Stardew Valley: A Spiritual 'Successor' to Harvest Moon

I am loving it! Can't believe a single person made this.

Holy crap this is fantastic!

Apart from the fishing. The fishing makes me want to throw myself off a cliff onto a pile of lemon juice-covered broken glass.

But the rest is fantastic!

lol, I like the fishing. :3

So, for someone who's never played a Harvest Moon/Animal Crossing type game, what's the main draw here? What other games have similar elements? It looks a little like NES/SNES Zelda, but less of an action adventure game. Is it just kind of a casual (not meant in a derogatory way), relaxing, farming game?

Wow, it's only $15? Instabuy.

ebarstad wrote:

So, for someone who's never played a Harvest Moon/Animal Crossing type game, what's the main draw here? What other games have similar elements? It looks a little like NES/SNES Zelda, but less of an action adventure game. Is it just kind of a casual (not meant in a derogatory way), relaxing, farming game?

It is an RPG/simulation game with immense charm. Great art, great sound, charming characters, and the gameplay is fun and addicting. I mean, I love it so far. I've got 5 hours in it already!

How's the controller support? I saw partial on the store page.

Holy crap, this music is classic Secret of Mana inspired.

Wowzers.

Best Harvest Moon/Rune Factory like game I've played. Which may seem like faint praise since I can't think of any other one that's any good. It does a lot of things fairly good and it's fun. It does fall short of it's inspiration in some ways, and probable copies them in some places it shouldn't.

My biggest complaints would be weak combat, slow travel speed, and the UI/Inventory system. Still the general farming is nice. Its scenery is pretty as well. Although I wish the character sprites were more detailed. Good fun and has that one more day addiction going.

ebarstad wrote:

So, for someone who's never played a Harvest Moon/Animal Crossing type game, what's the main draw here? What other games have similar elements? It looks a little like NES/SNES Zelda, but less of an action adventure game. Is it just kind of a casual (not meant in a derogatory way), relaxing, farming game?

You have a bit of control over what crops you grow and where, as you farm more, you expand your land and tools and start interacting with town folk, you can work on romancing some people in town mainly through gifts. That's the basics of Harvest Moon as I know them, but its super addicting.
This game seems to bring in more elements, such as mining, combat, crafting and some other things.

I'm still tempted, but I've just recently bought Cities: Skylines, which is filling my 'just one more turn/day' needs at the moment.

How's the controller support? I saw partial on the store page.

Weakish. There are things you can't really do with the controller. Example: I was confused for a good fifteen minutes on how to deploy a scarecrow. As far as I can tell, this can only be done with the mouse, and furniture deployment in general is really awkward with a controller, frequently impossible. And you can't move existing furniture with a controller, either, that also takes a mouse.

You can use the controller most of the time for most things, but you will need to pick up the mouse sometimes, so it's not a very good couch game. It really feels like a controller game, and it's a little annoying that it's not all there.

Seems quite pleasant, otherwise.

edit to add: oh, if anyone is confused about moving chests.... you can't directly move them, unlike other furniture. You have to empty them, and then hit them with your pick. This doesn't destroy the box or anything, but the normal click-and-drag move mechanic doesn't work if the target is a container.

second edit: I haven't had that long with the game, but I'm quite enjoying it.

master0 wrote:

Best Harvest Moon/Rune Factory like game I've played. Which may seem like faint praise since I can't think of any other one that's any good. It does a lot of things fairly good and it's fun. It does fall short of it's inspiration in some ways, and probable copies them in some places it shouldn't.

My biggest complaints would be weak combat, slow travel speed, and the UI/Inventory system. Still the general farming is nice. Its scenery is pretty as well. Although I wish the character sprites were more detailed. Good fun and has that one more day addiction going.

You get stuff to move faster later.

And don't forget that you have A LOT of control on building your home and farm that you never really had with Harvest Moon that I can recall. No clue about Rune Factory.

Warning! I just had an earthquake that killed *every plant I own*. It happened right about Day 28, so just about the time that it was transitioning to Summer. The thing is, I just sunk my entire cash store into spring seeds to get them planted last thing, assuming they would mature in early summer. I've been all but wiped out. I have, like, 150 bucks and a chicken.

I don't know if the earthquake was random or not, but the timing is suspicious: you may lose EVERY plant in the ground at a season transition.

If so: infuriating.

(edit: and why the F*$)*%) would an earthquake kill plants? Most of them were barely even poking out of the ground.)

That maybe normal, harvest moon never let you grow out of season crops unless you have a green house

About movement speed, there's also an always-run toggle in the Options menu.

Or the shift button.

I automatically set it to autorun in the first couple minutes. I still think it's a slow with that. I think its a side effect. The maps are bigger then harvest moon so getting around takes longer. Time seems to move faster too I think. I figure you'll get a horse or skateboard later. I see a few shortcuts that aren't open yet that'll help.

BoogtehWoog wrote:
master0 wrote:

Snip

You get stuff to move faster later.

And don't forget that you have A LOT of control on building your home and farm that you never really had with Harvest Moon that I can recall. No clue about Rune Factory.

Yeah the whole building stuff is nicer. This game does some things better. I just wish it bored less from it's predecessors. I think the controls and UI would be better if they were more original. I may be sounding a little harsh but I am enjoying this a lot.

Malor wrote:

Warning! I just had an earthquake that killed *every plant I own*. It happened right about Day 28, so just about the time that it was transitioning to Summer. The thing is, I just sunk my entire cash store into spring seeds to get them planted last thing, assuming they would mature in early summer. I've been all but wiped out. I have, like, 150 bucks and a chicken.

I don't know if the earthquake was random or not, but the timing is suspicious: you may lose EVERY plant in the ground at a season transition.

If so: infuriating.

(edit: and why the F*$)*%) would an earthquake kill plants? Most of them were barely even poking out of the ground.)

Yeah the season change kills all non-season plants. The earthquake probable only messed up the land a bit with rocks and stuff I'd guess.

I automatically set it to autorun in the first couple minutes. I still think it's a slow with that. I think its a side effect. The maps are bigger then harvest moon so getting around takes longer. Time seems to move faster too I think. I figure you'll get a horse or skateboard later. I see a few shortcuts that aren't open yet that'll help.

BoogtehWoog wrote:
master0 wrote:

Snip

You get stuff to move faster later.

And don't forget that you have A LOT of control on building your home and farm that you never really had with Harvest Moon that I can recall. No clue about Rune Factory.

Yeah the whole building stuff is nicer. This game does some things better. I just wish it bored less from it's predecessors. I think the controls and UI would be better if they were more original. I may be sounding a little harsh but I am enjoying this a lot.

Malor wrote:

Warning! I just had an earthquake that killed *every plant I own*. It happened right about Day 28, so just about the time that it was transitioning to Summer. The thing is, I just sunk my entire cash store into spring seeds to get them planted last thing, assuming they would mature in early summer. I've been all but wiped out. I have, like, 150 bucks and a chicken.

I don't know if the earthquake was random or not, but the timing is suspicious: you may lose EVERY plant in the ground at a season transition.

If so: infuriating.

(edit: and why the F*$)*%) would an earthquake kill plants? Most of them were barely even poking out of the ground.)

Yeah the season change kills all non-season plants. The earthquake probable only messed up the land a bit with rocks and stuff I'd guess.

Couple Pro-Tips:

- Toggle on Always Show Tool Hit Location in the Options. Gives you a better sense of the tiles you're targeting.

- You can watch TV programs to learn new recipes.

This game has WAY more depth than I originally thought. There's a lot of stuff going on.

Just got into summer. An earthquake did happen. Annoying since it made a mess. The dead crops I was expecting though and anything solid survived fine.

I installed a sprinkler system. Which basically makes it so I only have to harvest things now. Gives me more time for dungeon diving. Money is a little tight while I wait for the next harvest though.

The set bonus thingy in the community center is a bit annoying. I like doing it but it's extremely easy to forget what I should be looking out for. So I'm checking it out from my inventory pretty often. Wish you could drop items to it from there as well.

Also learned right click does extra moves for weapons. Nothing that useful so far. Spamming left click is still the best. Bought a chicken but realized it was pointless without a silo. Also upgrading your watering tool isn't that useful. Just increase water capacity. I thought it would be like harvest moon where it increase range as well. Maybe I'm missing something.

Lots of cool buildings in things. Got a beehive, charcoal maker, and will have a tree sap gather for one of each tree soon. Fun stuff.

Game's been out for a day and there's already a mod that increases movement speed and fixes slow diagonal.

https://www.reddit.com/r/StardewVall...

Movement feels fantastic now.

Only downside is that it creates a separate .exe that you use to launch the game. A burden I'm happy to bear with how snappy the game feels now. I just added it as a non-Steam game in my library.

Aaron D. wrote:

Game's been out for a day and there's already a mod that increases movement speed and fixes slow diagonal.

https://www.reddit.com/r/StardewVall...

Movement feels fantastic now.

Only downside is that it creates a separate .exe that you use to launch the game. A burden I'm happy to bear with how snappy the game feels now. I just added it as a non-Steam game in my library.

Much better. Also got the fast travel-ish going. Really makes things more pleasant for me. Course now I stayed up longer then I should for this.

I'm just absolutely boggled by the fact that *one guy* did this game. Not one programmer, with hired-out art and music: one guy, period. All the art, all the music, all the code. One guy.

And, lemme tell ya, from what I can see... if he did this game in four years, he was incredibly productive.

I'm sure there is something I'm missing but it seems odd that I get up at 6am and by 7:30am I'm exhausted from I guess working? (I'm still clearing out the farm of rocks and trees). So then I'm walking at a snails pace and basically useless so I end up going to sleep at 8am lol.

Malor wrote:

I'm just absolutely boggled by the fact that *one guy* did this game. Not one programmer, with hired-out art and music: one guy, period. All the art, all the music, all the code. One guy.

And, lemme tell ya, from what I can see... if he did this game in four years, he was incredibly productive.

It is utterly baffling. How could one guy do all this? This game puts a lot of games to shame with how fantastic it is. And the guy is working around the clock fixing bugs and other issues. He's already released two patches in as many days.

TheGameguru wrote:

I'm sure there is something I'm missing but it seems odd that I get up at 6am and by 7:30am I'm exhausted from I guess working? (I'm still clearing out the farm of rocks and trees). So then I'm walking at a snails pace and basically useless so I end up going to sleep at 8am lol.

Don't work yourself down to exhaustion, maybe? There's an energy meter in the bottom-right corner of the screen that decreases as you perform physical activities. With even just a tiny bit of energy, you still can walk at normal pace and explore. My preference is to maintain my garden first thing in the morning, then do town stuff, and then when I return back home in the evening, I'll burn down almost all of my remaining energy clearing rocks and trees before bed.

Also, you can eat stuff to restore your energy.

Also, you can eat stuff to restore your energy.

TheGameguru wrote:

I'm sure there is something I'm missing but it seems odd that I get up at 6am and by 7:30am I'm exhausted from I guess working?

Most farm actions have an endurance cost, and it's quite high, early on. It drops some as you gain experience with your tools, but digging out rocks and clearing trees seems to stay pretty expensive no matter what.

You don't need to clear the whole farm; I'm finally to the point that I'm pulling in pretty serious money, and I've got, I dunno, maybe an eighth of it cleared? I haven't even gotten all the way down the right side yet. About all I have energy to water, each day, is ~120 plants or so, and that fits nicely between the pond and the house. (and it was lower than 120 when my character was lower level; I think he's a level 7 farmer now? I'd have to look.) (edit: if I upgraded my watering can, I could probably do many more, but the problem is that I wouldn't have the use of it for two days, which would be very bad. I've been waiting for two consecutive rain days, but that hasn't happened since I had the resources free for an upgrade.)

After some period of time (maybe Summer?), a path opens up to the trainyard in the far north. If you run up there and go to the Spa, you can recharge your energy for free. It's rather slow, as you have to navigate up there, get into the water (a fairly slow process), get out, and then run back to the farm, but it's been enough to give me a whole bunch of extra energy for working into the evening. It's sufficiently useful that I'm thinking about finally making some torches for evening work, which I haven't bothered with before. (I made one torch for the dark corner in the house, and that was it. )

You can also eat food to regenerate energy, but of course using it that way means you can't sell it. The spa costs time, but no money.

second edit: So, by the way, what order are people upgrading tools? All I've done so far is a copper axe. I'd like to do the watering can next, but not having it for two days has been a serious problem.

If you go to sleep after the timer gets red you won't recover your full energy for the next day. So go to sleep before midnight.