Stardew Valley is a game about farming, but there are other adventures that await curious gamers besides cultivating a rich and generous garden. From mining and fishing to making friends and falling in love, Stardew Valley’s Pelican Town is full of rewarding opportunities. As present-day problems give way to pressing matters on the farm and within your new community, Stardew Valley’s meditative activities often lead to personal reflection in the real world. It is a game that piques your curiosity as often as your heart does.
Your journey begins in the field, cleaning up an abandoned and dilapidated farm. Plotting and planning your garden requires care and attention to detail. What fruits and vegetables do you grow? How much space does each plant need? How do you protect your crops from nature’s troublemakers? You learn through practice, and while the basics are easy to grasp, you need to quickly find the best way to equip your budding farm with new tools and equipment. Upgrades help speed up essential tasks like tillage and plant irrigation, but advanced equipment becomes a necessity when it comes time to cut down large rocks and stumps that protrude into your garden.
The creation menu also entices you with optional tools to save time; automated sprinklers that water the crops every morning, artisanal equipment to make canning or beer from the crop, and refineries, such as a furnace to turn the ore into metal rods. If you want something, you can make it, you just have to scour your environment for the necessary components.
About
Developer: ConcernedApe
Publisher: Chucklefish, Fangamer, 505 Games, ConcernedApe
Release date: February 26, 2016
Price: $33.61
System Requirements
Platform: Windows Vista or greater
Processor: 2 Ghz
Memory: 2 GB RAM
Graphics: 256 mb video memory, shader model 3.0+
DirectX: Version 10
Storage: 500 MB available space
Stardew Valley review: Gameplay
If you have heard of Stardew Valley but have never played it, like us, you will know that the game is multifaceted. You can farm, raise animals, fish, forage, mine and defeat monsters in caves and mines. A popular aspect of Stardew Valley gameplay is the ability to get to know, make friends and even fall in love with some of Pelican Town’s residents. we enjoyed taking our time, focusing on farming first, then taking some lovely chickens and cows for passive income and spending the rainy days in the mines. Some days we did nothing but collect wood!
Stardew Valley does not punish players for not playing the “right” way and allows them to make their own mistakes that they can correct next time around. Over the past decade, retro-style games have made a comeback. Sometimes we are a little tired of all the pixel art present in indie titles. Don’t get me wrong – we understand that smaller development studios can rely on the simplicity of pixel art to get where they want to go. But we often prefer hand-drawn art styles and lots of character.
Stardew manages to do all this, even with pixel art. It can be seen in the enchanting surroundings, with small details scattered over the enchanting landscape. Little birds here, worms in the ground, flowers and weeds swaying in the wind – sometimes we forget that Stardew Valley isn’t actually a real place.
Stardew Valley review: Combat
In the mines and a few other places, you will want to defend yourself with a weapon. The combat in this game feels a bit like Zelda – maybe – but a little stiffer and not that deep. As you play, you can acquire better weapons, making it easier to explore more hostile territories. You can equip boots, a hat, and two accessories that also provide different perks or stat boosts. Once you advance enough, you can earn your way into the Adventurer’s Guild, allowing you to purchase weapons and complete monster eradication objectives. Completing these objectives earns you items and money.
Graphics and Sound
There isn’t much to discuss when it comes to Stardew Valley’s sound and graphics. Probably the reason is that the game is a basic farm simulation video game, unlike action RPGs. Also, Stardew Valley isn’t particularly a 3D video game. Instead, this video game is more like a 2D video game made with sprite animation. To provide more detail, sprites are two-dimensional images or animations superimposed on a scene.
Furthermore, they are the non-static elements within a 2D game, which move independently in the background. Additionally, sprites are often used to represent player-controlled characters, props, enemy units, etc. Furthermore, sprites can be composed of several tiles or even smaller sprites. Being a 2D game with sprite animation doesn’t mean Stardew Valley is that bad visually.
In fact, this video game has brighter and more vibrant colors than even more expensive games like Minecraft. Also, Stardew Valley with bright and vibrant colors is very impressive and necessary. This is because, as the game is a farm simulation game, the green colors of plants, leaves and trees are very vibrant and colorful. That said, the sprite animation used to create characters and NPCs in Stardew Valley is very detailed, varied and unique.
Final Words
Stardew Valley is a beautiful and fun game that, when all its parts are put together, creates a wonderful adventure in the countryside. Whether it’s rainy, sunny, snowy or dusted with pollen in the air, each day offers an abundance of fantastic activities ready to be picked up or mastered and new friends waiting to be made. Even after 100 hours with three years of play in the books, we still feel we have so many mysteries to uncover and many items to collect.
