Editor’s Note: This review takes a fresh look at Stardew Valley after its 1.6 update on PC, replacing our previous review from 2018. You can read more about our review policies and philosophy here.

Every time I return to Stardew Valley after a new patch drops, I ask myself: why is the pull still so strong? Newer farming games have improved on many of the mechanics its developer, ConcernedApe, introduced way back in 2016, adding interesting twists to the old-school blueprint it repopularized – so in 2024, why is Stardew Valley still my favorite? But that’s just it: Stardew Valley is the model for farming games now. It may not be quite as refined or as streamlined as some of the sims it inspired, but none have managed to capture the raw lightning in a bottle that makes it so enduring, either. That’s partly because Stardew Valley might be a “cozy” pixel art haven, but it’s also tough. Managing your time and juggling dozens of competing priorities is an endless challenge, and it’s in this superbly balanced dance that I find an intense satisfaction that simply cannot be beat. Pair that with a nearly decade-long parade of new quirky details to discover every time I start up a fresh farm, and Stardew Valley becomes truly timeless.

There is no small measure of irony to the fact that the start of Stardew Valley plucks you from a soul-crushing desk job and plops you into a quaint little farming town… where you must then become a tireless, people-pleasing perfectionist. Oh, you thought you were just going to be pleasantly plucking weeds and planting parsnips on your late grandpa’s abandoned farm? No, you aren’t just a farmer after your move to Pelican Town. Like any typical entry-level intern, you are expected to wear many hats. Restoring the Community Center to its former glory may be fulfilling labor, but you’ll also need to level up your skills across the board, from foraging to fishing to mining, and even monster fighting. Don’t forget to smoodge your way into the hearts of the lovable townspeople by showering them with gifts every day. How else are you supposed to find your life partner?

I’m a returning fan, so I know what I want to accomplish on each new run, but for those new to this sensation you might find that, at first, Stardew Valley gives you so much freedom and so many options that it can feel kind of aimless. Besides the odd request from your neighbors arriving in the mail, you are given no larger objective – just this broad rags-to-riches goal of fixing up your grandpa’s farm and the town by delivering bundles of goods. It’s only as you start to progress through the seasons that you realize what’s at stake. Sure, you could play at your own leisure and still find plenty of joy in a more relaxed, unoptimized pace. But you’ll soon come to understand that forgetting to gift Jodi that cauliflower she wanted in spring could mean waiting a whole year before you get back to the season where you can grow that crop again, and thus learn to make time for the things that matter most.

This makes Stardew Valley a deceptively tense balancing act of managing your time and multitasking efficiently. There are plenty of things to unlock that will make that easier, be they cooking recipes for meals that increase your stamina so you can accomplish more each day or upgraded tools to help you till the earth and water your crops quicker. But the cost of unlocking those things usually comes in the form of grinding for experience points in the skill you are trying to improve or collecting a certain number of required items. Do you want to unlock the greenhouse before the end of Year 1? Well, then you’d better make sure you grow enough gold-quality melons that summer to complete the Pantry Bundle in the Community Center, otherwise you’ll have to wait until Year 2.

This is why playing Stardew Valley alongside a good game guide can be day and night. Like many “old-school” games, Stardew Valley doesn’t always tell you everything you need to know. Not every quest has hints to follow, and when it comes to finding some seasonal items such as specific fish, you’re going in completely blind. There’s definitely joy to be found in figuring something out for yourself, but I only found myself truly thriving once I realized that there was an endless dirge of strategy guides and community resources to be found online.

While this might sound like an overly rigid slog, it certainly doesn’t feel like one. Seasons are so fleeting and the time you have to accomplish your goals is so limited that you’re always incentivized to explore areas you might not have otherwise in order to accomplish them quicker. For example, if you want to unlock the minecarts (a handy mode of fast travel), you’ll need to push yourself to explore the mines. Each floor is randomly generated, and breaking open rocks to find materials while cutting down slimes and other monsters quickly evolves into a harrowing dungeon crawl. As you delve deeper, you will encounter dangerous and strange new enemies with different attacks and harder hits, and it’s fun to prepare the right weapons and stat-boosting food to survive. Lose all your health (or run out of energy and fail to make it home in time) and you’ll pass out, costing you cash or even your precious treasure depending on which character randomly finds you and brings you back to the surface, making each trip down into the mines feel fresh and potentially nerve-racking.

If combat isn’t your speed, there are so many other things to do that you could easily put off exploring the mines for a bit in favor of farming, foraging, or even socializing – and don’t even get me started on fishing. (Okay, if you insist!) Stardew Valley’s infamous fishing minigame is both the bane of my existence and my greatest obsession. It’s such a simple activity: cast in your line, snag a fish, and then keep a green bar overlapped with a bouncing fish icon until you’ve successfully reeled it in. And yet, nothing is more devastating than carefully tapping my left mouse button for a whole minute to keep a Pufferfish on the line, only to break concentration for a moment and watch my progress crash into the red. On the other hand, nothing is quite as elating as finally catching an elusive Catfish on a rainy day. Every fish has different behaviors and movement patterns that dictate how they wiggle around on the hook, adding an interesting layer of strategy to recognizing them; some are easier to predict and others will have you on the verge of frustrated tears. It is quite literally my favorite activity.

The joy of Stardew Valley isn’t just in making the most of its jam-packed days, it’s in all the little quirks and secrets you discover along the way. From heartwarming cutscenes with villagers to bizarre one-off quests that could have you delivering maple syrup to a strangely cognizant bear, truly, so much character has been injected into this idyllic town. This is the only game where I can build a pond on my farm only to then get absurd demands from the talking fish within it. What is a fish going to do with three Omni Geodes anyway? Time to go mining in the Skull Cavern, I guess.

You’re rarely doing the same thing for very long because it takes less than 15 minutes to play through an in-game day, a pace which only further entices me to stick around for “just one more” every session. Because time is so tight, it often feels like you never quite have enough to do everything you might want to – that may sound frustrating initially, but it’s actually so absorbing. It forces you to strategize and plan out your tasks in advance, fueling that obsessive urge to keep playing even more in order to keep from leaving some goal only half finished. In this way, each morning feels like embarking on a new dungeon run. How far will you get today? Will luck be on your side or will it work against you?

Stardew Valley feels endless, which is both thrilling and overwhelming. Yes, technically, there are two ways in which you could see yourself “beating” it. The first is to fully restore the Community Center by gifting the adorable little Junimo spirits specific bundles of local goodies, which you either have to grow or hunt down yourself, and the second is to achieve total “Perfection,” Stardew Valley’s version of 100% completion. Either one will have you planting vegetables, growing fruit trees, and raising animals on your farm, all of which follow suit with Stardew Valley as a whole by being fairly straightforward on the surface, but deviously deep if you want to maximize both the quantity and quality of your produce. It will likely take you more than one in-game year just to complete the Community Center on your first playthrough; with 28 days in each of the four seasons, that means this challenge alone can easily take dozens of hours, and I loved every minute of it.

Hearing about that scale of time commitment could make it seem like an intimidating task, but this is the true appeal of Stardew Valley: It is a collector’s paradise. Just when you think you’re done, you’ll stumble upon another list of tasks to delightfully check off. Complete the Community Center bundles and now the local fisherman, Willy, is asking you to help repair his old boat. Next thing you know, you’re traveling to a totally new island that’s mostly inhabited by voracious parrots. Of course, the only way to explore this entirely separate area and unlock all the cool things introduced there is by feeding the parrots the Golden Walnuts found hidden throughout the island. It gives you another enticing goal to distract you from whatever you may have been doing before, even if just for a few days.

This deluge of options is in no small part thanks to all of the excellent free updates Stardew Valley has sporadically received since its initial launch in 2016, tantalizingly pushing that finish line further and further out of reach for its dedicated players. ConcernedApe has added co-op multiplayer, cool new starting farm layouts, tons of additional crops and seasonal events, expanded post-game activities, and innumerable bug fixes – not to mention plenty of silly things like the recent craze sweeping the valley: drinking mayonnaise. I’ve lost count of how many farms I’ve started over the years, including one on the unique new Meadowlands Farm layout that was introduced in the most recent 1.6 update (only on PC as of this writing) and I still haven’t found those darn raccoons it added! It could quite literally take you over 100 hours to discover everything Stardew Valley has to offer… and by the time you do, there may have been another patch.

And did I mention the lore scattered throughout it all? Because, yes, Stardew Valley is steeped in the stuff. At first, the people of Pelican Town might come off as stand-offish and sometimes even cold. But the more you chat with each villager and give gifts to increase your “friendship” level with them, the more you will unveil just how messy these people are. The kind but strangely vain mayor has a secret lover; we’re all pretty sure that Abigail, our resident video-game loving goth girl, has a mysterious origin story to discover. Heck, you don’t even get to meet one of the villagers until you’ve reached Year 2 because he’s been away fighting in a war against some fantastical evil empire. I love getting to feel like the town snoop, prying into the personal details of everybody’s lives without any of the repercussions. If anything, the messiness of these characters makes them feel more grounded and endearing.

As you get to know this community better, you’ll make headway in one of the biggest aspects of Stardew Valley: Romance. There are 12 eligible villagers residing in Pelican Town, all of whom you can get to know by chatting them up once a day and gifting their favorite things. This is one area where Stardew can, admittedly, fall a bit flat relative to the high points of other games with a focus on dating. While it’s great that you can date any of these villagers regardless of gender, it doesn’t quite make up for the lack of both interesting personalities and diversity amongst your choices for romantic partners.

If there’s romance available in a game, I want to feel torn by the decision of who to pursue. But here, my indecision over who to marry initially has less to do with being too smitten and more to do with the fact that all of the options are similarly… unappealing. That being said, I don’t think all of the villagers of Stardew Valley are necessarily supposed to be immediately “likable” in a traditional sense. Just as it often is in real life, it’s only after taking the time to get to know them through special conversations and unlockable events that some of them start to look more attractive and complex as people. But while their larger stories are generally well written, they don’t necessarily make for the most exciting romantic partners to woo right out of the gate.

Microsoft has closed a number of Bethesda studios, including Redfall maker Arkane Austin, Hi-Fi Rush and The Evil Within developer Tango Gameworks, and more in devastating cuts at Bethesda, IGN can confirm.

Alpha Dog Studios, maker of mobile game Mighty Doom, will also close. Roundhouse Games will be absorbed by The Elder Scrolls Online developer ZeniMax Online Studios. Microsoft did not say how many staff will lose their jobs, but significant layoffs are inevitable. IGN has asked Bethesda and Microsoft for comment.

On Redfall, the disastrous vampire co-op game will now not receive promised updates as Microsoft has ended all development on the game. Microsoft said Redfall will remain online to play, and it will provide a “make-good” offer for those who bought the Hero DLC.

Signup here https://t.co/wb1R4m4emj to receive details on how eligible players can receive this credit. pic.twitter.com/69Os17kpQ8

— Arkane Studios (@ArkaneStudios) May 7, 2024

Arkane Lyon, which is working on Marvel’s Blade, survives the cull, as does Bethesda Game Studios (Fallout, The Elder Scrolls, Starfield), and Machine Games (Indiana Jones and The Great Circle). Doom developer id Software is also unaffected.

In an email to staff sent by Matt Booty, head of Xbox Game Studios, Microsoft blamed the cuts on a “reprioritization of titles and resources”. The email, verified by IGN, is below:

Today I’m sharing changes we are making to our Bethesda and ZeniMax teams. These changes are grounded in prioritizing high-impact titles and further investing in Bethesda’s portfolio of blockbuster games and beloved worlds which you have nurtured over many decades.

To double down on these franchises and invest to build new ones requires us to look across the business to identify the opportunities that are best positioned for success. This reprioritization of titles and resources means a few teams will be realigned to others and that some of our colleagues will be leaving us.

Here are the changes going into effect:

Arkane Austin – This studio will close with some members of the team joining other studios to work on projects across Bethesda. Arkane Austin has a history of making impactful and innovative games and it is a pedigree that everyone should be proud of. Redfall’s previous update will be its last as we end all development on the game. The game and its servers will remain online for players to enjoy and we will provide make-good offers to players who purchased the Hero DLC.

Alpha Dog Studios – This studio will also close. We appreciate the team’s creativity in bringing Doom to new players. Mighty Doom will be sunset on August 7 and we will be turning off the ability for players to make any purchases in the game.

Tango Gameworks – Tango Gameworks will also close. We are thankful for their contributions to Bethesda and players around the world. Hi-Fi Rush will continue to be available to players on the platforms it is today.

Roundhouse Games – The team at Roundhouse Games will be joining ZeniMax Online Studios (ZOS). Roundhouse has played a key role in many of our recent game launches and bringing them into ZOS to work on The Elder Scrolls Online will mean we can do even more to grow the world that millions of players call home.

With this consolidation of our Bethesda studio teams, so that we can invest more deeply in our portfolio of games and new IP, a small number of roles across select Bethesda publishing and corporate teams will also be eliminated.

Those whose roles will be impacted will be notified today, and we ask that you please treat your departing colleagues with respect and compassion. We will provide our full support to those who are impacted in today’s notifications and through their transitions, including severance benefits informed by local laws.

These changes are not a reflection of the creativity and skill of the talented individuals at these teams or the risks they took to try new things. I acknowledge that these changes are also disruptive to the various support teams across ZeniMax and Bethesda that bring our games to market. We are making these tough decisions to create capacity to increase investment in other parts of our portfolio and focus on our priority games.

Bethesda remains one of the key pillars of Xbox with a strong portfolio of amazing games and thriving communities. As we look to the future, there is an impressive line-up of games on the horizon. In 2024 alone we have Starfield Shattered Space, Fallout 76 Skyline Valley, Indiana Jones and The Great Circle, and The Elder Scrolls Online’s Golden Road. As we align our plans and resources to best set ourselves up for success in this complex and changing industry, our teams across Arkane Lyon, Bethesda Game Studios, id Software, MachineGames, ZeniMax Online Studios and the Bethesda publishing and corporate teams will be well-positioned to build new IP, explore new game concepts, and expand on our existing franchises.

– Matt

Microsoft’s announcement of the cuts at Bethesda come over three months after the company announced plans to cut 1,900 staff from its video game workforce, and amid a boom time for Bethesda’s Fallout series following the breakout hit Prime Video TV show. The closure of Tango Gameworks hits just over a year after the launch of Hi-Fi Rush, what many considered to be one of the best Xbox games in recent years. Hi-Fi Rush launched on PS5 as part of Microsoft’s new multi-platform push in March.

pic.twitter.com/KhhqgR902g

— Tango Gameworks (EN) (@TangoGameworks) May 7, 2024

Microsoft plans a June showcase event to reveal its upcoming slate of games and potentially Xbox hardware plans.

In a series of tweets, Arkane Lyon chief Dinga Bakaba hit out at the cuts, calling them “absolutely terrible.” “To any executive reading this, friendly reminder that video games are an entertainment/cultural industry, and your business as a corporation is to take care of your artists/entertainers and help them create value for you,” Bakaba continued.

“Don’t throw us into gold fever gambits, don’t use us as strawmen for miscalculations/blind spots, don’t make our work environments darwinist jungles. You say we make you proud when we make a good game. Make us proud when times are tough. We know you can, we seen it before.

“For now, great teams are sunsetting before our eyes again, and it’s a fucking gut stab. Lyon is safe, but please be tactful and discerning about all this, and respect affected folks’ voice and leave it room to be heard, it’s their story to tell, their feelings to express.

“Inside baseball, but if I read ‘immersive sim curse’ from the community, especially from a fellow dev, I swear to God… Please, let’s talk about the *real* challenges instead of rehashing irrational anxieties of the past.

“Even more inside baseball, but with a very, very wide range, as a wise and sorely missed man said: ‘Please Stop.’ “

Layoffs are sweeping the video game industry, with a number of high-profile studios cutting staff or shutting down. In stark contrast to a year of blockbuster video game hits, one of the biggest ongoing industry trends in 2023 was the prevalence of mass layoffs, and they have continued into 2024. While actual figures are difficult to obtain, estimates suggest the number of workers laid off in games last year approached or exceeded 10,000. A recent GDC survey of developers suggests one-third of all game developers were impacted by layoffs last year, either directly or by witnessing them happen at their company.

Developing…

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

Hades 2 is now available through Steam Early Access and in just a single day it’s more than doubled the original game’s lifetime concurrent player count.

As reported by VGC, the May 6 Early Access launch of Hades 2 reached a peak of 79,276 concurrent players within 24 hours, according to tracking website SteamDB. The original Hades reached a lifetime peak of 37,749 concurrent players, meaning the sequel has already crushed its popularity on the platform.

Hades 2, which arrives as a sequel to the critically acclaimed Greek mythology themed roguelite, returns players to the world as they meet legendary figures like Odysseus, Nemesis, and Dora through a blend of storytelling, action gameplay, and dungeon crawling.

Its Early Access version has received positive critical reception too, earning a 9/10 from IGN. “Even in its Early Access state, Hades 2 is just about everything one could ask for in a sequel to one of the best roguelites of all time,” we said.

“Featuring excellent refinements to its roguelite progression, a fantastic new main character in Melinoe, and two unique sets of levels that have you fighting foes on the surface and in the underworld.”

Hades 2’s full release date is yet to be announced, as have its platforms beyond PC despite the first game being available on PlayStation 4 and 5, Xbox One and Series X and S, and Nintendo Switch. It likely won’t arrive elsewhere until 2025, however.

“We expect Hades 2 to be in Early Access development at least through the end of 2024,” developer Supergiant Games. “Given the nature of Early Access development, we don’t have a specific end date planned at this time.”

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.

The true test of a vampire game isn’t so much in the ways it lets you do the cool things vampires do – it’s in how it portrays the classic vampire weaknesses, forcing you to live a vampire lifestyle. V Rising does a pretty good job of this, with banes from sunlight to garlic represented, while also featuring a striking and memorable art style alongside exciting and tough ARPG combat. Many of the gripes I had in my Early Access review have been addressed without changing the heart-pounding identity of the experience, especially when playing in a customized single-player world.

As a newly-resurrected vampire in a world where humans have mostly chased your kind into the shadows, this mashup of Diablo and the survival crafting genre doesn’t spend a lot of time on up-front storytelling. The descriptions for its varied bosses give some sense of how the world is put together, but there’s not really a main plot to follow until much later. You build a blood altar, you get a list of special enemies you need to kill to unlock new abilities and better technologies, and you’re off on the hunt. This doesn’t bother me too much, and I did enjoy piecing together how little bits of lore were connected, discovering new areas and factions along the way.

In Early Access, I had a hard time with the amount of resource gathering and waiting around for ore to smelt that you had to do. But with 1.0’s extensive game setup customization, I found that I could dial things like resource yields and crafting speed in to the point where there was really no drudgery involved at all. Some high tech recipes still take longer than I’d like to finish, but there is generally always something rewarding I can be doing while I wait, so it’s not that big of a deal.

Designing and detailing your massive vampire castles can be highly entertaining. On a private server, they can be built up to six stories high, with a huge variety of functional and cosmetic items to unlock – from eerie, floating candelabras to a hungry treasure chest that recycles unwanted items into their component materials. You do have to continue feeding your castle blood essence to keep it active, which comes from just about any enemy you kill. This isn’t much of an issue in an offline game since essence will only be consumed when you’re playing, and you can save up hundreds of real-world days’ worth, so you’re unlikely to ever run out. But on a public server, depending on its settings, your castle could eventually crumble or even be captured by enemy players, causing you to lose that spot on the map if you don’t log in at least once or twice a week to top it off. That can start to feel like a chore after a while.

I’m also a little bit disappointed that my castle couldn’t have a basement. Especially when I started imprisoning foolish mortals to use as blood cattle – what? Don’t look at me like that. I longed for the ability to stick them underground in an elaborate dungeon, but had to settle for an above-ground jail.

The other welcome addition since Early Access that cuts back on the downtime of building and crafting is Rift Incursions, which are timed events that pit you against a unique roster of enemies to earn Stygian Shards, which play into a new mid-to-late-game progression system. Among other things, they let you craft more powerful versions of all the base weapons using ruined weapon templates, which can be bought or found in random drops, with modifiers that can vary in strength.

This adds a little bit more of a feeling of personalized loot and progression without being overly random. You’re never going to be splitting hairs between 12 different versions of the same axe, which would have been a bit too much Diablo for me. But there is a reason to keep hitting up rifts if you want the absolute best gear for your build, which is nice.

The fast-paced but deliberate ARPG combat is the star of V Rising, and it’s honestly some of the best in the genre today. The broad array of flashy, fun, and deadly active abilities to unlock allow for some awesome builds. I particularly liked the Blood tree, which focuses on healing yourself throughout battle. I would have appreciated a stamina bar or more ways to get additional combat dashes, because basically everything is cooldown-based, and it can feel really bad in those moments when you don’t have any buttons to push. I prefer more fine-grained resource management and builder-spender combat, myself. But it also encourages you to think carefully about when to deploy your defensive and movement abilities, which keeps bigger fights from feeling too button-mashy.

The more than 50 challenging bosses are really the highlight of V Rising. From zealous human hunters to creepy necromancers, no two feel alike in fighting style or personality, and almost all are very well-designed encounters. The later ones can be cleverly and mercilessly difficult, which is generally a good thing. My main criticism is that some of them feel like they have too many defensive and area denial abilities, to the point that you don’t get enough opportunities to attack them in melee. I can switch to my pistols, sure, but I prefer to slice my food to pieces. Luckily, each one has a fairly unique set of tricks, so it never feels like V Rising is leaning on one thing too much to dial up the challenge.

I really like the art direction overall. It’s a bit stylized and cartoony, but not in a way that detracts from the horror aspects. Whether I’m exploring a misty, haunted forest, slashing my way through a skeleton-infested graveyard, or sneaking into a pastoral human village – bundled head-to-toe in rags, which isn’t suspicious at all – everything is very readable and eye-catching. It’s never a pain to figure out what’s going on in combat, and the environment artists have made great use of color to create a range of moods and vibes. This is only helped by the soundtrack, which does generally fit what I’d call stereotypical vampire music – all mournful strings and melodramatic piano melodies – but it’s executed well.

The survival mechanics really sell the vampire fantasy, too. There is a full day/night cycle, and standing in the sun will start to drain your health quickly after a short grace period. Moving about by day is still fully possible if you’re careful, thanks to the fact that anything that casts a shadow in the environment can serve as a safe haven, including passing clouds. That’s a really cool touch. Shadows even shift throughout the day, so noon is a more dangerous time to be outside than dawn or dusk.

Keeping your blood supply topped up is also appropriately essential, as it’s your main way of healing outside of combat. What’s even better is that the blood type of the last enemy you fed on temporarily gives you a character class, which comes with handy bonuses like increased critical chance for rogues or damage resistance for brutes. How much of a bonus is based on the Blood Quality of your victim, which is semi-randomized and encourages you to seek out particularly tasty prey. I enjoyed how this system let me customize my fighting style on the fly and encouraged me to act like a discerning hunter.

There are also rich options for multiplayer, for everything from building a big castle in a private world with a few of your friends, to PvP free-for-alls with capturable castles and siege golems. I personally prefer the former. But even on public servers, I found a lot of the issues with balance in Early Access – like all of the good plots of land being taken, making the whole world feel like more of a Gothic suburb – have been alleviated quite a bit. The official servers have been very stable during the beta as well. I never felt like I lost a duel because of weird ping or anything like that.