03-27-2024: I Think Stardew Valley Saved My Video Games Interest!
(Warning: Not too much beside spoilers for both Stardew Valley and the 1.6 update.)
It’s funny that last week, I wrote a blog that I might be suffering from autistic burnout due to various events and feared that I might be losing my video games special interest as a result of it. On the same day I published that blog, Stardew Valley released that huge 1.6 update for the PC, which its creator, ConcernedApe, has been hyping about for months (and even published one update log per day on Twitter to tease the fans)! Of course, me having that version of the game, which I won in a lottery from the r/StardewValley (aka one of the few kindest subreddit that I know on Reddit) in 2022, I decided to play it on the whim to see what big changes the game did since I stopped playing it early last year after finishing the main game
And it’s as magical as I the last time I played the game.
Everything about the game, from the pixel graphics to the background, the music (I love the music in the game) and that it’s a slow pace game (which makes my autistic brain happy) is the reason why I liked Stardew Valley in the first place.
When I first got the game, I bought for the Nintendo Switch during winter break in 2018. Actually, I wasn’t supposed to get the game at all in the first place. I wanted to get Harvest Moon 64 for the Virtual Console for the WiiU (back when you buy game online, NINTENDO) instead! But for some reason, my mind didn’t want me to play Harvest Moon 64. Maybe it’s some of the dialog in the game has aged poorly, that you can only play as a male character and that he can only romance women (this was the 90s’ folks) or that the game can be actually hard if you’re not paying attention! Look, I know that Harvest Moon 64 is a good game (and it’s one of the best in the series), but for some reason, I wasn’t feeling it. So, I decided to get Stardew Valley for the Switch instead.
I remember playing the game nonstop whenever I had downtime from school and from my part-time job. Growing crops, selling them, raising the barn animals, exploring Pelican Town and the surrounding area while listening to the music that played, made me smile. While I had to deal with the fishing mini game that nobody likes and having to fight monsters in the mines can be stressful, where you can actually lost valuables if you “die”, but at the end of the day, it didn’t matter as at least you did something productive in the game.
Then there was the romance option, which everyone gives huge praise for as you can marry someone on the same sex as the player (that you can choose the gender), which made the queer people (like me) real happy, as there weren’t too many games (that I know of at the time), where you can do that. I know that in my Switch file, I married Alex; the athletic that has a bit of a sad backstory about his parents and had 2 kids with him.
For the gameplay myself, I remembered that I made to level 10 in all of my skills and even completed the museum. Then I also remembered completing the Community Center and putting JojaMart out of business, which is endgame as I feel accomplished that I saved the town from the evil corporation (but has some downsides when the store actually closed). Afterwards, I abandoned the game after making it to Year 5 before returning to it in 2021 to see what the 1.5 update is about. I know I just unlocked Ginger Island on that file and was confused on how the island works before abandoning the game, once more.
With the PC version that I won in that lottery (which I enter on a whim to see if I got lucky), I decided to play it with mods this time around since that what made the PC version superior, compared to the consoles. I mainly used simple mods such as giving the townspeople clothes to wear on various holidays and seasons, where I don’t have to worry about my friendship meter going low if I don’t talk to them for a while (which is a bad habit of mine since I tend to forget), have the map show where the townsfolks are during the day and give them more dialog that ties to the events and things that are going on in the game.
With the mods activated and using the knowledge that I learned from playing the Switch version, I played the game a bit differently before. I remember grabbing the forgeable and selling them earlier compared to my first playthrough and mastering that fishing skill sooner, which in my first playthrough; it was the last skill I mastered. As for the mining and fighting the monsters, I was a bit more scared to do it on the PC version, compared to the Switch version as I’m more careful and leave as soon my health bar is low. It was because of that, it wasn’t until recently that I mastered both the mining and the combat skill. While I did a few things differently, I still end up driving JojaMart out of town by completing the Community Center and that I still end up marrying Alex (old habits die hard)!
It was completing the main story in the PC version of Stardew Valley; I end up abandoning the game once more for other things after making it to Year 3 and haven’t come back until the 1.6 update. Despite what the people said on the r/StardewValley about starting over whenever there is a new update, I end up going back to that file and continuing like it was nothing. I enjoyed some of the new things that the 1.6 update has to offer; such as adding books, where when you read them, you gain powers, XP and quality-of-life updates; added new items like big chests, which double the size of regular chest; that you pets can give you gifts now if they have max hearts and that there’s a chance that green rain appears during the summer! There’s a bunch of other things that is the 1.6 update, but it’s too big to put in here and that you should look it up yourself (or don’t… if you want).
It was during my autistic burnout when the update came out and I decided to play the game to see if it can save my video game interest, even if I can only play for a bit to prevent burnout from playing it for too long. So far, it’s working with me enjoying the things that I mention above and that I even made further progress on Ginger Island; compared to the Switch version!
Although I only beat 4 games this year, replaying Stardew Valley makes me feel like that I am doing something that will make me like video games again. But I’m worried that I’m going to abandon the game again and that my video game burnout will come back and it will cause me to lose interest, once more. Even if that’s the case, it’ll make me appreciate indie games better as Stardew Valley was made by just one person (amazing, right!?!)!
Still, I’m still disappointed about the events that I mention in my last blog that made me think twice about liking video games such as hearing gaming developers are losing their jobs (and are getting vocal about it) and that Nintendo is still shutting down fan game content and emulators (like the successor of the popular Switch emulator, that they took down a few days ago). But seeing the success of Stardew Valley and that it’s still popular, 8 years since it came out, made me gain some hope on liking video games again and that it was properly just regular burnout that I was experiencing.
I hope I can continue to like video games, even if I stop playing Stardew Valley again.
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