There’s Something About Stardew…

I would consider myself to be a cozy gamer. I love all of the cozy games considered popular in the cozy gaming community- Animal Crossing, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Disney Dreamlight Valley… well, all but one.

An extremely unpopular opinion: Stardew Valley was a miss for me.

A bit of background if you’re unfamiliar with the game; Stardew Valley is a farming life simulator originally released in 2016 by Concerned Ape. It rose to critical acclaim over the years, with many hailing it as the greatest farm sim of our time, or even the greatest cozy game of all time.

That is something I would have to disagree with.

I first played Stardew Valley in late 2022 when a friend sent me a gifted copy of the iOS version. I played it for about one or two in-game weeks before uninstalling the app, finding myself growing bored with the repetitiveness and annoyed with the poorly-designed controls.

When I purchased my Nintendo Switch in mid-2023, one of the first few games I purchased was Stardew Valley for a couple of reasons. The first reason being to see if I would enjoy the game better on a made-for-gaming console, and the second reason being to see if the controls would be any better. Unfortunately, I found myself disappointed with the outcome of these two objectives, and thus still disappointed in this game.

As Stardew Valley was my first official farming sim, I wondered if farming games just weren’t for me. I tried one other farming game at the time called Sprout Valley and found myself bored with that as well after only a few hours of playtime. At that point, I was pretty much ready to give up on the farm sim genre.

Then I stumbled across Rune Factory.

I was so intrigued by the hybridization of farming simulation and RPG-style fighting that I soon found myself purchasing a copy of Rune Factory 4 Special- and absolutely loving it. I’ve already poured over ten hours into the game and have yet to find myself bored with it.

Next, I found Ooblets. This game is pretty similar to Pokémon but with the battle style of a Just Dance-Obey Me! hybrid. The design of the game is vibrant and pastel like Animal Crossing. Needless to say, even with its farming mechanics I still found myself enjoying this game.

Finally, I found Wylde Flowers. A farming sim by day, but the main character becomes a witch with the town’s secret coven at night! I had my hesitancies with the art style and I haven’t had this game for long, but it is extremely addictive and fun!

So, this has led me to wonder… what went wrong with Stardew Valley? Why did I enjoy these other farming sims but not the most popular one? Of course, there’s my issues with the controls but that couldn’t be it. I took some time to ponder this when two answers came to me, the first being… the 2D pixelated art style.

I’ve never been a fan of 2D games, more specifically 2D pixelated games. Stardew Valley has a very blatant 2D, pixelated, 16-bit look to it that I just don’t vibe with. Even when I was younger I preferred Pokémon Y and Pokémon Moon over Pokémon SoulSilver (I still have an incomplete game cartridge in my 3DS case). Also, I believe this is the reason I didn’t click with Sprout Valley. But that isn’t the only reason I didn’t enjoy Stardew Valley though…

The second reason would be the unfriendly townspeople. The townsfolk in Stardew Valley are nothing like the villagers in Animal Crossing, or the townspeople in the games I mentioned above. Instead, the townspeople in Stardew Valley are unwelcoming, some even being downright hostile. After doing some research and finding out that it can take many in-game months to get some of these townsfolk to even warm up to you, much less make friends, it makes me have little motivation to go out into the town and interact with the characters when half of the game is trying to grow your relationships with these people.

Overall, what really bothers me about Stardew Valley is the extremely heavy focus on farming. While the others I’ve listed above have an extra mechanic besides farming (such as fighting monsters, performing witchcraft, or getting into dance battles), Stardew Valley just doesn’t seem to. I am aware that there is a mine where you can fight monsters, but it takes a long while to unlock in-game- and I’m not even sure that is worth it.

Maybe you think I’m wrong. Maybe you think I should’ve given the game a bit more of a chance than just a few in-game weeks. Trust me, I’ve tried… but every time I open Stardew Valley on my Switch, I just close it to go play something that I actually want to play. Maybe one day, I’ll be ready to pick it up again. But for now, Stardew Valley, despite its popularity, was not a game for me.

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