Any other games, like Stardew Valley?

[Lenora Rose]

Despite some quibbles about the art style, I liked My Time at Portia enough to restart after losing a fairly extensive save and to buy My Time at Sandrock, but haven't played the latter. They're more crafting than farming (in fact, I'm debating whether I will even bother with getting animals this time around, though it does make some crafting supplies much easier to produce). Both stories do have an ongoing storyline (and take place in sequence) but aren't really hard core story games. The third one, My Time at Evershine, has polished up the art style to a much less distorted one, and is promising to be a much more interesting expansion, but of course it isn't out.

I like Coral Island a lot. It started as fearfully close to a Stardew clone with a different art style (really pretty IMO) and a more Asian / South Pacific setting and a post-oil-spill theme, but as it's expanded on the underwater stuff and the giants, the festivals, and added yet more cutscenes and detail to its romanceables, it's gained a lot more of its own tone. Some clean-up tasks are a bit grindy, but I enjoy the game anyhow.

Right at this moment, my non-stardew solo gaming* time is taken up with the story mode for The Wandering Village, which doesn't even slightly try to hide its Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind inspiration, even if the Onbu is much much bigger. It's a city builder more than a farm sim, though. Take care of your giant monster home, and your village and villagers, both at the same time. (And I learned, at last, that no, I don't have to do the cruel quests --- though there's no mechanic to outright refuse them, you can unpin and ignore those groups, and there are enough quests to fulfil conditions without torturing your beastie or sacrificing villagers to him. Unless, y'know, you decide to try it out.)


*my gaming with others is almost all with my kids and features a *lot* of Mario Party Jamboree and a wee bit of Kitaria Fables. Also, some online versions of board games as well as offline ones.

 

[Lenora Rose]

The ones I haven't tried but have acquired as games on sale/in bundles and are on my list as high interest games-to-play:

Roots of Pacha: prehistory variant of a farming sim, including discovery of "new" technologies that are only new from a Paleo perspective. Looked more my thing than Paleo Pines.

Spirittea: another shamelessly based-on-Miyazaki-stuff game, running a bathhouse for spirits. Which makes it technically closer to a business sim than a farming one, but still has the running around meeting locals, fulfilling villager needs, collecting supplies, etc mechanics.

Wylde Flowers: Finite story, witchcraft based, but the "build your own space and grow things and help the local village" threads match up as sim style.

Wildmender: This one, like The Wandering Village, is a bit of a stretch. More survival than farming, and the survival side differs enough it barely counts, but the way you cultivate the spare plants/resources and restore the ground looks a lot like a farming sim pushed over into "healing nature" territory. Also doesn't look like as many other characters.