Stardew Valley (NSP, XCI) ROM + v1.5.4.2 Update

Stardew Valley You have inherited your grandfather’s old farm in this game and are determined to start a new life there. With a few coins and some hand-me-down tools, you set out to turn the overgrown fields into a thriving home. However, the town’s way of life has changed since Joja Corporation arrived, and the community center, once the hub of activity, is now in ruins.

Despite this, the valley offers plenty of opportunities, and with dedication, you can restore Stardew Valley to its former glory. Now, there is the added feature of multiplayer, where you can invite 1-3 players to join you in the valley. Together, you can work on building a successful farm, share resources, and develop relationships with the townspeople or each other.

To increase the difficulty, you can choose to scale the profit margin on your produce. More hands make for a more challenging, yet rewarding experience. This is a farm life simulation game developed by Eric “ConcernedApe” Barone. Players take the role of a character who inherits their deceased grandfather’s dilapidated farm in a place known as Stardew Valley.

The game was released for Windows in February 2016 before being ported to other platforms. Stardew Valley is open-ended, allowing players to grow crops, raise livestock, fish, cook, mine, forage, and socialize with the townspeople, including the ability to marry and have children. It allows up to four players to play online together. Barone developed Stardew Valley by himself over four and a half years.

He was heavily inspired by the Story of Seasons series, with additions to address some of the shortcomings of those games. He used it as an exercise to improve his own programming and game design skills. British studio Chucklefish approached Barone midway through development with the offer to publish the game, allowing him to focus more on completing it.

Stardew Valley has been cited as one of the greatest video games of all time, with praise directed towards its music, characters, and relaxing qualities. Yasuhiro Wada, the creator of Story of Seasons, also praised the game for retaining the freedom that later entries of his series had lost. The game was a commercial success, selling over 20 million copies by 2022.

GAMEPLAY

Stardew Valley is a farming simulation game primarily inspired by Story of Seasons, a series by Marvelous and previously known as Harvest Moon. At the start of the game, players create a character, who inherits a plot of land and a small house once owned by their grandfather in a small village called Pelican Town, located in the titular Stardew Valley. Players may select from several different farm types, each with a unique theme and different benefits and drawbacks.

The farmland is initially overrun with boulders, trees, stumps, and weeds, and players must work to clear them to restart the farm, tending to crops and livestock to generate revenue and further expand the farm. Players interact with non-player characters (NPCs) that inhabit the town, including engaging in relationships with them; this can culminate in marriage, which results in the NPC helping the player’s character to tend the farm. After marriage, players may have the chance to have or adopt a child with their spouse.

Players can also engage in fishing, cooking, crafting, and exploring procedurally-generated caves with materials and ores to mine or creatures to combat. Players can take on various quests to earn additional money or complete specific collections of materials (called “bundles”) to restore the town’s Community Center or pay certain amounts of money to complete JojaMart bundles.

Completing bundles rewards players with various items, including seeds and tools. Completing multiple bundles grants players access to new areas and game mechanics, such as a desert. All of these activities must be metered against the character’s current health and exhaustion level and the game’s internal clock.

The player can consume food that grants certain buffs that are useful in certain activities and situations. Food is also a source of replenishing health and energy, which allows the player to complete more tasks in a given day. The game uses a simplified calendar, each year having four 28-day months that represent each season, which determines which crops can be grown and which activities can be beneficial. Later in the game, players can restore a greenhouse and access an island that can grow any crop regardless of the season.

Stardew Valley, originally titled Sprout Valley, was created by American indie game designer Eric Barone under the alias ConcernedApe. In 2011, Barone graduated from the University of Washington Tacoma with a computer science degree but had not been able to get a job in the industry, instead working as an usher at the Paramount Theatre in Seattle. Looking to improve his computer skills for better job prospects, he came to the idea of crafting a game that would also pull in his artistic side. Growing up in the Pacific Northwest, Barone incorporated many elements of the region into the gameplay and art.

YOU’RE MOVING TO THE VALLEY