What's the Appeal of Stardew Valley?

[CharmaineP]

Hi,
My gaming daughter has recommended Stardew Valley for my university assignment, learning about virtual gardens and their communities. I've never gamed, and Stardew Valley seems like a great community to learn from. Could you share with me what the appeal is of Stardew Valley? Charmaine

 

[Confused]

One of the things I like about Stardew Valley is the characters, they all have decently memorable and distinct personalities, which makes the game very fun and immersive. I also love the art style of the game, it's very colorful, and the pixel art style is something I can really appreciate.

 

[Njin]

Hiya:) Sounds like you kiddo is smart, SV is a great game.. lots of goals you can do or not do if you want.. Intuitive gameplay no matter if your fishing, farming, foraging, mining.SV has a relatively small open world that cam be easy to memorize after a few hours. It has a good size village with shops and complex characters to befriend by just chatting and giving gifts.
On your farm that is fully customizable, you can grow crops for recipes or for sale. You can raise a few or a lot of animals if you want & get your rancher goods like eggs and milk. You can mine in a few different locations ore and gems. There is a bit of combat involved in the mines and depending where you are it can range from easy to a little challenging. But there is no player death, no loss of lives, no game over, The worst penalty you get if you fail to beat a slime or whatever monster of a good variety knocks you out, Is you may lose a small amount of money or a few items . But you can get them back if want. You can Fish for a substantial variety of fish. You can farm the fish in ponds. You can forage everywhere for berries, flowers and other fruits and more. There are a lot of secrets to find and strategies to try out . My favorite part of Stardew is making money by creating massive wine, or diamond operations, my longest running farm is kind of industrious with tons of buildings, filled with statues and machines that generate pure profit, I see a few people play that way. Most people just play to accomplish some goals and decorate their farm. A bunch of others like to befriend the villagers and romance the NPC's and get married and start a little family. SV can look very small at a glance but it is very deep. It is a great game to play when you just want to relax by yourself, But you can also play it with some friends and that makes it challenging and fun in different ways. What appeals most to me about is it is almost infinitely replay able. So many different things to do. So many different ways to do them. best of luck on your University Assignment:)

 

[GDawney]

I have several different characters that each have their own farm. I play different "save files" depending on my mood. The goals in the game are rather loose. You can play it anyway you'd like. Some of my characters have been around for years, some are just starting out. I don't know that SV is the right place to learn about virtual gardens, but there is a very strong community, both in the game and in real life. I enjoy playing SV because it is not a competitive game, although you can play it that way if you want to. The game is truly whatever you make of it.

 

[MogBeoulve]

I think a lot of the appeal of this game is that you are allowed to do pretty much whatever you want. I picked up this game because it is honestly the first farming game I found where you can have rabbits. (Rabbits are very impractical as they are tyrannical little creatures, very demanding. I get why most people don't put them into games.) And not only can I have rabbits, I can have as many rabbits as I want to buy and feed. The fact that I finished restoring the community center and unlocked Ginger Island are sort of things that just happened while I was amassing my army of furry bunnies, not the ultimate goal for my farm.

Farming games do have a sort of general appeal; they are cute and fairly simplistic, and it's nice to make friends and see your farm grow from year to year. The key to Stardew Valley, though, is that its creator took a solid foundation and tweaked many of the little imperfections the old Harvest Moon games had. He saw what worked, improved on it, and fixed things that didn't work. I can't tell you how many times I saw how things were implemented in this game and wanted to personally thank ConcernedApe for fixing something that had annoyed me. It's made the game genuinely fun to play, and I think that contributed to its success.

 

[PoppyForPenny]

The intro scene illustrates the deeper appeal. Being worn down and tired and overworked and vaguely unsatisfied in your everyday life. Wanting something more, where you can grow food and participate in a community, carry on generational traditions, gather resources and use them yourself, explore natural settings, and even glimpse magical and mysterious forces and beings. In real life, most people won't get a deed to grandpa's farm. Most people won't get to use a forge, mine diamonds, defeat monsters, make a living off gardening, turn wool to cloth, or fish all day. Many of us have a deep desire for this simpler, more connected life, but it is out of reach.
I live in a city. I have chronic pain. I have unpleasant appointments and endless paperwork and a hard job. I'm getting older. Stardew Valley manages to ease some of the discomfort.
The whole game is very cozy. Very soothing. Very fun! But I think the real appeal, is providing that outlet, that framework, that simple digital simulation of a life and world that is better, happier, and more joyful.

 

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Hmm, there's many different things that many different people find appealing about this game. And perhaps that's one of its greatest appeals, it has a lot of different things you can do, but aren't really forced into doing anything if you don't want to. So, heading the list, we can put 'player agency'. You do what you want to do in the game, there is no railroad plot forcing you down a particular path. There is a goal laid out with the Community Center, but there are also many ways to go about completing that, including going down the Joja Route if you prefer. And there's nothing in the game forcing you to complete the community center either. The only real timed thing is the return of grandfather's ghost on Spring 1 of the third year, but even that isn't a hard and fast time limit, because you can always put a diamond on his altar and summon him again if you want the reward from his approval.

The next thing that I, personally, find appealing about the game is that most of the NPC's are more than just cardboard cutout stereotypes. Also, the community has more than its fair share of drama that you can uncover as you live in town. This isn't a perfect village with perfect people and perfect motivations. There's drama, there's some very questionable decisions being made, there's scandals. It's a messy, gossipy town, and is more immersive for it.

Pairing with that is the sprite-based graphics. Keep in mind, this was all done by one guy. He doesn't have an AAA budget, so he needed to create a visually appealing game on the cheap. So he went with sprite sheets, and I am absolutely here for it. He could have tried to do some kind of '2.5d' stuff with 3d modeled figures in an isometric view plane, but that would've been much more difficult and, frankly, probably looked worse. He picked an aesthetic, and he ran with it. It's pretty clear he took a lot of inspiration from the SNES era of gaming, and did an (in my opinion) amazing job with it. So I guess you can tack on 'visual appeal' onto the list.

Now let's get into the mechanics you interact with. Ultimately, your character will generally want to make money somehow. There's many ways to do so, depending on which mechanic you wish to interact with. Do you really enjoy the fishing minigame? It's probably the fastest way to make money, bar none, in your first year. So if that's your thing, you can absolutely do that. However, if you don't particularly like the fishing minigame, you don't really have to interact with it much, outside of trying to complete the fishing bundle for the community center if you so decide. Farming is generally the most likely thing for many players to focus on because, well, your character is generally referred to as 'the farmer', so that's kind of a hint. And while fishing can be the most short-term profitable, you can get more long-term profits from farming. However again, you aren't *required* to farm if you don't want to. So in addition to player agency, there's a wide variety of mechanics, and generally most people can find something enjoyable in the game as a result.

Now, for myself, with a background in the financial industry, I found it extremely enjoyable to figure out how to maximize my profits very rapidly. In fact, I've written more than a few guides on that topic. I've done quite a lot of number crunching and calculating to min/max my income. For those who like that sort of thing, this game is amazing. There's several others in the community who have also done independent in-depth examination of profit margins, ROI, and other metrics by which you can measure your profit. And doing so and following these strategies can make a large amount of money. But simply being rich isn't the end-all-be-all in this game. Many things you do in the game don't require much if any money, and you can make a decent amount of money with any number of strategies without ever opening up a spreadsheet. It's something you can do, this isn't EVE Online, you aren't required to use spreadsheets.

So, I suppose that's my answer to your question. Player agency, visual appeal, a broad variety of mechanics that you might 'click' with, and enough depth to 'deep-dive' in full tinfoil-hat mode if you are so inclined, but not requiring diving if you don't want to.

 

[SoftViceMaster]

I'm still very new, but I think the appeal is definitely how relaxing it feels. There is no real 'mistakes' you can make in it, or at least there's very little penalties for doing certain things (you can still faint in the mines and you have to pay a fee/lost items but that's about it as far as I can tell). And I've seen that, if you decide to, you can take literal years (in-game or not) to finish things like the Town Hall.

 

[CharmaineP]

Hi Confused, NJin, GDowney, MogBeoulve, PoppyforPenny, ShneekyThel and SoftViceMaster, you guys are amazing!
Thank you very much for taking the time to reply to my post. You will be pleased to know that I embarked on my first Stardew Valley Farm experience yesterday....talk about a rookie. It's called Fairlight Farm. I had to ring my daughter for help to just get my avatar out of bed! I've more or less mastered the keyboard controls and did a lot of clearing to plant my parsnip seeds that were in a box in the house. It took me a while to figure ou the 'X' key which is useful, I had two mail items one from the Mayor (not sure about him) and an in-game player called Willy (whoever he is!). I'm experiencing the appeal already, the noises the tools make are gratifying. I and my avatar ended Day 2 exhausted, I was exhausted from firing up or creating new neurons to play the game. I will keep you posted on progress....

 

[LowBattery]

The ability to play how you want with the game still being fun and enjoyable.
you can use mods, and still have fun, marry NPCs or other players, play singleplayer or Multiplayer, watch storylines of characters and see their development and growth. or you can just play it simple!
Getting bored of a slow game? try speedrunning! Getting bored of marrying the same person? Try marrying every bachelor and bachelorette!
The art style is beautiful, and the game is so fun.
Also, hats.

 

[CharmaineP]

Thank you LowBattery. Speed running, I will give that a go....what are the hazards of that? There are hats?! Excellent!

 

[Jayamos]

My first night I couldn’t figure out how to open my own door and passed out on the porch, so you’re in good company, CharmaineP.

I took up SDV because I was having health problems and there were a lot of smoky days one summer. I have a garden IRL that is a refuge, but I also needed a way to occupy myself that was physically undemanding and could be done inside. So, virtual gardening. When I first started playing I could see plenty of ways the farming is very different from IRL (no aphids, yay!) but also saw details that made me think the game was put together by someone who actually knew something about growing veggies—like a cartoonist who draws a face that differs from a person’s actual face but also evokes it so it’s recognizable. I could put together a fantasy farm and have some of the same challenges of planning a real life garden (which plants? How do I handle crop rotation? How do I make good use of available space?) while planting things that I grow in real life—or things I would never grow in real life.

It’s also like a garden in being a safe space with room for creativity. As many have pointed out, not much bad happens to you in this game. There are very few mistakes you can’t come back from pretty quickly. In fact, when the worst things do happen to you, someone always helps you out. And as in real life, some farm for aesthetics, some for stuff they can put into meals, some for money-making, and the game lets you do any or all of those things. I love the over-the-top things people come up with in the forum.

The mix of predictability and randomness is part of what makes it enjoyable. You can set up your own routine, goals, and schedule, but so much in this game is randomly generated that you never have quite the same day twice and there’s often a surprise (OK, festivals are weaker in this regard). I also appreciate the purely decorative random bits the game gives you, like butterflies flying out of a tree in summer, woodpeckers showing up in fall, frogs leaping out of the weeds in the rain, or seagulls flying off the dock at the beach.

The game is built out of a lot of similar, simple parts (all garden crops function pretty much the same way, fish ditto, etc.) so it’s easy to learn the basic mechanics, but the parts all differ in how you can use them, when and where they occur, and so on, so they all fit together differently. For instance, is a given pumpkin a jack o’lantern? Loved gift for one NPC? Part of a recipe for a loved present for another NPC? Something to ship today for a nice wad of cash? Something to put in a preserve jar for a nicer wad of cash in a few days? That means you can learn the basics of the game and enjoy it quickly, but the vast, not to say overwhelming, array of choices means you can play for hundreds, even thousands of hours, and not exhaust its possibilities.

What makes it truly addictive for me is that it works as both a set of strategies to figure out and as a story I’m telling myself about whatever farmer I’m playing. I enjoy figuring things out (there’s even a wiki for research! Nerd happiness!) and storytelling so to be able to do both at once makes my brain very happy. Different farmers mean different styles and strategies to try and different stories that result. But they all have happy endings.

 

[Lew Zealand]

Ostrich Racetrack

I tried to make an Ostrich Racetrack in Minecraft. I failed.
I tried to make an Ostrich Racetrack in Ark. Completely nonfunctional.
I tried to make an Ostrich Racetrack in Slime Rancher. There's no Ostrich Slime. How are these basic things overlooked?!?

OK okokok for reals.

There are a lot of great answers here already and the meta-answer to your question is ALL of the answers. Stardew Valley is flexible enough to be all these things to millions of different people. Not exaggerating, there are over a half million reviews on Steam and that's just the people who wrote reviews. And you can bet those people played a million different ways.

You can play the most direct route that the game softly guides you along or you can run it off the rails and make it your own sandbox. It somehow manages to take honestly fairly rudimentary NPC interactions and lace them with heart and meaning and value and invests you in playing the game. I'd use the word 'compels' if it wasn't so scary but there are a great many people who obsess their first playthrough and I'm one of that very large group. It really grabs you that firmly, perhaps because you get to play the way you want. You make Stardew Valley yours. And when you play it again, you make it a different yours.

IMO the art style plays perfectly to this flexibility with the anime-style sprites and pixel-art portraits already giving you 2 different ways to visualize the Villagers. You have no enforced frame of reference, it's not dictated to you. Deliberately keeping this flexibility engages your imagination to extend what everyone looks like in your minds eye and encourages you to mentally flesh them out in your own personal way. Interact as you see fit because it's all correct in your imagination, every single bit.

Add in how well the stylistically varied soundtrack matches the changing moods during the various vignettes and locations abundant in the game and you have a distinctive game with built-in play flexibility, imaginative visual engagement, and spot-on sound design. And that's not even touching the landslide of clever mods made by people passionate enough about the game to devote heaps of time to amazingly giant and clever expansions.

I play a lot of other games. Some of them do individual things better than Stardew Valley but precious few. But none other manages to bring all these things together in an almost perfectly coherent package.

In a small download that could still fit on one forty-year-old CD.
Which plays on just about any device made in the last 10-15 years.

And was made by a single person.

 

[wildandblue]

Not much to add to fine comments from the posters above, but I love to play for some of the small moments (which are for you to discover). And it's a nice life one can build in Stardew Valley, and a pretty good reminder to slow down in real life, make new friends, grow some flowers and veggies, raise animals and go adventuring.

And its replayability. Take what you've learned in your first farm to your next farm save. You don't have to complete the whole game to start a new farm if you like.

@CharmaineP, I'd actually like to hear more about your university course about virtual gardens.

 

[CharmaineP]

Hi Jayamos, Lew New Zealand and WildandBlue,
Thank you for your replies. Everyone's replies are insightful and really informative, enough for a thesis the way we are going! To answer your question, wildandblue, the assignment I am doing is part of a course called Practising Fieldwork, which is part of a graduate diploma to crossover from a Degree I did in Environmental Studies so I can proceed to a Masters in Social Anthropology. I started a Masters in Environmental Management, but having worked in the Environmental field since 2004 I realised that we cannot manage the environment; it will manage us. Communities must be empowered and supported to look after their environment so that it can look after them in return. The virtual garden component is part of four fieldwork assignments, the first being research on an actual garden, the second conducting interviews about the garden, the third engaging with a non-human element of a garden and communicating something about that engagement only using audio or visual and the fourth virtual garden communities- so far my favourite :-)

 

[Lew Zealand]

Hi Jayamos, Lew New Zealand and WildandBlue,
Thank you for your replies. Everyone's replies are insightful and really informative, enough for a thesis the way we are going! To answer your question, wildandblue, the assignment I am doing is part of a course called Practising Fieldwork, which is part of a graduate diploma to crossover from a Degree I did in Environmental Studies so I can proceed to a Masters in Social Anthropology. I started a Masters in Environmental Management, but having worked in the Environmental field since 2004 I realised that we cannot manage the environment; it will manage us. Communities must be empowered and supported to look after their environment so that it can look after them in return. The virtual garden component is part of four fieldwork assignments, the first being research on an actual garden, the second conducting interviews about the garden, the third engaging with a non-human element of a garden and communicating something about that engagement only using audio or visual and the fourth virtual garden communities- so far my favourite :-)

That sounds fantastic! I wish you every luck and skill and success with your work towards a Masters and I very much appreciate your perspective in the parts I highlighted. And of course have fun playing the game!

 

[0._]

I find the game appealing with first off, the art style. It isn't something you see too too often now but it fits well. I find the overall aesthetic of the games design to be nice as well. When playing, I find it to feel sort of cozy. I find the gameplay isn't stressful while still tossing alot of niche mechanics in. It's been a while since I last played, just started back about a week ago- but it's still fun. I enjoy SDV in that of the fact that there never is a truly beating it, (not including 100%,) and even if you did get 100%, you can go back and play through again with different goals in mind, or to put yourself on a timeframe. I could continue on however there have already been some good responses here, and so I will leave it here. I hope this helps!

 

[wildandblue]

... The virtual garden component is part of four fieldwork assignments, the first being research on an actual garden, the second conducting interviews about the garden, the third engaging with a non-human element of a garden and communicating something about that engagement only using audio or visual and the fourth virtual garden communities- so far my favourite :-)

Thanks for this great explanation. You make the work of it sound like a lot of fun, so I'd say you're in the right field!

One of the elements of Stardew Valley is after growing your own food, we can make numerous dishes (in addition to jelly, wine, coffee, pale ale, etc.), and then can give favorite food gifts to others in the community. This mirrors what's happening in many real life communities where community garden harvests are donated to a community food project which in turn donates to and provides free community meals. I live in such a community and it works beautifully.

In one of the mods, Stardew Valley Expanded, there's a community garden near the Museum, and although players can't actually help garden there, I like the idea it's there.

There's also magic that happens in the SDV gardens, but you'll have to experience it first hand. I don't want to spoil it for you.

 

[Colleen&Potato]

It’s not only fun, but also surprisingly educational. I’ve played for years and I’ve learned a lot about fish, plants, and minerals. Not enough to make me an expert, but enough to contribute to a conversation about gardening (mostly “I grew a butt ton of parsnips last week”, which is often met with looks of concern and confusion).

 

[0._]

Thanks for this great explanation. You make the work of it sound like a lot of fun, so I'd say you're in the right field!

One of the elements of Stardew Valley is after growing your own food, we can make numerous dishes (in addition to jelly, wine, coffee, pale ale, etc.), and then can give favorite food gifts to others in the community. This mirrors what's happening in many real life communities where community garden harvests are donated to a community food project which in turn donates to and provides free community meals. I live in such a community and it works beautifully.

In one of the mods, Stardew Valley Expanded, there's a community garden near the Museum, and although players can't actually help garden there, I like the idea it's there.

There's also magic that happens in the SDV gardens, but you'll have to experience it first hand. I don't want to spoil it for you.

Huh, that's pretty interesting. Thanks for sharing! I didn't know that was in the mod (I put in a mod that makes items more recognizable, which was my first time modding SDV,) but that is a really nice little detail.