned islands. Dungeon farming added an element of adventure and risk. Festivals (minigames), random events , and much more were added.

Stardew Valley offers both single-player and co-op modes, with up to 8 players. The core gameplay is the same in both, but the players are involved to different degrees. In single-player mode, you have to do everything yourself. In multiplayer, each player decides how they’ll contribute to developing the farm. Some might focus on growing crops, others on fishing, others on dungeon farming, and others on building relationships with NPCs.

Whenever a character performs an action in the game, they gain experience in the corresponding skill (farming, mining, foraging, fishing, or combat). Once they gain enough experience, their skill level increases, unlocking new crafting recipes and improving their effectiveness in that area. For example, they might get more crops from each plant they grow.

Each skill has 10 levels. At levels 5 and 10, the player must choose one of several possible professions. There are over 50 in total, offering a huge range of build options for the main character. Progression continues even after they reach the maximum level in all five skills, through the Mastery Level system. Mastery points are equivalent to “extra” accumulated experience points.

In Stardew Valley co-op, each player levels up their character independently. Experience and skill levels belong only to you and do not affect other players. The game is balanced to let characters of different levels play together without limiting anyone’s activities, though the more developed character will be more effective.

The player who creates the world is called the “host,” and the others become “farmhands.” You can join a world through split-screen, over a local network, or via an online server. All saves remain with the host, who can also continue playing alone. If the host is offline or the farm is not currently open to other players, they cannot access the world or their characters in it.

An active modding community creates and updates mods for Stardew Valley that change or improve the interface, graphics, and gameplay mechanics, as well as add new content (crops, animals, buildings, and tools). The 5 most popular mods are: