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Stardew Valley
PC (Steam)
Farm with Friends for Relaxing Fun
4/5 stars
While farm-sim type games haven't been around forever, they have enjoyed plenty of iterations over the years from Harvest Moon (or Story of Seasons to more modern gamers) to the more realistic Farming Simulator series - and, yes, a lot of mobile games as well, perhaps none more popular than FarmVille back in the day. Stardew Valley, from ConcernedApe, takes most of its inspiration from the classic Harvest Moon series, but manages to stand on its own. It offers a wide variety of things to do - but, more importantly, it also offers up to four-player cooperative gameplay and while it's a chill, calm game, having more people along just makes things go along much more smoothly.
Looks and Stuff: The game was inspired by the classic Harvest Moon and so is the look. The top-down models look like they stepped right out of the classic SNES era, though the game is much more polished and has a lot of color - to go along with the colorful characters you encounter. You can even change your outfit (well, hat, shirt and pants at least) giving you mild customization options. Since this is a farm, the game does a good job of giving you a wide variety of both crops and animals and they look pretty good, though sometimes figuring out what to pick and what to cut can get annoying - which is why I spent most of my time fishing.
The game does a good job on the sound front, whether it is animals, music or the random sound effects - even chopping down trees just makes a nice "thwonk" sound. It's all very satisfying in this aspect and adds to the atmosphere. Aside from one crash and a few controller issues, we encountered no major bugs.
Story: Since this is a sim experience more than a story-driven game, there isn't some big, deep story. You essentially inherit a farm and must do what you can in three years to make the spirit of your grandfather happy. What you do in those three years in entirely up to you - but there's plenty you can do. The run-down community center can be fixed up by completing a variety of tasks or, if you really want, you can join the enemy and instead promote JojaMart (an obvious Wal-Mart reference). Many of the townsfolk have meters you can max out just by being friendly and gifting them things they like - and, if you want, you can marry many of the women/men in town and start a family. You can go fishing - including catching some very wily, hard-to-land specimens. You can go deep into the mines for minerals and more - fighting enemies along the way and earning progress with the Adventurer's Guild. Of course you have your own farm to tend to - raising crops and animals and ever-expanding to include things like fish hatcheries, a slime ranch and much, much more. But you only have a set amount of time each day to pursue your various activities and if you stay out too late you will pass out and have even less time the next day. While cooking provides no monetary advantage, eating provides plenty of benefits - and will help you survive big enemies in the mines. So the actual story may be bare, but there is a lot to do in the meantime. The game even offers seasonal events from gift-giving to a fair to a visit by an important mayor - so you even have something to look forward to each year.
Gameplay: Day-to-day things are pretty much the same - you wake up and decide what to do: for most people this means scrambling around watering crops (unless it's raining), picking crops if they're ripe, checking on your animals - petting them to keep them happy - and using the spoils (eggs, milk and such) to make even better stuff to sell. If it's early game you will probably spend time clearing out your farm - cutting down weeds, stumps, rocks and trees to make room for more farmland. Your tools can and should be upgraded as soon as possible to make things much easier. Alone you must make choices - fish, explore, socialize - with a finite amount of time there's only so much you can do throughout the day. With four players, however, we each found a role - I was the fisherman, maxing out that stat first while doing mild socializing and a little mine exploration on the side. I also helped out on the farm when I could. Other people would explore the mines all day or cut down lots of trees or just be an actual farmer and tend to things at home. We each had our role and things sometimes overlapped. I never found the fishing mini-game that hard and was actually impressed when I caught the rare fish after a battle. While fishing isn't the go-to option for making a lot of money, it was charming. Even fighting monsters was kind of relaxing, I must admit. The whole game is just a take-your-time-and-do-what-you-feel type of experience. Don't get bogged down by things and just have fun.
Replay value: Plenty to do here and the developers are good about adding new additions from little tweaks to big updates so this is a game you can always come back to and find something to do.
Final Verdict: It's a calm way to spend your time, alone or with friends and it has plenty of maps and challenges to keep things going for as long as you want.
Presentation: 4/5
Story: 2/5
Gameplay: 4/5
Replay: 4/5
Overall (not an average): 4/5
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