Stardew Valley on sale

[marycrawford]

Stardew Valley basically got me through the pandemic and it's half price at GOG right now - 7 eur or the equivalent in dollars.

I support buying it at full price, because it's made by a single, fabulous developer, but it's not like it would go on sale without his full approval (and also he made a bunch and deserves every red cent.)

In essence, it's about growing your farm but also about getting to know the villagers you meet, and it's made with love and care that none of the monetized clones that came out after it got popular will ever be able to replicate.

I'm still trying to figure out who I will marry this run - my last farm I didn't want to marry anyone at all and lived with cryptid monster Krobus instead, who only comes out when it's raining and makes me poppyseed muffins to express his affection.

Comments

[marthawells]

That sounds really tempting. It looks like you can play it on a Mac laptop.

[marycrawford]

Yes, it works on Macs! It runs great on mobile too, especially an ipad or similar - the developer spent ages working on the mobile update and recently finished it, so it has all the same content as the pc/mac game. I really love the integrity of this dude - he could basically retire and never work again, but he's kept putting out free content for everyone to enjoy, fixing bugs, working on a whole new game he won't spoil to anyone, etc. And the game feels like a huge retreat away from the parts of gaming that I hate - monetization ('pay X to not have to wait for Y'), stressful failure states ('you stayed away from your farm one entire day and all your crops died!'), social media integration ('send a message to all your friends and get free seeds') etc. None of those things are here, and it's just a ton of fun.

[marthawells]

That's pretty awesome. I loved a Farm game back when I was still on Facebook and it just slowly became unusable with all the monetization and losing features constantly.

Playing Pathfinder through roll20.net with friends was what got us through 2020-2021.

[marycrawford]

Aw, that sucks about the Facebook game - I think that's the era where developers realized how profitable it could be to lock all the good content behind paywalls, blech.

Playing Pathfinder through roll20.net with friends was what got us through 2020-2021.

That sounds like an excellent way to socialize and game at the same time, invaluable during lockdown. You can do multiplayer things in Stardew too, but it wasn't quite my jam - it's not really that kind of roleplay and I find it more relaxing to go at my own pace.

[ivyfic]

I love Stardew Valley. 1.5 released for iOS in January, so I'm in the middle of my third play through.

[marycrawford]

Aw that's great progress - I have some mobile farms but I just started a new one so I could have the Beach farm on mobile and let my ducks swim.

[gwyn]

I admit that as someone completely missing the game gene, I don’t get the appeal of games but everything I hear about stardew valley makes me think it’s the one game I might actually enjoy. I might have to look in to it!!

[marycrawford]

It's cheap enough to give it a try, you never know - you might enjoy it! I find it very soothing, once you have some animals and crops and things and can just wander around petting chickens all day. It's definitely a game I would recommend to people who aren't gamer types, you can take it at your own pace and see what you want to do. Also, therienne and mollyamory will be happy to indoctrinate you if necessary. :D