Damn guys don't you think is a lot of negativity lately around... well around everything, I think is time to chillax a bit, is time to go on on more simple life, in tune with nature and your surrounding, perhaps with a dog or cat, what about harvesting your own produce? A fishing trip maybe? That would be nice, right? Well, it's time to grab your hoe, hey, I know what you're thinking... NO! plant some seed and visit the town center to see who's birthday it is this week! WE'RE TALKING ABOUT STARDEW VALLEY!!!!
Source: GIPHY
I'm sure anyone who already knows this game could hear perfectly the previous gif don't fool yourselves, I know you did but for those who don't have the pleasure to have played this gem Stardew Valley is an open-ended farming simulator RPG try saying that 10 times really fast where you inherit your grandpa's farm and with a couple of coins and some tools you're onwards to rebuild your farm and do whatever you want... I mean it you can do pretty much anything your wholesome nugget can think!
You can do things like and not limited to inhales... deeply farming, transform your farm, harvest your crops, cook your crops, sells your crops, turn them into juice, wine or some kind beverages, HARNESS THE POWER OF THUNDER!!, go fishing, make delicious sushi, have some farm animals, dogs, cats AND A FUCKING BABY DINOSAUR!!, spam the pet button to see those hearts fly, harvest their stuff, sell them, exhales... inhales again get to know all the townspeople, get close to them and become real friends, participate in the town events, marry your crush isn't this amazing? You can't do that in real life explore the enormous Pelican Town map, talk to mystical creatures, go into the caves and mine some minerals, LAY WASTE TO THE MONSTERS INSIDE THE CAVES LIKE YOU'RE SOME KIND OF WHOLESOME DOOMSLAYER!! and have lots and lots of fun!!!
All jokes aside, like I could do that this game is massive, it's incredible the amount of content, depth and heart this game has in less than 500MB, the freedom it lets you experience is almost amazing, this game was clearly inspired by the Harvest Moon series by Yasuhiro Wada but this is a clear upgrade, the goal of the developer yes, this whole thing was the making of just one guy... more on that later was to see a better version of the game he loved so much, he played clones and modded versions of the game but he never felt like those were complete, so he went all FUCK IT, I'LL DO IT MYSELF!! and begun on the developing of this masterpiece!
Source: Official Stardew Valley Wiki
The man in question is Eric Barone AKA ConcernedApe, as I said before this man, did ALL the work developing this game, art, music, sound effects, design, programming, writing, everything, he wanted to create the most complete farming simulator he could taking as starting point everything games like Harvest Moon and Animal Crossing had done right but expanding on stuff he saw in other games and always wanted to see in his favorite games shit I wish I could do that "I see the problem and now I'm gonna fix it" with my life...
After graduating from the University of Washington Tacoma with a computer science degree and unable to find a decent job he started to develop this gem as a way to hone his skill in computer science, little did he know he was about to CHANGE THE WORLD... c'mon he did stop arguing with me... later in September 2012 he announced the release of the game using Steam Greenlight initiative which got a lot of positive reviews and interest, in 2013 it was approved and was approached by the publishing company Chucklefish to help him publish his game
2015 came and ConcernedApe announced that the game was about to be released but also said that he refused the idea to put the game in Early Access believing that players should get the complete game instead of a rushed buggy one this guy is my hero...I'm crying! Finally February of 2016 came and the game was released, the critics loved it, the players loved it, wars stopped, no one was hungry anymore, and peace reigned over the world... ok no, but the reception was great selling 400000 copies in just two weeks
Source: GIPHY
To this day more than 4 million copies of this game have been sold, ConcernedApe attributes a lot of it success and I agree to the indie nature and the solo development of it, the freedom he got during the creation of Stardew valley was what enabled him to imbue the game with his soul and that personal spirit, in addition, the contact with his players let him achieve that, this game is still in development, now it has features like Multiplayer game and a lot of stuff ConcernedApe added while his programming skills were getting better, if you haven't tried this game yet, I can't say this enough, PLAY THIS GAME and if you already love games like Animal Crossing and Harvest Moon this is a must-play, you won't regret it!
Other Sources
Stardew Valley | Wikipedia
Stardew Valley
Official Stardew Valley Wiki
How Stardew Valley Was Made by Only One Person | ThatGuyGlen
Myself, I've played this game more than I could count
THANKS FOR READING!
Source: GIPHY
THANKS FOR READING!