If you are looking for a relaxing game that gives you many hours of entertainment and is not enormously expensive, Stardew Valley is the one you should buy. This is a game that is available for Mac (through Steam) and also for iPhone and iPad. This is a kind of agriculture simulator although it has many more nuances and a large amount of content that for us is extremely interesting. In this article we analyze this game that has been without a doubt a success.
Game mechanics
Farm in its purest form
In Stardew Valley you will have the possibility to build a gigantic farm where you can grow as many crops as you want and raise a wide variety of animals. It has all the good things about the agriculture simulation since you will have to take charge of organizing the cultivation spaces by tilling, cleaning and watering them later . You will have at your disposal a large number of seeds to plant depending on the season in which you are, although when you get the greenhouse you can plant different crops regardless of the season.
Each of the crops that you are going to do will have a growth date and when this is met you will be able to collect the work that you have done. Once you have it in your possession you can decide whether to store it or sell it to get money with the aim of making other purchases. But in vegetables and fruits the thing does not remain, since you can always go to the carpenter of Pueblo Pelícano to build a corral or barn for you to have pigs, cows, goats, rabbits or chickens. The products you get from these animals can also be processed and sold, although be careful, you should save something for the kitchen.
You can set yourself the goal of having good taste on your farm and putting enough resources into the decoration. You will have many recipes at your disposal so that you can decorate the farm that you have inherited to your liking to make it very beautiful.
But obviously everything you can do during the day will depend on the amount of energy you have. You have to be very careful with the energy bar that you will always have in sight since it will be spent as you carry out actions. If it ends up reaching zero you will pass out and lose money and objects due to medical expenses. At the beginning, energy is a big problem since it prevents you from spending many hours and forces you to go to sleep soon. But with the progress of the game, this bar will increase.
Fishing
If crops are little for you, you will also have the possibility to take your fishing rod and go to the river, lake or sea to enjoy a few hours of fishing. You should bear in mind that on some occasions you will have to catch very specific fish that come out at defined hours and in fixed places . This forces us to use the Wiki that has been created regarding this game. This is not surprising since the amount of content that Stardew Valley has is incredible.
Mining and combat
Stardew Valley is not a simple farm simulator, and hence its true fame, but it hides many other mechanics. One of them is exploration and combat. In the town we will find different mines that we will have to explore going down levels to collect minerals and geodes. But this you must do with great care since in these mines you will not be entirely alone, being plagued by monsters that you must kill with your sword. With these minerals you can make different crafting or improve your tools to make them much more efficient (especially the shower).
As we have previously mentioned, in addition to minerals you will also find geodes in your forays into the mines that you can open in the blacksmith and artifacts can come out of these. These artifacts are collectibles from the game that you must leave in the museum contributing to the town’s collection.
At the end of the whole, you will spend many hours to get all the artifacts, minerals and crops available so that addiction is more than assured.
History
At the beginning of the game we will be able to choose the physical aspect of our character as well as the name and his tastes. Once this process is done we will see a cinematic where we see ourselves in a large office very overwhelmed and when we open a letter from our grandfather we learn that in Stardew Valley we will find tranquility in an inherited farm . Here we must go and begin to carve our own history.
In order to continue the game there are different challenges in Pueblo Pelícano, the town where this story takes place. One of these is the Community Center or Civic Center that we will have to fix, if we want, trying to collect resources from the map that can take a long time. As a reward, different parts of the map will be opened to continue advancing even more. When we finish it, we will advance in the story, although as we will explain below we have a great capacity for choice.
But not everything is like this since in the town a magician also resides and there is a quite magical atmosphere in the environment that undoubtedly gives history a great touch. If you want to know much more about the lore of Stardew Valley you can always go to the museum and read the books that you rescue along the way.
Choice ability
Within a few days of being on our farm, we will be faced with the possibility of helping the town with the reconstruction of the civic center or helping a large corporation. In the town we find a large commercial area that wants to end the local commerce of the town, the MercaJoJa . We can choose to join this corporation and destroy the civic center, or help our neighbors and end up causing the bankruptcy of this shopping center. At the end of the whole, and this is something recently added, we will work to open a new cinema.
Graphics and music
If you are looking for a game to relax, this is the most interesting option right now for both your Mac and iPhone or iPad. It has tremendously beautiful graphics and the music is incredibly good. You can spend the dead hours in front of your screen and totally disconnect while you are in the mine or you are cultivating in your field. The only problem will come when you get to the end-game and you need to find an artifact with a lot of haste and do not find it, because that is where the real stress will begin.
The only ‘glitch’ we have been able to find in Stardew Valley in general is that the combat is not too good. Enemies have a rather strange hitting range and can end up bugging us many times.
Social relationships
The story happens in Pueblo Pelícano and therefore you have the possibility to develop with all the neighbors. Although you can also decide to go the autistic route and not interact with anyone, but the truth is that the gaming experience is much more complete if you interact. You will have the possibility of giving gifts to the inhabitants in order to increase hearts and social relationships. Depending on the amount of friendship we have with someone there will be exclusive events and we can also get married and have children.
And speaking of events, in each station the town dresses up and they celebrate a specific event such as a large community community or a Halloween event in the fall.
As we said at the beginning, this game can be found both on Steam and on the App Store. It has a fairly adequate price for all the hours of fun it will give us and it is also updated every bit with new content.