I just want to preface this by saying that this is easily in my opinion one of the best video games ever made. This review will likely be very long but that is the only way to do justice for how amazing this game is. In my opinion, this is genuinely one of the best games I have ever played in my life and this game is one of the games that I have had the most emotional attachment towards. I don’t even know where to start with this review.
This game starts out simple as you are are living a corporate life in the city until you inhabit your grandpas rundown farm in search of a simpler and more fulfilling life. You are able to do many farm related things in the game such as harvesting crops, caring for animals, fishing, mining, and much much more. There is also a town with many unique villagers to interact with. They each have genuine personality and the writing is so well made. I can only imagine that weeks were spent just constructing the personality and cutscenes for these characters as they become complex enough to where you start picking favorites and get used to their personalities and quirks. You can even marry and have kids which makes the game also have life sim elements. These are the basic foundations for how nearly everything in the game plays out, however the game is MUCH more complex than that and it is has so many standalone systems, mechanics, and elements. From entire arcade games, festivals, heart events, quests, and more there are so many possibilities. The mechanics feel rewarding and fun and while the early game may feel slow it is just part of the process. The pixel art present throughout the game is a masterclass in it of itself and was wonderfully made with attention to detail. The music for the game is also phenomenal as each track fits the seasons and events where each one plays and I would argue it has one of the best soundtracks ever created in a game. It fits the vibe so incredibly well and has a wide variety of instruments. Some of the tracks are extremely memorable, relaxing, and they just further reinforce the idea that Stardew Valley is one of the best games ever made. The amount of crops you can farm, the number of things you can buy, the places you can go, etc just gives the game so much life. In this game, which mind you costs a fraction of the price of a single triple a game (and with todays market there is no guarantee that the triple a game will be playable) stardew valley has the potential for hundreds of hours of play if you wish to obtain perfection and achievements and potentially thousands of fun hours from the base game alone. This replay ability factor is further made better when you consider the different marriage candidates, community center alternative, and farm type. The thing that increases the replay ability of the game 10 times is the modding science. The stardew valley modding scene is enormous and the possibilities for what you could do to change the game are truly endless. You can get mods that do anything from changing the sprites of certain villagers to complete overhauls and storylines. This alone adds the potential for thousands of hours of enjoyment. And this is before mentioning that the game was created by one single person. You heard me right. One person did all of the programming, art, music, story boarding, writing, game design, etc. Arguably one of the best games ever made with extremely precise pixel art, amazing music, and god tier gameplay was crafted by a single person. You know he is a good developer when he is manually going and fixing peoples save files out of pure altruism and care for his fans. To think he spent so much time doing things like that for his game and community even after spending so much time making this games shows his absolute insane dedication and care for this game. In the high off chance that concernedape reads this I just want to say one thing: your game is absolutely awesome and you have a gift. Before this point, you said that you thought the game would fail but you astronomically shortsold yourself then. This is a work of art in every aspect and you did more work yourself than some entire teams of developers have been able to do in way more time. Besides just the game itself and modding, the game is also very accessible and has many features. You can play multiplayer with your friends and the game supports cloud saves. This makes it very easy to hop in a game with your friends and the cloud saves allow you to easily play the game across multiple devices without going through the jungle gym of saves. The game is also available on a wide range of platforms from consoles, pc, and mobile. There are likely some minor things that the game has a problem with, but I struggle to find anything about the game to talk bad about. This game can get you in such a relaxed flow state where the only thing that you are thinking about is your farm. This game has such amazing gameplay that even after completing perfection you can get endlessly lost in your own personal objectives that you come up with. I love this game so much and i am planning on writing a video essay about this game at some point. If you have read this far and haven’t picked up the game, I hope I have convinced you to buy and enjoy this game to the fullest. This game is an easy 10/10 in my eyes.