Stardew Valleyis the rare kind of game that is the absolute pinnacle of its genre.. It’s the game by which all other farming simulators and cozy games will be judged.
On one hand, that’s great. Stardew Valley offers everything anyone could want out of a farming sim, life sim, dungeon crawler, and dating sim all rolled into one, but on the other hand it makes it really hard to get interested in games that attempt to do anything like it because I know that whatever new farming sim is getting highlighted in aNintendo Directjust won’t hold a candle to it.
I’ve been interested in giving theStory of Seasonsseries another shot after nearly two decades away from it, but every time I think about giving one an inquisitive poke, I catch a glimpse of Stardew Valley out of the corner of my eye and get back to mining iridium ore and romancing 12 people at once.
Sorry, Story of Seasons, Stardew just really kills any interest I have in you.
Stardew Valley Makes Me Feel How I Remember Harvest Moon
The Story of Seasons series is a spiritual successor of sorts to the Harvest Moon series. Harvest Moon games are still coming out, but there was a falling out between the series’ original developer and the copyright holder, so the people behind it moved on to make their own farming sims that are essentially just Harvest Moon under a new name. It’s complicated, but not the point here, so we don’t need to get into the nitty-gritty of it.
Stardew Valley was developed in response to the declining quality of the Harvest Moon games. Solo developer Eric Barone has spoken about how, when setting out to make Stardew Valley, he wanted to recapture the joy he felt when playing the original Harvest Moon games on the Super Nintendo and Gameboy. Unbeknownst to him, he was creating a game that would capture the magic of those old farming sims even more effectively than they did.
Stardew Valley is better than those games by a long shot, but if you grew up playing Harvest Moon like I did, you aren’t constantly thinking about how much better it is than those games. Instead, it’s making you remember how much you enjoyed playing them when you were young.
Playing games from the Story of Seasons and Harvest Moon series doesn’t do that for me because, while they’re fine enough games, they don’t have that same spark to them that Stardew Valley does. Maybe it’s because Stardew is largely the passion project of a single person that’s beenupdated and refined for free over the years, but there’s just something about the game that’s able to recapture the spark that current-era Story of Season games don’t.
It’s Not You, Story of Seasons, It’s Me
I would be interested in Story of Seasons if Stardew Valley didn’t exist, but seeing the newest entries in the series and other farming sims like it doesn’t fill me with excitement and interest, it just reminds me that it’s been a while since I’ve started a new Stardew farm.
This isn’t Story of Seasons’ fault, exactly. The games aren’t bad by any means, it’s just that when there’s a game that’s as strong and well-defined and exceptional as Stardew Valley in the genre, it makes everything else look worse by comparison.
Maybe one day, a Story of Seasons game will launch to sweeping critical success that rivals that of Stardew Valley. If that ever happens, I’ll be the first to give it a shot, but until then, you’ll find me minding my own business in Stardew Valley while ducking Pierre’s calls.
