Stardew Valley Review (Windows PC, 2016)

For decades I’ve been saying that I could make a better Harvest Moon game than the developers behind it. That is, if I had any knowledge on how to create a video game. Now what if someone that did have this ability had the same feelings about Harvest Moon that I do? Well that very thing has happened, and the end result is an indie game called Stardew Valley. Today I’m going to take a look at the game as a big fan of the Harvest Moon franchise. Comparisons will be inevitable. Here we go!

Stardew Valley is a farming simulation and RPG hybrid. You begin the game by creating your own character choosing such attributes as hair style/color, clothing, skin tone, etc. From here we’re shown a sequence depicting an old man on his death bed as he decides to leave his farm to his grandchild. Fast forward years later and you are that grand kid. You’re wasting away working for the evil Joja Corporation when you finally read the letter left to you by the kind old man. With this you’re off on a bus to Stardew Valley and the ranch with which you can do as you please.

That’s the magic, nay, the spirit of Stardew Valley. While there isn’t an endless number of options and gameplay styles there are more than you’ll be able to fully experience in one run through. You really can play how you like. The sun will rise and set every day but you never have specific goals that must be completed and are left to your own devices. Stardew Valley will try to nudge you toward specific activities such as farming and restoring the community center but how you play is ultimately up to you.

At first glance Stardew Valley might look like the old Legend of Zelda games. You view the action from a familiar overhead perspective, everything is two dimensional and drawn with sprites, and you can move in all eight directions. Like in Zelda your character has various tools they can use such as the pickaxe for destroying rock, the hoe for tilling soil, axe for chopping wood, etc.

These are given to you by default and are used primarily for farming. You’ll also get a fishing pole and sword later on. We’ll get to those in a bit. The game uses an internal clock where each day is only a few minutes long and there are twenty eight days in each month (there are only four which represent the seasons).

While not required there’s a definite emphasis on farming in this game. You can purchase seasonal seeds at one of the few shops in Stardew Valley. These are grown by first tilling the soil, dropping the seeds, and then watering that tile of ground every day. If you’re diligent you’ll have crops in a few days which can be sold for money by throwing in your shipping bin. Different fruits and vegetables grow in different seasons so you’ll be switching out what you’re growing pretty regularly.

Should you so choose you can ignore this aspect of the game entirely. There are lots of ways to make money. You can spend your days mining with your pickaxe and selling the stones and minerals you find, or you can simply gather nature’s bounty from the wild terrain and earn some jingles that way too. With the fishing pole you can spend your days reeling in fish to sell, and that’s actually one of the best ways to earn money early on.

Where Stardew Valley excels is in what you can do after you’ve earned money. You can set up an orchard on your ranch to grow seasonal fruit. You can take this a step further by creating a winery and selling adult beverages. There’s also various animals that can be raised that give products that can also give you money. This is only scratching the surface. There are so many devices you can purchase, buildings you can have built on your land, and more that can be used to generate income.

What is copied almost directly from the Harvest Moon series is the social system. The town and outlying areas of Stardew Valley are populated by a cast of very colorful people. By giving them gifts (at least ones they like) and speaking to them frequently you raise their affection for you, and anyone can become a friend. Taking things a bit further there are several marriage candidates. When your affection reaches a certain level with these people you can opt to get married to them and even have children. Not everyone is single and ready to mingle, but there are a handful of them that are.

This brings us to an interesting question. So what does Stardew Valley do that Harvest Moon doesn’t? To start with you can marry people of the same gender. This is something that fans have been wanting for a long time. Harvest Moon is non-linear but feels very structured. Stardew Valley gives significantly more options and is much more wide open. There are so many ways to make money that it’s ridiculous allowing you to completely ignore the farming angle if you so choose. Harvest Moon doesn’t offer quite as much freedom in this regard; you’re largely tethered to farming.

There are a few other things that set this one apart. There’s an action RPG hidden in the mines here, and it’s surprisingly fleshed out. You’ll find weapon upgrades and a variety of different enemies to do battle with in real-time. In addition there’s an online mode which allows for you and a friend to farm together. The only drawback is that this isn’t cross-platform. You have to play on the same platform as your friend. That’s a minor complaint though because it’s an amazing feature.

Minecraft is a popular game and this one borrows a major element from it. This is crafting. There are so many ingredients that you can find in Stardew Valley and all of them are worth holding on to. You’ll find a use for absolutely everything. They can be combined to make new pieces of furniture, items, etc. You need recipes for these which are obtained from the friendly villagers as you befriend them. It’s not as detailed as Minecraft, but it’s plenty for a game of this kind.

Stardew Valley has been compared to a 16-bit game as far as graphics go. In screenshots this isn’t that far off, but in motion it’s an entirely different story. The characters have few frames of animation and everything is pixelated. The art style is very charming, and my only complaint is in regards to the character portraits which can be a little off-putting sometimes. The game runs incredibly smoothly however. Animations are amazing, and there are some modern effects sprinkled in the game which look fantastic.

The soundtrack was actually a bit disappointing. It uses modern redbook style audio and the compositions are high quality. My issue is that sometimes it doesn’t feel like music from a video game. I would have preferred bleeps and blips for this style to be honest even with the realistic sound effects. There just aren’t a lot of memorable audio tracks in my opinion.

Stardew Valley really is the Harvest Moon I always wished for. It’s what I had in mind for the series evolution, and even after decades the franchise still isn’t at this point. This is one of the most replayable games I’ve played in a great long time. There are few other titles this open that have this many options. It also helps that the graphics are done in retro style but are still amazing. Stardew Valley will make it hard for me to return to the old franchise to be honest.