After getting Stardew Valley to 'a good place' with update 1.6, Eric Barone is now fully focused on his next game
After getting Stardew Valley to 'a good place' with update 1.6, Eric Barone is now fully focused on his next game: 'I'm committed to not working on Stardew Valley until I'm done with Haunted Chocolatier'
I screamed!
What great news!
i picked your comment specifically for this reply.
i am so happy that you found a game that you love withe a great dev and a supportive community.
but i still can't figure out why this game is so big.
i know, i know. and i feel like a dad trying to figure out why all these kids love the minecraft on their nintendos these days.
you might think i want you to explain or convince me. but i'm just happy knowing you love a game i'll never understand the way you do. that's actually really fucking cool.
Do you mean Stardew Valley or Haunted Chocolatier?
Stardew Valley is a combination of a creativity toy, a dating simulator, a soap opera and a security blanket. You're actually able to return to a humble artisanal life, make absolute bank doing it, and beat the giant megacorp should you choose do to so. A decreasing number of places offer that kind of hopeful feeling in reality.
Haunted Chocolatier? I don't know, didn't really see the appeal when it was explained to me.
Stardew allows people to achieve their dreams that are unrealistic in the real world, like -
Home ownership
Finding friends and community in a new place
Finding love
Evicting their local walmart and replacing it with a cinema
Escaping the fresh hell of late stage capitalism (or becoming the very worst proponent of it, sometimes somehow both)
Chiming in with why I love SV: While the game itself is a new thing (well 9 years old at this point), it really feels like a product of an earlier time. And not just the graphics, music, gameplay, and plot. It lacks all the dark pattern mechanics and monetization that's nearly inescapable in modern games. It just feels good to play, but always feels good to put down.
I just find the game endlessly charming. Every time I pick it up it reminds me of my childhood playing SNES.
The initial appeal for me was that I enjoyed harvest moon, except for how the old tech made the experience of playing it suck so bad, I couldn't replay it. It was annoying doing any of the basic tasks like switching tools iirc. so there was a huge opening in the market for a new harvest moon that wasn't annoying to play. And where you were allowed to be gay.
So the initial buzz came from that, imo. the people who wanted a new harvest moon game were like 'wow, finally!' and then word of mouth did its thing. these days, nostalgia for it specifically drives people back to play, along with extensive modding and occasional free updates keeping things fresh.
i think other people can explain better why the harvest moon formula itself is so appealing, but i just think it's interesting how an indie game can get so popular by just being like "what if i made this big corporation game people want a new entry from, but fixed the stuff in it that sucks?'
i don't know anything about harvest moon, but you said something that stood out for me.
i thought it was neat that you could flirt with anyone in that game, but that's as far as i got with that. i assume, though, that you can pursue relationships with anyone and that it's totally not an issue at all. that's the impression i got, and i thought that was pretty cool. didn't come off as anything political when i saw it at the time, though, i just figured it was the inevitable evolution of characters in fiction. i miss my old naivity.
iirc, there was one old harvest moon game where you played as a woman and you could marry a guy OR live forever with your female bestie. i don't remember if that one made it to the english speaking world.
stardew valley really upped the game when the guy who made it decided it'd be no big deal if you wanted to pursue a same sex relationship in it. now it feels like a standard of the genre to let you do that, and it really wasn't always like that. other games did it, too, but it still felt exceptional back then.
(but, yeah, the gay thing was a big deal for me personally, especially at the time sdv came out. i don't know if it was generally a big deal for most players, but that's definitely a reason for it to catch a certain sort of player's eye back when it was first becoming popular.)
i thought there was something special about just making it that way and not making a point of it. it's just the way it is. that's just really cool to me.
The ideal is that it's just in there and no big deal. I know that's all I wanted when I was young.
Love that energy! That's kind of how I feel about the Elder Scrolls. I can't get into it but I'm so glad there are people who do.
people are gonna hate me, but i never got into Star Wars. however - and i can't explain why - Spaceballs was my favourite movie as a kid. i recoded it off CityTV on Beta.
Mel Brooks (writer/director/producer/star of Spaceballs) is infinitely more talented than George Lucas so it kinda makes sense.
i can only agree.
"fuck! even in the future nothing works!"
