Stardew Valley is My Emotional Support Cozy Game

For Father's Day last year, the kids and I gave Matt the newest Playstation, and it has been the BEST TOY EVER! The local public library has an excellent selection of Playstation 5 games, and it took me about a week to build up a nice, long list of cozy games for my holds queue. 

The greatest of these games is Stardew Valley.

I happened to check it out from the library right before Matt and one teenager left for Peru, so there was nothing to stop the other teenager and I from becoming absolutely obsessed with it. After our first game, when I said, "Hey, want to try out this new game with me?" and then I swear the next time I blinked it was four hours later, I literally started to set a phone alarm when we sat down to play together.

When my other teenager had returned from her trip and was out of COVID quarantine and ready to hang out at the same video game console, we started our own co-op game together and she also became obsessed. And then all three of us each started our own individual farms, too...

Like, the only person in the family who doesn't live and breathe and dream Stardew Valley, weirdly, is MATT! The guy who plays every other video game so obsessively that we keep threatening to buy him a Witcher body pillow for his next Father's Day! I tried to start a farm with him one night, but he was... bored, of all things! I don't think there's enough murder and adrenaline in the game for him.

But, of course, the lack of murder and adrenaline is EXACTLY what I love about Stardew Valley!

So, the game. You start out having inherited a small farm adjacent to a small village. From there, you can do what you want. You can putter away on your farm, decide what to grow and plant and water it, harvest it and sell it, make improvements and unlock new things to build and putter around with. 

You can raise animals, and treat them nicely and improve their habitats and sell eggs, milk, and wool, or cook or craft with the products. You can fish, and try to catch different types of fish, and learn how to build crab pots, and build a machine that recycles the trash you fish out of the waters:

You can mine, and collect minerals and gems and ore that you can smelt and build with, kill monsters, explore the levels. 

You can play by yourself, but you can also start a co-op farm that you can share with as many people as you feel like can fit on the screen with you. Then you can both go off and do your own thing or work together. Here, I'm fishing at dusk while my teenager is exploring the mines. We'll share all our loot!

You can interact with the villagers, give them presents and go on quests with them, build friendships and unlock other secret missions. There's a Community Center that you can rebuild by gathering different items and unlocking new areas on the map:

The three of us LOVE trying to collect all the items to work towards rebuilding the Community Center. We are going to be genuinely sad when that challenge is completed!

 Days pass and seasons change, and the seasons bring new plants to grow and forage. You can earn money to improve your tiny little cabin--

--and you can buy and sometimes are given things to decorate it with. None of us have improved our tiny little cabins yet, but one teenager spends a LOT of time and money collecting floors and wallpapers, so it's only a matter of time.

There's a museum where you can donate your weird finds--

It was a mistake to donate that dinosaur egg. Apparently they're REALLY hard to find, and you can incubate an actual dinosaur from one!

--and earn rewards, or you can keep them and display them yourself, or sometimes you'll find that they're called for in future quests or builds.

All the villagers have drama, and when you start to get to know them, they'll involve you in their interpersonal messes. 

One of the teenagers is trying to get Abigail to fall in love with her. It's working!

All of that is available to do, but you don't *have* to do any of it! You can putter around and do exactly what you want. Want to farm and ignore the villagers? Totally fine! Want to put all your efforts into rebuilding the Community Center and ignore your farm? You can do it! You can't die, and you can't lose. You just putter happily away at the work you want to do, feeling like you're busy and making progress, but nothing is so urgent that you have to stress about it.

I know absolutely zero about how video games are created, so the other day I read Blood, Sweat, and Pixels, each chapter of which is about the creation of a different video game. It turns out that most games are build by huge teams, which are then broken down into smaller teams, who then have to figure out how to communicate with each other and work across their various specialties and just when they get something right, someone from the top comes along and changes the direction of the game or wants an entirely different character or just otherwise completely messes everything up.

Stardew Valley, however, was created and programmed and built from scratch almost entirely by one guy, ConcernedApe. For five years, his partner supported ConcernedApe financially while he by turns puttered casually or obsessed deeply, assembling Stardew Valley by bits and pieces according to whatever he felt like working on at any given time. Instead of relying on a team and its specialties, he taught himself all the specialties, all the programs, all the skills required to create a complete video game. This includes scrapping all his work on a section when he improved enough to do a better job. It's... psychotic, honestly. Misanthropic, even. But it IS a masterpiece.

Also? His partner is a hero and a saint. I do not think that I am constitutionally capable of supporting someone for 5+ years while they pursue their dream of single-handedly creating an entire video game from scratch. I mean, that's... that's bonkers! His partner was working and attending college, then working full-time, then working and attending grad school, and the entire time, this guy's in their bedroom fiddling around on the computer. Like, there is definitely a prize for being the Most Supportive Partner, and she won it. 

The kids and I played all summer and fall on the Playstation, and we enjoyed it so much that before we sent Will off to college, Matt bought the PC versions of Stardew Valley for each of us. So now a couple of times a week I phone her, put her on speaker, and then we log into Moonspot Farm for an hour of cooperative puttering while we chat. During that hour, I genuinely forget how far away she is, and how much I miss her.

It's my favorite thing.