I’ll preface by saying that no matter what I say here, this game is amazing and my silly opinions don’t take away from that. For me, however, something about the game just made it difficult to get completely into it like I’ve seen others have. Let’s start off with the good. The game creates a really satisfying gameplay loop that really helps you enter into the ‘flow state’ – coming from survival Minecraft, it scratches all the same itches. You get wonderful audio-visual feedback each time you chop a tree or farm a parsnip, and it all contributes to a nice little cycle where it makes the number go up, which I’m a big sucker for. Adding to this, the energy system limits you to a certain number of actions each day, adding in slight breaks in between working to reduce the monotony of certain tasks. For a bit I did try to optimize every single day to maximize what I could do, but eventually I gave up and adopted a cycle of water parsnip, sleep, repeat for a period of time. I appreciate that this exists – it gives the option for the player to hyper-optimize and maximize resources, but it doesn’t force them to do so in order to be successful, and lets them choose how they want to spend their time.
Where the game began to get slightly cluttered for me was in how the gameplay mechanics attempted to intertwine with the narrative and thematic elements. Stardew Valley thematically seems to be a push towards an idyllic return to a simple life of freedom, as the initial premise revolves around your character leaving their corporate desk job to take on the farm as a passed down wish from their grandfather. And to some extent, the day/energy system plays into that, preventing players from only concentrating on physical tasks and incentivizing them to go explore. However, Stardew features a very large and sprawling progression system – the idea of this peaceful, farming lifestyle feels incompatible with some of the endgame farms that I’ve seen, where players essentially build huge gigantic fortresses with perfectly maintained farming and mining systems.
(I don’t know how much of this feels like ‘idyllic farm life’)
It’s certainly fun, but I think the fun that it provides feels thematically wrong and out of place. In the same way, the themes of community and relationships did fall somewhat flat for me. Admittedly I’m not the most social person so this could just be my own personal issues, but I had a very hard time feeling invested in interacting at all with the NPCs. The game attempts to incentivize you to interact and work together with your fellow villagers, but these incentives feel very poorly aligned with the end goal of the interaction. I’m not finding Robin’s ax for her because I think she’s a great person to me and I just want to help a fellow villager out, it’s because Robin will give me 250 smackaroons.
(money money money money)
The game even grades you on how “good” of a fellow villager you are, which kind of compounds the poor incentives. This is all wrapped together in a storyline that features a villain so comically evil that it was a bit hard to take seriously and really feel invested in the struggle of the town. Altogether these dissonant elements make it hard to appreciate the game outside of just the farming gameplay – it’s incredibly satisfying to play and there are few things more dopamine-inducing for me than watching the number go up and up, but outside of that it just felt a little empty.
I liked your point about the discrepancy between the peaceful, tranquil abnegation of the game and the gameplay elements that drive capitalistic or player progression tendencies. This is also something I picked up on – I think that the player relationships and small conversations that you have with NPCs are what often remind me that this game is not just about the beautiful, perfect farm that I have to make. I sometimes wish there was more interactivity and narrative beyond just giving gifts; if I could actually respond and have conversations, for example.
I definitely agree with your point on the massive, tightly run farms that I see from many extreme players; it also seems very stressful to me. It was refreshing to see how you described the dissonance between the values of the game and what the game mechanics actually valued. I wonder if there was a way to better tie player goals for their farm/progression to the NPCs, perhaps through small branching choices or exchanges that aren’t just gifts, in order to have better connections with the player.