f13.net

Hard not to pay attention to this game. It's a Harvest Moon "clone" with a Terraria look, developed by one dedicated guy over four years. It is NOT Early Access, the game is ready, done and rich with everything you'd expect, so all the activities, seasons and a lot of NPCs with their daily schedules, dialogues, interactions, romantic options and all. Seems impossible to dislike it if you are into the genre, the Steam consensus is overwhelming (98%) and a lot are tossing around the fact that it is just better than all the Harvest Moons.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/413150/


(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3584773/Stardew%20Valley%202.jpg)

Bought it on Saturday afternoon and already have 30 hours into it. Totally hooked.

I never got into the Harvest Moon thing but was always interested. Timing is good because I need some low stress mindless gameplay to mess around with. I will probably play it 'poorly', but for me it's just for decompressing after long days lately (work + school + studio + house hunting).

My first character is my favorite sprite, Busta (originally Busta Clubs of SimGolf), the afro-sportin' pimp of 'Da Farm'.

This game has devoured every bit of my free time.  Just finished my first full year and loved every minute.

Picked it up. Is there more storage available in your house somewhere? I saw the backpack upgrade but can't afford that; need somewhere to stash my wood/stone.

It has devoured more than just free time from me, I bought the game on Friday and by Tuesday evening I was at 45 hours played (about 1.5 game years), having skipped work for two days  :ye_gods: Yesterday I finally had to go back to work, but I expect a lot more hours this weekend...

I don't think any game has been this addictive for me except maybe the early days of Ultima Online. It's a bit surprising, because while I did play some Harvest Moon games in the past, I lost interest pretty soon each time. But this game is just so exceptionally well made and has an incredible amount of content. Great soundtrack too. And all of it created by just one person.

You can craft more chests, takes 50 wood per chest. You can also place the chests outside.

Yeah, I have a chest for every category of item: foraged goods, crops, seeds, etc.  Sometimes two.  It's a problem.

So just like Ultima, or even Minecraft  :why_so_serious:

Yeah, apparently my hoarding instincts are just as strong as they were in '98.

Someone (http://steamcommunity.com/app/413150/discussions/0/405693392910667885/) created a farm planning tool, it's a work in progress but already very useful:

https://stardew.info/planner/ (https://stardew.info/planner/)

My farm / building placement is such a mess currently that I'd like to reorganize most of it. Demolishing and rebuilding upgraded buildings is expensive though, I hope I can gather enough resources for it during winter (dungeon season).

I imagine at some point there will be three or so copies owned in my house. Harvest Moon has been a longtime popular game with the children, and I enjoyed the Harvest Moon: Rune Factory game I played.

Got pretty far into the mines, and...

So. Help me with fishing. Can't make it work for anything but the very easiest fish, either with the mouse or controller.

Speaking of controller, this game works fairly well with my Moonlight setup playing on my tablet.

http://community.playstarbound.com/threads/easier-fishing.107819/

 :grin:

Triple post?

This game just became fiancee approved last night, she loves the music while she's on her laptop. So that's probably a bad thing for my productivity.

After playing with the controller on the tablet, I think I prefer it for all but the farming bits, even on the big screen.

What do people think about replayability here?

Days are way too short!

Days are a bit short. I'm constantly making it home with 10-20 minutes to spare. I believe that's moddable, but I want to spend at least the first year playing it normally.

Replayability? I'm a looong way from worrying about that, but the folks with 100+ hours in already can chime in :)

Video games are weird sometimes, I'm at work thinking about going home to play a game all night that largely just emulates tedious farming chores over and over every day.  :oh_i_see:

I haven't looked but supposedly mods already exist to adjust how long your days are if anyone wanted to go that route.

*edit* - Lots of random stuff here, but looks to be largely just image replacements and changes - http://community.playstarbound.com/threads/mod-list-modding-guides-and-general-modding-discussion.106868/ (http://community.playstarbound.com/threads/mod-list-modding-guides-and-general-modding-discussion.106868/)

I found days to feel pretty short early on, but as I got further along that largely stopped being an issue (except in the mines, where I never feel like I have enough time to progress as much as I'd like to). Once you unlock and can build the second tier sprinklers, as well as using crops that can be harvested multiple times per season.. you start having a fair bit more free time as you aren't wasting it on watering and planting.

I'm only half-way through summer in year one, though, so maybe there's additional time sinks once you get into livestock, which I've yet to delve into (just started building my first coop now that I've gotten a silo filled up).

I'm enjoying the game.. a fair bit more than I expected, although it could use a couple tweaks here and there.

Yeah, the copper water can and regrowth crops really save time. I'm in the fall now, and I'm pretty much all-in on berries. Bought a few strawberries at the fair, and they made more money than anything else. Too bad I didn't stock up for next spring. But the summer blueberries and fall cranberries are making huge profits for not a lot of upkeep. Plant them in rows of three or six for quick watering.

I felt the days were short as well until my first winter.  During that season I was able to explore the mine a bit more and built eight quality sprinklers.  Once I installed them and used them for Spring I had tons of time since I didn't have to water everything every day.  Now I'm in my second winter and have eighteen quality sprinklers and eight iridium sprinklers; can't wait to see how much I can grow in the spring.

They can be a significant daily time sink, and compared to farming not really that good time spent / money earned ratio. I currently have 4 chickens, 3 ducks, 2 cows, 2 goats and 2 sheep, and I'll definitely get rid of some (or most) of them before getting any pigs or rabbits. At this setup it's often 2 pm until I get all daily duties done, and I have full automatic watering for crops.

My morning routine:
- Talk to spouse, kiss spouse
- (Until they fix the "house is a mess" AI problem: every 3rd day, give spouse a gift)
- Talk/play with kids
- Collect keg/jar products and refill
- Pet cat
- Fill cat's water bowl
- Every 2nd day, pick mushrooms from the cave
- Pet and milk the cows
- Pet and milk the goats
- Pet and shear the sheep
- Open barn door unless raining or winter
- Pet the chickens and ducks
- Collect eggs
- Open coop door unless raining or winter
- Collect mayo, cheese and cloth from previous day
- Insert eggs into mayo machines, milk into cheese presses and wool into looms
- Collect fruit and tapper products from trees
- Collect honey
- Fix fences
- Collect crops
- Plant more crops if needed
(- Misc farming duties)
- Sell everything

Evening:
- Close barn/coop doors (not much, but  forgetting it will result a chaotic morning)

I know not all of those are absolutely necessary each day, but I tend to forget things if I don't have a routine.

Do you have a bot script for these?

You know, until you got to the "Pick mushrooms from the cave" part that's also my RL daily routine...

 :awesome_for_real:

I like that this game works for the minmax crowd as well as folks like me that just kind of mess around. Hot peppers? Yeah, I'm having a hot pepper garden, too! Is it profitable? Don't care!

:)

Just one more day.....

No shit.

"Ok, I'll save after this day." Three days later....

Of the few interactions I have seen with the villagers I was really impressed by how funny or deep they can get.

I'm a hermit, just like in reality  :grin:

I do give food to the homeless guy in the tent when I go to the mines. Just seems like the thing to do.

Yeah, Linus was the first person I befriended in the game.  I kept just handing him yams every time I passed his tent on my way to the mine.

There's even a PTSD moment with a character who returns home from a war.  It can be a surprisingly touching game.

All the character interactions are really well made. Especially after you have kids, the feels are stronger than in any Sims game so far. Just llittle things, but done so incredibly well.

Is there a way to get seeds other than buying them or whacking bushes?

There is a machine you can create later on that consumes plants and in exchange you get a few seeds.  Also, if you do the foraging bundles in the community center you get a pack of thirty seeds that grow the foraged plants of that season.  In fact, as you increase in Farming those seeds become craftable if you have a full set of the foraged items for that season.

Half million copies sold already. From part-time usher to multimillionaire in a week and still counting. Nice!

Sounds like Western Harvest Moon.  Which is great.

Need Western Rune Factory now.

WE NEED CULDCEPT

Wow, way to punch me in an old wound.  How about a new Phantom Dust?

Fucker. :awesome_for_real:

Culdcepts are still coming out though.

This is possibly the best game ever created in the world ever.   :heart:  Days are still too short, though. 

I'm off to dig a hole and buy a cow.

Does everyone just romance Penny? I started diwn that path but things got awkward and im thinking of bailing. Does that make me a bad person?

Yes, but only virtually.

I basically romanced all five of the women (ten hearts), with the intention of going with whomever I liked the most. Until you marry one of them there's zero downside to going after them all. I'm probably going to go with Leah. From what I skimmed over on the game's forums, Abigail is the most popular, followed by Leah, then Penny and Haley. Maru, apparently, is incredibly unpopular.

Almost done my second spring and starting to see good pay days from farming crops. Currently running about 24 second tier sprinkler plots and 1 iridium sprinkler plot. Spent a lot of money stocking up on strawberry seeds (256 or so) for year 3's spring, as most spring crops otherwise are kind of annoying due to the need to constantly replant. Going to increase my plots by another 12 of the second tier sprinklers for summer to really start raking in the cash. I'd love more iridium sprinklers, but I just don't have a lot of iridium yet (I haven't unlocked the desert). Other than farming, I'm just aiming for a single source of everything else (1 cow, 1 chicken, 1 duck, etc.) to have them on-hand for quests and for the community centre bundles.

Hah, I've been giving flowers to Maru.

I do think he needs to balance a bit more to incentivise replantable crops.

HM handles it with the ability to carry over quality increases from one generation to another; that's not a thing here I don't think.

I went with Leah, Penny has a weird April O'Neil vibe :awesome_for_real:

Strawberries, Cranberries and Blueberries seem to be way too good from what I've seen in the first year.

Blueberries in particular. Strawbs were only popping 1 per plant, iirc. Bluebs were popping 3 per. First turn-in I was all  :ye_gods:

Not going to abuse it, want to keep the game slow and relaxing.

Has anyone joined joja mart? How much does the story diverge or is it just endgame right then? I'm curious about going that route but don't spoil too much if you have please.

I never made it longer than an hour with any Harvest Moon game. 35 hours into this and I see no end in sight yet, this game is fun. I'm loving that you can just casually play at whatever pace you want. I haven't even hit winter in my first year yet.

Tryin' to raise some hard love :drill:


The looser the waistband, the deeper the quicksand,
Or so I have read...
(Item / location spoiler in this one)

I shouldn't have capitalized that, makes my OCD kick in every time I see it referenced.

If you purchase a Jojamart membership, the main difference is the Community Center is replaced with a Jorjamart warehouse, and all the bundles are purchased with gold.  I'm not sure if there are other differences.

I suggested to some of the others playing at work that if I were the developer, and the player purchased a Jojamart membership, I'd format their hard drive.

 :awesome_for_real:

I'm just about through winter, first year, and still ambling about.  I'm more of a miner than any sort of farmer.

Is there an undo function?

I've only played a few hours but so far if I crafted something I can't undo that. Since crafting stuff is just a single click action this gets really annoying. If your inventory is full for example you can't leave the menu until you destroyed the newly crafted item (or a different item).

I've twice accidentally destroyed a newly planted fruit tree, which was super annoying.

The game only saves when you sleep so quitting out before sleeping is really the only way.

I planted a few fruit trees against the edge of the map so now I have to wait a month before I figure out if I screwed up or not  :grin:

I'm nearing the end of my first winter as well.  I spent most of it mining to make a hoard of sprinklers for the spring.  I also found cranberry wine and jam sell for a boatload of cash with the artisan perk so I've started up a room dedicated to making those.   Once blueberry season hits I'll save a bunch for the wine/jam making, I'm guessing those will sell as well.  No one wants the Salmonberry Jam apparently  :grin:

Just about to hit year 2, fall and I'm starting to find I have nothing left to spend money on. I've made so much money this summer (blueberries, star fruit wine/jam) and I had only allotted about half my farm to blueberry and star fruit production. The house is now fully upgraded, the barn and coop fully upgraded and filled with an even split of the animals for each (so I can get one of everything for shipping and achievement reasons). I have a fruit tree of every type, two silos, a stables and hardwood fencing around the various sections to limit grass growth. Only thing I have left to do is finish upgrading my tools from gold to iridium. I mean, I still have to hit level 25 of Skull Cavern, but money-wise there's nothing left for me to do really, which is somewhat of a let-down. Hell, I've even stock-piled 30 items for each villager that they 'love' for gift giving.

There really needs to some kind of re-balancing when it comes to the money. Once you get out of that first year and have that first winter to set everything up.. money will no longer be an issue ever again. I'm sitting on almost 200k cash and the only thing I buy now is more iridium sprinklers every Friday to make my farm even more efficient and cost effective. The jump from 'poor and struggling to find time to do everything' to 'rich and everything done by 1 pm' is insanely fast when it happens. Longest part of any day is when I go gift giving and have to chase everyone down.

I'm about halfway through my first autumn and my plan is also to spend the winter making sprinklers :) I'm watering (copper can) until 9:30am!

I hope the game doesn't get such a massive nerf because of the powergamers/min-maxers. I'm just at 10k but not sure I want to upgrade my house to a kitchen and blow all my bankroll on it. It's a great casual game, but I can see where if you try to power through it there isn't much there.

Best would be if he put in a couple game modes, a casual mode that's basically the current game (maybe with the fishing mod :)) and a hardcore mode that tweaks the configs to lower yields and crop/goods prices.

Or you could just realize that game balance is a stupid and pointless thing in single player. Just give people difficulty settings and let them do as they will.

It's not as uncommon as you think.

Binding of Isaac changed and nerfed a lot of stuff because the hardcore players complained about it on Twitter, Reddit, Steam and all of the other internet shitholes. Even games that only have daily challenges and leaderboards get flooded with demands for "game balancing" changes.

Which is why I wrote what I wrote.

For those who didn't know, while using a watering can you can hold down the left mouse button to "charge" it and water more than one square a time.  Not sure if you knew that or not, Sky; it's something I didn't realize until after my first year.  It's still handy, even after sprinklers, because you often still have to water plants on the first day of the season.

Yeah, that's why I mentioned the copper can. It's good, but I've got about a full scarecrow's worth of crops this autumn.

Summer of 2nd year. I find it a relief to not have to fill the hay bins and water the crops. It still takes me about four days at the beginning of season to plant everything--I'm still stubbornly trying to grow the full range of crops. Have started experimenting with cooking. Still takes time in the morning to chase down all the animals to pet them and to milk the cows and goats.

Not sure what's useful about slime ranching so haven't even bothered thinking about that. Need to upgrade most tools past steel. Haven't really worked on gift-giving--I feel a bit of misanthropist, I don't like the townsfolk much. Also haven't really romanced anyone much as yet.

Way better than Harvest Moon.

Does the game keep track of who likes what gifts somewhere, or am I supposed to remember?

I am not sure how to use the Community Center to get the bundles. I can see the bundles but don't know what I'm supposed to do next.

Just started first summer.

You're supposed to remember. I just use the wiki.

For the bundles, when you have an item for a bundle you just go to the appropriate floor-plaque thingy, right click on it, select the bundle and then click and drop the item into one of the slots. For example, if you get a peach you'd go to the pantry plaque, right click it, click on the artisan bundle and then click the peach from the left side of the screen and drop it into one of the slots on the right.

It's a bit clunky at times, in a very charming way.

Sometimes single crops simply vanish from one day to the next. Is this normal.

I have a stone fence with a gate and scarecrows (which claim they haven't encountered any bird yet) and yet sometimes when I start a new day a single crop is simply missing

Is the scarecrow within 8 tiles or whatever of the crops that disappear?

Do you have scarecrows out? crows will pillage your fields and leave little missing plots.

Edit:Beat me to the punch

Yes

It happens. I've had it happen where a crop tile will go empty and is right beside a scarecrow. It's fairly rare, though. No idea on the cause, but I just assume an overly bold crow.

If your scarecrow is claiming no crows scared, it might be bugged? Mine has 25 scared off in less than 3 full seasons.

Am I a bad person if I say I got a refund for this?

You might be a bad person, but it'd be on different merits (we have your posting history, remember). I think a farming/life simulator qualifies for "might not be for everyone".

So I just found the casino....GOODBYE MONEY

I love Harvest Moon (and Rune Factory, and Story of Seasons, and...) but I just couldn't get into this for some reason. Maybe I'm used to them being handheld games, or just that this feels like a step backwards compared to RF4 or SoS.

It kind of is a step back from RF4, but I am still enjoying it for what it is.

Plus he's said that he will add more content over time.  He's also acknowledged that there isn't much "game" after a player hits the 2-3 year mark, you've probably accomplished pretty much everything that there is to do at that point.

Ginaz, if you're looking for a farm simulator to try, I think maybe Rune Factory 4 would be better.  It has a lot more to do, particularly on the monster slaying side.  Unfortunately, it is on 3DS.

Which is the main point really... if you want that style of game-play on PC this game has the market to itself. Which also gives him a nice foundation of funds and players to extend from, especially since he's not bound by retail release restrictions.

I've bought it, I've always been curious what the draw of these sort of games is and it's cheap enough to experiment with... though when it will float to the top of my steam backlog is a good question. But then I guess it will probably keep improving for some time, the guy seems pretty motivated.

Dunno about that, there's a fair number of these on Steam that never took off, like Our Love Will Grow (http://store.steampowered.com/app/423770/), Wild Season (http://store.steampowered.com/app/328220/), World's Dawn (http://store.steampowered.com/app/432010/), and no shortage of farming games without the relationship stuff (from Farming Simulator to the ocean of Farmville knockoffs).  There's a small flood of them in development / submission on Greenlight, too.  Stardew is just the first one that's really sold well.

Do you get to craft a mill at some point? Seems weird that I'm perpetually dependent on Tom Nook (or whatever his name is) for wheat flour etc.

Would also be nice to be able to grow rice but that would take some ability to alter land forms to create water infiltration. Not really the climate for it.

Nope, you'll always have to buy your wheat flour and other such ingredients (such as sugar). Not a huge issue as you will easily be able to afford to buy thousands from him in single shots, if so inclined, later on due to a lack of late-game cash sinks.

Abigail is a gamer and a goth. She has blue hair, likes to hang out at cemeteries and she's an existentialist. She's weird and socially awkward and she hates being around people. No wonder she's a favorite with people who live on the internet. She's the ideal projection screen for all nerd hopes and dreams.

I was more thinking in terms of the big names being completely off the platform... but I probably should have guessed there'd be other indie attempts at doing something similar. The "World's dawn" game actually looks pretty good and has positive reviews, but I'd never heard of it.

Ok, I've gotta post here as I know some of you have beaten this game. So on my 99th (not even but many starts) I went all in on parsnips. I'm on my first day of summer and I went for 40 blueberries. I think I can do that again tomorrow or near. As it turns out 40 was about as much energy as I want to spend. Does this sound right to you? How would you advise me?

I got to say something here. This is"nt my kinda game. I buy a lotta games most of which aren't the kinda games that really interest me. So I bought it and I pussed, and I pussed some more. For such a simple game its deep and complex. I can't play Darkest dungeon for long as I'll cramp up, I gotta take it in increments. But this game is relaxing. It's actually fun to play. This is news to me.

Sounds like you haven't truly let go of the Joja Mart life.  Take a day off and go fishing.

Bros don't let bros puss. Bro.

Well bro's do let bro's pus. I mean just dick around a bit. So I did and I thought I figured something out. So I restarted and went all in on parsnips. Then summer and I went 40 blueberries and another 40 the next day. It takes over half my energy to harvest and water the plants. I can only clear the farm on rainy days I have so little energy. Is money an object? Well I have way more then ever but I haven"t upgraded my house yet let alone buy a silo or coop or barn. It's a breakthrough to say this game drains stress as I play while all other games build stress. Why did no one think of this before?

I prefer heroin.

With regard to energy:

ya, there's a million things to say here .  But your right.  That save is still there but I've restarted. And there's no telling how many times I do this. How can you craft a game that is so simple but so complex? And I say that ignoring fishing. And I haven't been to the mines yet. And.. And  And.

Arise!

So, this didn't click with me before but I decided to give it another shot and now I'm liking it. I did grab some mods for it, though; none of them make the game "easier" they just give you more information.
NPC Map Locations
Better Milking
Animal Mood Fix
Lookup Anything
Show Item Sell Price
Skip Intro

I'm just starting Summer, Year 1.

I enjoyed it but I really have almost never hit as hard a stop point as I did with this game--where I just mentally tallied up the things left to do, which weren't that many but a few, and said, "All done, no more ever". Got my money's worth, for sure, but I didn't even have a vague moment the next day of wanting to play more.

The problem with it is the time to get there and back to anything.  Unless you're burning warp items.

I just installed mods for this because milking was causing me distress. I installed

Better Ranching
NPC Map Locations
Lookup Anything

Considering using a fishing mod because I really hate the fishing. I'm only level 3 but haven't spent any time fishing since getting crab pots, except when I walk by them.

At level 3, fishing should be a lot easier.  Once you get lures, it's a piece of piss.  Stick at it.

Fishing with a controller is a lot easier than kb/m. I keep one plugged in just for that. The input from the controller seems to work with the fishing bar a lot better than my mouse.

I'm at the stage where I have more money than I literally know what to do with.  I'm currently taking 3 villagers at a time on a trip to friendly town by showering them with gifts while also making my farm look lovely.

As with most of these games (Subnautica was the same) I really do wish there was more 'there' to them.

This is not a reasonable expectation for *this* game, but someday I still feel someone's going to get autonomous-agent AI with some form of an emergent narrative-generator right in a game of this kind, so people's stories keep evolving and new people keep showing up. So maybe the game starts with everyone having a hand-written "story seed" but then you get to your third season and new stuff starts to happen that goes beyond the NPCs in Animal Crossing reacting to the changes you bring (or the time you've been away).

Even just having something like Animal Crossing, where there are hundreds of villagers and you get a random handful +/- a few each year would go a long way. And yet none of the games in the genre have ever gone that way. HM, SoS, RF, and SdV all have the same handful of fixed villagers and that's that.

I'm in Fall of Year 2, and just finished building the final upgrades to the barn and coop. House has been expanded only once. Have the greenhouse. I have no sheep yet and only one rabbit. Most of the townspeople are either at 1 heart or zero - a couple are at 3. Fishing level is at 3, and haven't yet maxed out skills except farming, I think.

I don't know how people manage to have a million gold the first year. I suppose my next play through would be more efficient, but I spend a lot of time just puttering. My tools are gold level. I have only 2 or 3 iridium bars. I don't have the lava sword yet, even. Haven't min/maxed. I just grow everything but my farm is still pretty small - only about 16 squares wide and not even all the way to the bottom of the homestead.

I guess Chucklefish is working on multiplayer, so whether more content will be added, who knows. Seems like a winning franchise though, so I'll be surprised if there isn't at least a new similar game, even if this one is finished.

I thoroughly enjoyed this game (was probably the game I put the most hours into last year that wasn't a Paradox game) and yeah, it has some real flaws in terms of the end-game/longevity. I gave it a pass, personally, on those issues due to being made by one guy and the rest of the game being fairly enjoyable.

I still go back to it occassionally, as well. It is fairly easy to min/max after you get the basics down and figure out how to be very efficient, especially in the early game to get the snowball rolling. Getting a million gold isn't that hard (I think I got around 1.1 million my first year on my last playthrough and I wasn't completely min/maxxing as much as I could have in terms of crops -- I limited plot size and grow a minimum of each crop type instead of sticking to the best gold per season crops). Big key is just getting enough gold early on to upgrade some tools to make things far more efficient and allow you to access sprinklers earlier. Fishing is the main way I get extra gold early on, as I find it easy (boring, but easy) and you can fit it in after taking care of your crops.

I do wish there were more villagers and better late-game content. After the first year everything is almost exactly the same, and by the end of the second year the only thing I usually haven't gotten on my farm is the $1 million+ buildings.. and that's usually because I start to get lazy atg that point, as my farm is all laid out will full iridium sprinklers and a couple sheds full of casks for wine making with a small area for the barn and coop and associated grazing.