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?
Multitasking efficiently is a deceptively tense balancing act.
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.
You’re always incentivized to explore areas you might not otherwise.
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.
Fast days entice you to stick around for “just one more.”
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.
It could easily take over 100 hours to discover everything it has to offer.
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.
