Stardew Valley is a farming simulation game primarily inspired by the Harvest Moon video game series.

(1) At the start of the game, the player creates their character, who becomes the recipient of a plot of land including a small house once owned by his or her grandfather in a small town called Pelican Town.

The player may select one of five farm maps according to their preference in play style, such as one with extra foraging spots, one with more mining resources, and another with a river used for fishing.

(2) The farm plot is initially overrun with boulders, trees, stumps, and weeds, and the player must work to clear them in order to restart the farm, tending to crops and livestock so as to generate revenue and further expand the farm’s buildings and facilities.

(3) All of these activities must be metered against the character’s current health, exhaustion level, and the game’s internal clock.

If the character becomes too exhausted, they will be returned to their house and restored with energy on the morning of the next day, but having forgone any opportunities to continue in activities from the previous day. If the player loses too much health, they will lose most of their energy and a random amount of money and items.

The game uses a simplified calendar, each year having only four 28-day months that represent each season, which determines which crops can be grown and which activities can be beneficial.

The character is evaluated on their third year. There is otherwise no deadline for completing the game, and as of 1.1 the player can be re-evaluated.

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Development

Stardew Valley was created by American indie game designer Eric Barone, under the alias of ConcernedApe.

In 2011, Barone had graduated from the University of Washington Tacoma with a computer science degree, but had not been able to get a job in the industry, instead working as an usher at the Paramount Theatre in Seattle.

Looking to improve his computer skills for better job prospects, he came to the idea of crafting a game which would also pull in his artistic side.

Stardew Valley originally began as a modern fan-made alternative to the Harvest Moon series, as he felt that “the series had gotten progressively worse after Harvest Moon: Back to Nature“.

Unable to find a satisfactory replacement, Barone began to create a game similar to the series, stating that his intent was “to address the problems I had with Harvest Moon” and that “no title in the series ever brought it all together in a perfect way”.

 Barone was also inspired by other games, including Animal Crossing, Rune Factory, Minecraft, and Terraria, adding features seen in those titles such as crafting, quests, and combat.

Initially, Barone considered releasing the title on Xbox Live Indie Games due to the ease of publishing on that platform, but found early on that his scope for the game shifted to be much larger than originally anticipated.

Barone publicly announced the game in September 2012, using Steam‘s Greenlight system to gauge interest on the game.

After the title was shown a great deal of support from the community, Barone began working on the title in full, engaging with Reddit and Twitter communities to discuss his progress and gain feedback on proposed additions.

He was approached by Finn Brice, director of Chucklefish, shortly after the Greenlight period in 2013, who offered to help publish the game on release.

Chucklefish took over many of the non-development activities for Barone, such as site hosting and setting up his development wiki.

Barone considered the timing of Chucklefish’s involvement fortunate, as Barone was hesitant about using Steam’s Early Access system for development.

Barone spent four years working on the project, redoing it multiple times, and was the sole developer on the game, frequently spending 10 hours or more a day working on it.

He programmed it in C# using the Microsoft XNA framework, while also creating all of the game’s pixel art and musical themes.

In early 2017, Barone stated his intentions for the possibility of a PlayStation Vita port, which was later confirmed and released on May 22, 2018.

Retail versions for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One are published and distributed by 505 Games. A collector’s edition released at the same time included a physical map of the game’s world, a download code for the soundtrack, and a guide book.

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Reception

Stardew Valley received “generally favorable” reviews, according to review aggregator Metacritic.

Jesse Singal writing for The Boston Globe wrote that the game was “utterly compelling, lovingly crafted”, and provided the player with numerous varieties of activities to do without falling into a cycle of repetitive activities.

 Elise Favis of Game Informer found that watching her autistic brother play Stardew Valley helped her understand his condition better, as the game provides enough structure of present events with enough of a view of future events to allow her brother to enjoy the game.

In the first two months after its release, Stardew Valley was one of the best-selling games on Steam, selling over 400,000 copies across Steam and GOG.com in two weeks, and by early April, more than 1 million copies had been sold.

Valve reported that Stardew Valley was in the top 24 revenue-generating games on Steam during 2016.

Journalists noted that the gaming community had shown support for Barone for the game; while there had been some players who obtained the game illegally, these players were impressed with the game and stated they planned to purchase the game, whilst other players made offers to help pay for those who could not afford the game.

Stardew Valley has also seen an active moddingcommunity, with players creating additional features and texture replacements for the game.

Yasuhiro Wada, the creator of the Harvest Moon series that Stardew Valley was inspired by, stated that he was “very happy” with the game, as it has shown to him that Harvest Moon was not a forgotten series and continued on in spirit.

He also stated that the approach taken by Barone with Stardew Valley was able to retain the freedom that he had wanted to keep in the Harvest Moon series that had been lost in the latter games, with more focus on animation and graphics.

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Features 

• Turn your overgrown field into a lively farm! Raise animals, grow crops, start an orchard, craft useful machines, and more! You’ll have plenty of space to create the farm of your dreams.
• 4 Player Farming! Invite 1-3 players to join you as ‘farmhands’ online! Players can work together to build a thriving farm, share resources, and build relationships with townspeople or each other. As more hands are better than one, players have the option to scale profit margin on produce sold for a more challenging experience.
• Improve your skills over time. As you make your way from a struggling greenhorn to a master farmer, you’ll level up in 5 different areas: farming, mining, combat, fishing, and foraging. As you progress, you’ll learn new cooking and crafting recipes, unlock new areas to explore, and customize your skills by choosing from a variety of professions.
• Become part of the local community. With over 30 unique characters living in Stardew Valley, you won’t have a problem finding new friends! Each person has their own daily schedule, birthday, unique mini-cutscenes, and new things to say throughout the week and year. As you make friends with them, they will open up to you, ask you for help with their personal troubles, or tell you their secrets! Take part in seasonal festivals such as the luau, haunted maze, and feast of the winter star.
• Explore a vast, mysterious cave. As you travel deeper underground, you’ll encounter new and dangerous monsters, powerful weapons, new environments, valuable gemstones, raw materials for crafting and upgrading tools, and mysteries to be uncovered.
• Breathe new life into the valley. Since JojaMart opened, the old way of life in Stardew Valley has changed. Much of the town’s infrastructure has fallen into disrepair. Help restore Stardew Valley to it’s former glory by repairing the old community center, or take the alternate route and join forces with Joja Corporation.
• Court and marry a partner to share your life on the farm with. There are 12 available bachelors and bachelorettes to woo, each with unique character progression cutscenes. Once married, your partner will live on the farm with you. Who knows, maybe you’ll have kids and start a family?
• Spend a relaxing afternoon at one of the local fishing spots. The waters are teeming with seasonal varieties of delicious fish. Craft bait, bobbers, and crab pots to help you in your journey toward catching every fish and becoming a local legend!
• Donate artifacts and minerals to the local museum. 
• Cook delicious meals and craft useful items to help you out. With over 100 cooking and crafting recipes, you’ll have a wide variety of items to create. Some dishes you cook will even give you temporary boosts to skills, running speed, or combat prowess. Craft useful objects like scarecrows, oil makers, furnaces, or even the rare and expensive crystalarium.
• Customize the appearance of your character and house. With hundreds of decorative items to choose from, you’ll have no trouble creating the home of your dreams!
• Xbox controller support (with rumble)! (Keyboard still required for text input) 
• Over two hours of original music.