Hey there, World!
Have you played or heard about Harvest Moon? I played it and it's about restoring your grandfather's old farm to it's former glory, make friends, and get married to the one you love. Do you like RPGs? I do, and it's fun to fight various monsters and get their loot. What if you combine the things from Harvest Moon and the things from an RPG? Well, Stardew Valley has those two and more.
Stardew Valley is an indie farming simulation role-playing video game developed by ConcernedApe and published by Chucklefish Games. The game was released for Microsoft Windows on February 26, 2016 (Wikipedia). It is available at Steam for PHP 419.95. It's about inheriting your late grandfather's farm after resigning from a depressing job at Joja Corporation. The town that you are going to live in is called Pelican Town, which is in Stardew Valley. You work your way up to make the farm good as new and meet new friends.
When you create a new game you will see a create a character screen. You can choose the gender, type in your name, your farm's name, and your favorite thing. Though I dunno what's the favorite thing for, but I read that if you put in something inappropriate, your conversations will be connected to it.
You can choose what skin color, top, hairstyle, and accessories. You can also choose what color of your eyes, pants, and haircolor. Oh, and I almost forgot, that you can choose either a cat or a dog for your preferred pet.
It's your choice that you skip the intro and get right to it on playing, or see the intro.
Okay so, once you can begin to play, there are some basics that you need to know. Your character has five skills that you need to develop so that his/her work can be done easily and quickly.
First is farming, you can water your crops, harvest them, care for animals and many more. Crops vary from spring to fall and you can buy seeds from the grocery store. Though I will get to the animals in a short while.
Second is mining, you use a pickaxe to destroy rocks to get their raw materials like stone, ore, and minerals. Some rocks need more than one hit to destroy them and some just need a stronger pickaxe to be destroyed so you need to upgrade your pickaxe along with your other tools at the blacksmith to make your work easier.
Third is foraging, you explore around the valley to search for wild plants and vegetables that are valuable to sell. Foraging also includes chopping wood for raw materials.
Fourth is fishing, though you can't fish yet at the very start but you will after a day or so. Fishing lets you catch different kinds of fish. You can fish at the lake, river, or the ocean. The fishing in this game has this mini game mechanic that all you need to do is making sure that the fish icon is in the green bar, and when it's in the green bar the meter at the right will fill up. But if the fish icon is not at the green bar, the meter will decrease until it empties which results that the fish escaped.
Last is combat, and this is where the RPG part comes in. When you enter the mine at the northeast of town, a guy named Marlon will tell you that the mines has monsters and he gives you rusty sword. This gives you the chance to explore in to the mines and fight monsters while you mine for ore and minerals. The deeper you go, more monsters you face. And at the bottom of the mines is just waiting to be discovered.
So those are the skills that you will need to know to make a living. Though doing those stuff aren't just going to make you money. Animals can make you money too! What's a farm that has no farm animals anyway?
Animals give produce that you can sell or make artisan goods with. Like for example, if you have chickens in your farm, they will lay eggs that you can sell. But of course they can't do this right away, you need to make them happy. Making them happy meaning taking good care of them. And if they are very happy in your farm, they will produce high quality goods. There are other animals that produce different goods. You just need to unlock them by talking to your local carpenter for upgrades and the person who sells animals.
Another thing you can do in Stardew Valley is crafting. Using the raw materials you found, you can craft all sorts of things like fences, machines, pathways, lights, fertilizers and more. Using your crafted items lets you make artisan goods, like the mayonnaise machine. With it, you can put eggs there and make mayo from it. It is quite usefull in decorating your farm with different kinds of pathways and fences.
If you are getting tired from work, why not take a break to visit the town and meet the villagers? Pelican Town is just a small town but has a great community. The villagers that live here have all different personalities. They like holding events and festivals to relax and enjoy. You can make friends with them by talking to them everyday or giving them a gift that they like.
You can also win their friendship by accepting their quests and fulfilling them. You can get their quests from the mailbox or at the bulletin board at the grocery stores. The quests have a monetary reward too so, why not?
If you make friends with the villagers, you can find a suitable husband or wife amongst them. There are five bachelors and five bachelorettes to choose from as your potential spouse. Just look for the people with the word "single" under their names in your social list. Though it is possible to have same sex marriage in this game but it's your choice on who will your character wed. If you have found a potential partner then you better gift him/her all the time, though you can only gift them twice a week and that is true for the other villagers. If you gained ten hearts for them, you will trigger a cut scene of them confessing their feelings to you and its up to you if you will accept them or not. Once you know that you can propose to them and you have your house upgraded at least once, you need to give them a mermaid pendant to propose with. And three days later, you are married. If you upgraded your house again, you can start a family and have kids. Adoption for same sex couples of course.
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| Not a marriage proposal but a proposal to be more than friends. |
This game got me glued to the screen for days. Which is why I am not that active in the interwebs. I am just taking a break from playing and giving time to write this for my blog. I really love it and I hope you will try it and discover more things that I haven't mentioned yet or don't know yet. This game is one of a kind and I have to thank my cousin-niece for introducing me this game.
I hope you enjoyed reading, and I'll write again soon. :)
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