What’s So Great About Stardew Valley? – What’s The Point?

What’s So Great About Stardew Valley? – What’s The Point?

I’ve got a question for you what’s the point of sandbox games don’t people want to feel like they’re getting through to the end of something isn’t that why people watch TV shows and read books to get the satisfaction of a whole story granted maybe some people

Just want to be creative for a little while but once a huge sandbox game takes over the genre you know like minecraft shouldn’t we just kind of be done with them like we found the winner if you want to go play a sandbox game go play that one right

Well if one game can answer why this endless genre is still successful it would probably be stardew valley this game came from the affection of many games in the same genre a melting pot of time management and sandbox games and even though it’s so heavily inspired by

Them audiences didn’t hound it for being old news or a ripoff in fact starting valley quickly garnered massive amounts of attention affection and even earned awards and nominations and not just started a valley but so many other big sandbox games have amassed huge followings over the years and if it’s so

Comparable to the games its competing with why did starter Valley stand out and as a matter of fact why are so many of these sandbox games popular at all it can’t be the story or a competitive edge that draws crowds so where do the fans come from well maybe we’ll figure out

The point behind this genre as we discover what’s so great about stardew valley you this is Animal Crossing Meets Harvest Moon meets terraria I would dare to say that every individual piece of this game is something we’ve seen before but never in such a succinct clean combination and

Let’s give a little credit to the sole designer eric barone for single-handedly coding creating sprites and composing the music for this wonderful game I’ve typically been a very story-driven type of gamer looking for tense and exciting complex games to drive through one after the last so I wasn’t too quick to pick

Up this game but as soon as I did it reminded me how nice it is to slow down every once in a while this is the perfect game for you to say I’ve got this two hour flight I’ll just pop in start a valley and I’ll be there in no

Time because this game is perfect for intermittent attention there are no high stake timeframes for you to sweat over you can play at your own pace there are a whole collection of optional paths to take and accomplishments you can achieve that requires specific timing and focus but that’s left up to your discretion

With many players not even bothering with them on their first playthrough you can be as uninvolved in this game as you want you can explore the city complete quests and fulfill goals available to you or do none of the above and just plant crops a day at a time this can be

Treated as an RPG or just a glorified farmville because your level of involvement and enjoyment is completely up to you been playing for quite a while but never really left your farm no sweat maybe it’s time to start exploring the world is always waiting for you even the

Story of the game mirrors exactly what stardew valley is supposed to be doing for you in a meta game sense worn down by your day-to-day routine come relax on your farm get away from it all for a bit in a fun new environment the colors are bright the music is relaxed and the

Neighbors are cheery there’s nothing in this world of stardew valley to get you down even when the Sun isn’t shining the world is full of energy the rainy days are cool and calm and without having to even worry about watering your crops you have the whole

Day to check off anything else on your list or maybe just wander around town for a bit and see what catches your eye while you’re wandering through the valley you may notice that the NPCs are just polarizing enough in their characteristics to make you build an opinion on them maybe you think one

Person is annoying one is and the other is funny the personalities don’t tell you to think each of these but there’s enough substance to any character to help you form that first impression of them before you actually get involved in any of their lives you can choose how much you want to be

Involved with any or all of these fellow citizens of stardew valley even to the point that you can just close yourself off to the world and not worry about it and while it’s not mandatory it does add another layer of complexity to this game if you choose to pursue interacting with

Any of these characters they’re all fleshed out people that you can learn about they have specific lifestyles traits favorite things habits and it helps the whole world feel more alive when you get to go check in on this new friend you’ve made across town starter Valley has the same addictive draw that

Was built into casual mobile games in early Facebook games like Farmville except for the fact that it’s actually a fully fledged game there’s no metadata of asking friends for stuff there’s no waiting around in real-time and checking in to make sure nothing’s changed or even worse burning time until something finally has

Changed everything works on the in-game time letting you pick up and put down the game at your own leisure and not forcing your hand to make sure you still progress at a decent rate when becoming invested in a management game of this type there are a few aspects worse than

The fact that some of them require being checked in on or you can somehow overweight on time and lose your progress luckily stardew valley doesn’t have that feature let’s take a look at other games that exist among the sandbox and management genres for a second and see

Why people like them if there’s no end game no final level no 100% complete badge then why would people spend so much time in it why quote/unquote waste your time with something you know you’ll never be done with let’s look at most likely the most successful sandbox game

Of all time minecraft it does have achievements and even a little story and credit sequence that you could trigger through doing specific tasks but those tasks are by no means the root of the experience itself in fact that ending wasn’t even added into the game until April 2011 in the beta 1.5 version

Contextually just a couple months before the game hit 10 million users without the inclusion of this added piece of story and it by no means restricts what’s available to you after you achieve it either if nothing else due to constant updates in most recent editions you most likely have an expiry

A good deal of the game by the time you see that credit sequence all of this is to say this game didn’t need an ending just to become popular and it still doesn’t as of early 2019 Microsoft stated that this sandbox title still had over 91 million monthly active users

Let’s look at a totally different kind of casual game which I’ve already referenced farmville this was a game for the truly casual in every sense I mean there were levels of obsessiveness that some players had but you can’t deny that the game was successful with a peak of

Thirty four point five million daily users at one point the major draw here being simplicity and connectability the rules are simple and you get to feel a little bit of satisfaction as you expand your farm and unlock new content for some players that was enough the next level up was involving your friends

Bringing people together through the already utilized Facebook connection to add both cooperative and competitive attributes then the final level of addiction comes from the time restraints on everything this was for players who were totally sucked into farmville checking it at all the right times and keeping track of when they needed to log

In next to maximize profits all of these different levels of involvement cater to different types of players and gave them what they wanted and you know what every casual game has this system minecraft farmville world of warcraft runescape terraria fallout shelter Animal Crossing they all follow a well proven formula of

Player involvement there’s the basic level of walking around the world and join the aesthetics listening to music and playing an easily understood game for as long as you feel like then there’s the totally opposite end of planning your day around when to log in next using external connections to boost

Your gaming experience and then there’s every level in between none of those games I just mentioned have an explicit ending in terms of roll the credits there’s nothing more to see here and the majority of them rely heavily on time-based interactions whether in real time or game time the

Benefits of a game like stardew valley lie on the ability to balance the addictiveness of the comeback soon sort of mentality with a relaxing level of drive from the player the game carefully nudges you into being more involved without penalizing you whenever you feel like you’ve had enough you

Do sandbox games need a purpose well the answer is actually that they already have one it’s to be accessible even their openness and repetitive nature are part of that stardew valley the other games are compared to and every other game out there in the sandbox genre aren’t for people looking to show off

Their abilities or take on a grand challenge the biggest turnoff for people against certain games that I’ve heard time and time again is well I’m just not good at it so of course they won’t be searching for fast-paced first-person shooters or complex strategy games just as the ever constant popularity of

Mobile games has indicated the general population just wants something to pick up and play maybe it’s relaxing and maybe there’s a little challenge but there are a few requirements for those games and can’t be over too quickly the narrative can’t be too important to the experience and it needs to be repetitive

In typical gaming the term repetitive has garnered some flak because it evokes the idea of the developers didn’t know what else to add so you have to do this mission over and over again with different places or characters and in reality repetition is good when portioned into a game properly because

It means familiarity the fact that nothing really changes day to day in stardew valley aside from a few little annual events which they give you clear warning for means you’ll never be lost when you boot the game back up you could have been gone for months suddenly

Remember you own the game and you’ll know exactly what to do because it still stardew valley your farm is still waiting for you and the neighbors are happy to see you there’s no real danger in the dreaded thoughts of where was I going and what was I doing

Every hugely popular sandbox has this level of repetition that allows you to get your bearings again starting a new world in Minecraft easy punch some trees find some coal and you’re good to go familiarity from repetition is an excellent tool for games to utilize when appealing to a casual audience this

Repetition is perfectly layered with a chipper attitude and cozy aesthetics meaning you’ll never feel lost or confused and always have a relaxing experience to come back to whenever you feel like picking up the game and that is what’s so great about stardew valley you thank you all for joining us on this

Episode of what’s so great about gaming as we grew closer to the world of stardew valley if you want to hear what’s great about another game check out the link to our last episode god of war 2018 on screen or in the description if you want to be a part of a positive

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I hope everyone’s having a great summer! In this month’s episode, we’re checking out Stardew Valley and analyzing it to figure out what makes a sandbox game successful. What do you think makes this genre so much fun?

Check out our last episode on God of War (2018):

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