Stardew Valley: Indie Harvest Moon on PC

[Blaine]

He's talking about Harvest Moon, not Stardew Valley.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Been playing this a fair bit today and yesterday. Best game in the genre I've seen yet. Been focusing on mining/dungeon stuff mostly because I'm in the mood for that (and partly because I'm trying to get the best tools ASAP because metagaming is life)- but random foraging, farming, fishing... all have pretty good mechanics behind them, lots of neat upgrades and side bonuses etc. Even the sidequests tend to be pretty satisfying to do.

I am curious if something bad happens if you buy a bunch of shit from the Joja mart? Bad ending or some such?

 

[Harpsichord]

I am curious if something bad happens if you buy a bunch of shit from the Joja mart? Bad ending or some such?

It doesn't matter unless you get a membership, at which point it changes how town development is handled.

 

[Tick Tock Crocodile]

Fail to get a partner for the Flower Dance and they put you in the corner of shame. Brilliant. A few mistakes in gifting Haley did me in.

I like the limit of two gifts per week. Not sure why--if you're trying to befriend someone, you're probably going to talk to them most days anyway--but I like it. It does help you spread out your gifts much more, in the beginning. I guess the fact that you're not always gifting the same people at the same times makes it feel less formulaic?

While the story isn’t the focus, obviously, I like how it’s handled so far. The whole ‘soulless corporation that kicks kittens on the weekends’ thing has been done before in HM, but the townspeople’s reception to Joja is not all bad. The fact that your character has actually worked for Joja, and potentially has more of motive to fight them than even some of the townspeople, is a nice touch, I think. I also like the fact that you can figure out some secrets and less-obvious parts of the characters' lives by snooping around their bedrooms and whatnot. Sometimes the game takes a "show, don't tell" approach to them, and that's really nice.

And the more I play, the more I love the mechanics and the controls. Plus the flexibility of crafting and placement, and the ability to make pure time-savers like sprinklers. Even the fishing mechanic, which I disliked at first, is grand now that I'm used to it. You can even place whatever’s in your hand into the shipping bin by clicking on it, no matter how far away you are! Sort of a pseudo-Miracle Hand that you’re given right from the beginning.

The game really tries not to be tedious. I like it a lot.

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

I agree. Game is legitimately great, and has actually caused my White March part II play through to fall by the wayside.

 

[Blaine]

Stardew Valley is certainly among the very best of the genre, and on top of that, it's PC native and supports modding.

The mod I'd most like to see is an NPC location indicator, or perhaps a tooltip in the Social tab that divulges their general location on mouse-over. I'm not normally in favor of games pinpointing nodes of interest for the player, but having no idea where someone's gotten off to actively wastes my time in a game that is strongly centered around time management.

On the other hand, perhaps learning all the NPCs' routines will be a satisfying challenge, but some of them have incredibly diverse routines. For example, some will travel far off into the woods to fish or just take a nature hike.

 

[Damned Registrations]

I wonder what would happen if you found one in an area you can build on and trapped them with a fence...

 

[Tick Tock Crocodile]

I wonder what would happen if you found one in an area you can build on and trapped them with a fence...

Apparently this is accounted for, and you can't place stuff anywhere that would interrupt their set paths.

 

[Siveon]

I can't imagine going into this during my current playthrough of Rune Factory 4, but it's certainly going to stay in my wishlist on GOG after all this praise. I haven't followed development, but I do remember being excited about this when I first heard about it. This may have a chance of getting a modding community as well, having a bit of a monopoly for the PC platform (native).

 

[Tick Tock Crocodile]

This may have a chance of getting a modding community as well

This is what could potentially be really cool. They already have some stuff over at http://community.playstarbound.com/forums/mods.215/. A few tweaks like weather controllers and a mod to change time flow (although I think that one needs updating). And a boob mod. You know there's a chance if someone's made a boob mod.

Someone even made one to replace the normal dog with

 

[Blaine]

Welp, gave my watering can to smith to upgrade right before a rainy day, except the day after that was a festival. I'm gonna just have to hope the festival ends by 3 p.m. and the blacksmith returns to his shop, but I know he won't.

That shit's gay as fuck, "upgrades" should be a new tool entirely.

 

[Turisas]

Welp, gave my watering can to smith to upgrade right before a rainy day, except the day after that was a festival. I'm gonna just have to hope the festival ends by 3 p.m. and the blacksmith returns to his shop, but I know he won't.

That shit's gay as fuck, "upgrades" should be a new tool entirely.

Yeah the way it works now, you gotta plan for that shit, taking into account festivals too (most will have you returning to the farm at 10PM after you leave the festival event). But fortunately the crops can't die from not watering them, it'll just delay their growth for the days they don't get it.

 

[Tick Tock Crocodile]

Oh, I was wondering how they handled upgrading; I hadn't got to try it yet.

Upgrading takes your tools away for a period of time in several HM games too, like FoMT and HMDS (aside from the Cursed/Blessed tools). It is annoying, at first, but manageable once you plan. I remember FoMT would let you jump multiple levels at once, if you had the material and the skill, but it would take even more days, so it was sort of encouragement to keep your tools up-to-date. On the other hand, if the weather was in your favour or you planned accordingly, you were free to go straight to a higher material, which would save money, I think.

I remember HMDS handled it in a more boring way--I think it forced you to to upgrade tools stage by stage? Anyway, I'm kind of interested in which way this game does it. I'm guessing they got rid of the need to have a certain level of a skill to upgrade? If so, I heartily approve--when you're spamming Y inside someone's house so you can get a tool to mithril, you know something's wrong. :D

 

[Damned Registrations]

It's actually kind of cool how flexible they were about that too; having focused heavily on mining, I have access to plenty of ore for the upgrades or anything I need to craft; but if I had focused entirely on something else, I could have gotten the ore by simplying purchasing it instead. It's really expensive though, which I suppose is why mining has a pretty low monetary return in general- the ores themselves are quite valuable resources, even if they don't sell for much.

 

[Tick Tock Crocodile]

I agree; it's really, really cool that you can also just buy them. They should be expensive, because getting some ore from the mine doesn't cost much except your time, but it gives you more options, which is great. In HM you're generally all but forced into mining, and quite early, too. This game is more flexible in letting you spend your time however you want to.

I noticed the lack of big-money items in the mine, at least early on, and I think this was another good decision. I still have memories of tilling up every tile in the ground floor of the mine in HMDS, gathering pricey jewelery because of the quicker return on investment. This was arguably a problem even before considering the fact that time was frozen when indoors. Crops didn't become 'worth it', really, until you'd started levelling them up, and that wouldn't happen until you had a Maker Barn and a Seed Maker. . .

Well, HMDS is an easy one to pick on. But this is a part of why I'm having so much fun with this game; I see a lot of good decisions, a lot of departures from certain HM games that make sense and improve the overall thing.

EDIT: Now that I think of it, I need to get my hands on some animals. I can't recall a single game that made me enjoy husbandry, HM or otherwise; maybe SV will be the one to do it.

 

[J1M]

Time dilation conversation is interesting. Since weeding and watering are boring activities, it would make more sense to set the day length at something like 20-30 minutes and shorten the seasons so you end up with a year that has less than 365 days.

 

[Tick Tock Crocodile]

Time dilation conversation is interesting. Since weeding and watering are boring activities, it would make more sense to set the day length at something like 20-30 minutes and shorten the seasons so you end up with a year that has less than 365 days.

Seasons in these games only last ~30 days, making the year around 120 days in total. Unless I'm misunderstanding?

 

[Machocruz]

Going into a new season really gave me a fresh start, now things are humming along nicely. Still haven't made much headway in the social game, but that's for lack of interest. Maybe I'll do a quest if I already have the item they want in my stocks. I'd rather spend my time being industrious and making money. I focus on farming, foraging, and fishing, with mining on rainy days. I spent half a rainy day looking for some asshole on his birthday. Nevar again.

Never touched HM or RF, but people are saying this game is the best in the genre now. I believe it, it seems really smartly put together.

 

[J1M]

Time dilation conversation is interesting. Since weeding and watering are boring activities, it would make more sense to set the day length at something like 20-30 minutes and shorten the seasons so you end up with a year that has less than 365 days.

Seasons in these games only last ~30 days, making the year around 120 days in total. Unless I'm misunderstanding?

I haven't played the game yet. Comment was more about the genre in general.

 

[Blaine]

Yeah the way it works now, you gotta plan for that shit, taking into account festivals too (most will have you returning to the farm at 10PM after you leave the festival event). But fortunately the crops can't die from not watering them, it'll just delay their growth for the days they don't get it.

It's also a bit of a newbie trap, because there's no way of knowing beforehand that the upgrade 1.) requires two days to complete and 2.) prevents any other interaction with Clint in the meantime. This can potentially cause you to fail Clint- or artifact-related fetch quests and can completely fuck up your plans for the following two days. Of course, it only takes once to know what's up.

Never touched HM or RF, but people are saying this game is the best in the genre now. I believe it, it seems really smartly put together.

Rune Factory 4 is right up there in quality and fun factor with Stardew Valley, actually. I think people are being a tad overenthusiastic because the game's just been released; also, there are a lot of people who may have only played the weaker entries in HM, RF et al.

Being inexpensive, PC native and moddable are huge marks in its favor, though.

 

[Blaine]

SteamSpy Stardew Valley owners estimate:

Pillars of Eternity (for reference; unfortunately they don't save older data):

ConcernedApe is now a multimillionaire rapidly approaching his second million USD (allowing for Steam's and Chucklefish's cut), and I can easily see the sales numbers exceeding 1m in the coming weeks/months.

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

That's not really surprising though. The game is the very definition of "casual". It just happens to be casual done right.

 

[Blaine]

That's not really surprising though. The game is the very definition of "casual". It just happens to be casual done right.

If this game is "casual," than all Harvest Moon-style farming sims and their ilk are casual games. If that's the case, then there must an awful lot of casual simulations out there in general.

I think you're stretching the term a lot further than it ought to be stretched, and I'm not really sure why, unless you're thinking that all it's really about is planting crops and selling them for profit. The game is highly complex, involved, rewards long-term planning and time management, and some portions of it are quite challenging. Casual games have been around for a long time, I avoid them like the plague, and Stardew Valley doesn't smack of casualness at all in my opinion.

Casual games are easy to learn and master, easy to play, not particularly challenging, usually fairly simple, and quite shallow. None of that applies here despite it being easy to start playing (as opposed to, say, the X series of space sims).

 

[Blaine]

Sebastian is a Codexer.

 

[Damned Registrations]

No way, he actual goes into the monster cave. Codexers wouldn't dare.