[Impressions] Stardew Valley for Nintendo Switch

I’m way too late to the party with Stardew Valley, both in terms of hype surrounding the game and in release window to post a review. But still, I feel this game deserves to be mentioned on its own, so here I am with a small Impressions post to tell you how great this game is.

Right off the bat, with both its cutesy pixel art aesthetic and its welcoming soundtrack you feel right at home while playing the game. Seriously, throughout my time with the game there was always the feeling that the game wanted me to enjoy it as much as possible and be as relaxed as possible. The game’s scenario is a modest rural one, where you tend to your crops every morning and visit the town to buy and sell stuff, or maybe even interact with some characters. Anyway, you’ll be sure to enjoy what you’re doing. Even just the routine of waking up and tending to your crops first thing in the morning quickly becomes special and rewarding as you see your crops grow as the days pass to finally harvest them and sell them for a pretty penny.

However, there’s much more to the game then just farming. You can go fishing, socialize with the other inhabitants of Stardew Valley (yes, that’s the name of the town) or maybe go to the mines. Oh yes, the mines. It feels like just this portion could be its own game. While you’re on the mines the game transforms from a “farming simulator” into a simplified dungeon crawler. You explore level after level as you progress deeper into the mines to find precious resources or even monster parts that you can use later to exchange for money. Forgot to mention, there’s some light combat while you’re on the mines, you even get to use a proper sword to kill monsters.

Though, there’s one major hindrance that may drive you away from the game: the beginning hours. If there’s one thing I can criticize this game for is the lack of tutorials and/or direction. I mean, I love that I can do whatever I want but I wish in the beginning I had an NPC take me around town to show me the shops available or even some text boxes that indicated me what to do next or how to perform basic activities. But hey, to the game’s credit, as soon as you understand how the main gameplay loop works you’ll start to understand how the more optional parts work and that’s when you truly start to love the game. On top of that, as the in-game time passes, more activities and locations become available, so there’s a constant flow of new content for you to enjoy and explore.

All in all, Stardew Valley feels like a great game and one that always leaves me with a smile after playing, even if I played for just a couple of minutes. And one of the major reasons for that is that you can quickly feel like you’ve achieved something or progressed somewhat in the game without putting much effort into it. In short, the game wants you to feel good about playing it and the “lack of direction” ends up being one of its biggest selling points because you got no expectations or objectives pressuring you or molding the way you should play the game. You can simply play the game the way you want to and adjust your play style as you see fit.

Now that I finally came around to posting something about this game, let me go work on my ZeReviews Awards. I promise they will be coming soon, and those will definitely be the last piece of content I post in 2017. See you soon.