Stardew Valley: More than just farming
/Stardew Valley is an interesting game. It is a traditional "life" simulator much like the Sims. You can do literally nothing the entire time, and it wouldn't matter. You don't need to eat during the day, and people will bring you home if you pass out at night. Money is useless, the gameplay carrots dangled in front of you leading to no ultimate ending. It is an existential nightmare of mere existence. The game coaxes you into action by offering you a sandbox, but it is the prerogative of the player to do something with that freedom. And, just as in real life, you can do nothing, however, unlike real life, you can't die. But, then running the clock out in such a way, there would be no point to the game. There is no story, short of what you can piece together by chatting with the various in-game characters, but you're only able to talk to each of them once a day, and often they will not share the intimate details of their stories without you having built a friendship with them, which can take literal years of daily exchanges, if you don't give them gifts on their birthday or out of friendship alone. You, therefore, can just sit in your farm and let the days run out, passing out and letting whomever finds you rifle through your pockets for whatever pennies they possess. But, that is sort of the point. As in life, it is incumbent upon you, the player, to impute meaning and desire on the game. As such, the game gives you a few achievements to strive for: bigger houses, fatter bankrolls, improved relations that lead to a wife, a dungeon full of monsters to clear, a position of influence in the city by completing a great community work. All arbitrary, and all meaningless in the grand scheme as they do not bring you any closer or farther from any overarching goal. You, the player must find value in the grind. Doing things for the sake of doing them. You take on the role of a city-dweller who gets offered a rent-free piece of land in a land trapped in time. You move out there to...retire? "Escape from the daily grind," it bills in the opening scene, but in reality, you are escaping one grind for another under the premise that a simple existence off the land is a superior grind to that of an office environmenmt. But, presumtuousness aside, the choice is rewarded in that the actions you take are immediately rewarded with the consequences and rammifications from the direct. Strategy and skillful play are encouraged, and exhaustion is a symbol of a day well spent. If you forget to water your plants, they die. If you diligently schedule your day, the extra hours and energy can be used to productive means. Time management becomes a strategy in itself, as the ever-ticking clock brings 2AM and collapsing in the street ever closer. A few extra hours in the day means a few extra swings of the pickaxe or the fishing rod, harvesting valuable resources for crafting and sale. Because, once you commit to living the life the game offers, the loop becomes pretty evident. Plant crops at the beginning of the year and tend those crops throughout. Multiply your money by selling and replanting. Once a foothold is established, start expanding the ways in which your farm generates revenues. Get some barn animals. Fix up your greenhouse and plant rare and valuable crops. Become an artisan and transform your goods into commercial products like cloth and wine and pickles and cake. Then, leverage that money into a yet-bigger farm, with time-savers like sprinklers and auto-milkers, more barns and barn animals. Building a bigger house. Buying gifts for your crush and getting married. Having kids. There are many achievements to get there. Completing the rebuild of the community center is an effective way. It builds strong bonds with the community and offers you valuable access to more resources. In the end, however, the office grind is replaced with a different grind. Choring is required, as the farm slowly overgrows and trees overrun the farm. Animals need feeding, crops need harvesting and watering, eggs need collecting, crab pots need emptying and baiting. Minerals need mining and wood needs collecting. Auto harvesters and sprinklers reduce the burden, but there is always a never-ending stream of things to do. Just as in real life, as well, money can solve many problems, too. In building the community center, if you lack the time to collect the goods, you can buy them from various merchants when they occasionally have them in their stores. Or, you can let the city further encroach in your bucolic paradise by paying the super-mart to fix it up for you as a warehouse. There is a sort of betrayal that is felt when you do such things, however, as the logo for the supermart, Joja, resembles Amazon's, and it somewhat mirrors the demise of Pierre's general store in the same way that huge online retailer is squashing local business. Indeed, Stardew is much more than just a farm simulator or a 2D clone of the Sims. It truly IS a life simulator. Every day, I wake up and kiss my wife, who sometimes has breakfast for me, or she has spent the morning making me a bomb to blow up stones in the quarry. I then go and pet my animals. They get auto-fed and auto-milked, but I must collect their goods to turn into cheese and cloth. I visit my chickens and ducks and rabbits and turn their output into mayonaise, saving an egg or two for lunch if I decide to cook a meal for energy later in the day. I let the animals out, then, and hope my pig finds a truffle. I usually have a few in storage to make truffle oil with, but I need to keep the stock replenished as there will be no truffling in the winter to come. I then visit my crops and ensure they were watered by the sprinklers, collecting fruit from my trees and harvesting as they come into maturity. I might one day build a hut for the Juminos to come and harvest the crops for me, but I am more efficient, and I can't wait for them to clear out the massive field and have it run more than a day long. I can get 3 harvests in a season on my berry plants if they are cleared out the day they bloom. I check my kegs and my greenhouse, where my most expensive fruits are made and transformed into liquor for Pelican town's bar. By now its noon or later and I make my way into town. If I have been mining, I will bring my geodes to the blacksmith for cracking, and will donate any interesting artifacts to the museum. I'll stop by the beach and check on my crab pots, which may have some nice lobster or crawfish to line my pocket, or some trash to recycle. In the growing seasons, it's usually evening by now, and I don't have much else to do for the day in ways of chores. I like to spend this time burning off the pent-up energy I have from not doing any manual labor and chop down trees or fish. I spent a season collecting seeds and planting a forest and now the lower portion of my farm is infested with trees denser than many forests. I use this time to also visit the secret forest for hard wood and will sometimes visit the mine and quarry for materials, however, those tasks are best left to winter when I have no crops to tend. But, even during the year, artisinal refineries are needed and sprinklers required, so sometimes a trip is necessary. When it starts getting dark I will make my way back to my farm, where I will load a second batch of cheese and eggs if necessary, and check my cave for mushrooms. They serve no purpose other than to add a little extra coin to my shipping crate, but there are some useful cooking recipes for the winter when I might want the buffs they offer. The day then draws to a close and I get any last-minute cheese and eggs into the machines before I call it a night and repeat it again the next day. There are no weekends for a farmer. Every day the animals need tending, the wife needs kissing, and the crops need watching. I am indeed a millionaire, because I am so ruthlessly effective. I have friends in the city should I require aide, and they often send me mail with recipes and gifts. I visit them in town and give them the fruits of my labor. A festival may some day arrive, and they are fine, but it slows down my day as I lose the chunk of free time I can be productive in. Still, it is a welcome change of pace. My life in Stardew was not always so simple, however. I left the city bursting with ambition and energy, with a blank canvas to draw my farm on. I spent the first few seasons running my energy bar to near-zero every day chopping wood and mining stone. Tilling soil, planting crops. It'd cost me half a day's energy just to water them all. Soon, though, I built up my silo, and started threshing grass to fill it with. The chicken coop followed, and soon the barn and cows as well. Slowly I chipped away at rebuilding the community center and the rewards I reaped were valuable. Access to the mining carts made travel more effective and the greenhouse was indispensable. Fixing the bus let me access the desert, where starfruit seeds can be found. I scuttled off to the mine on days when I could and built up reserves of iron and copper and gold that I transformed into kegs and preserve jars and cheese makers and mayonaise machines. When first winter came around, the farm animals were quite productive and provided me steady income through the season. I used the free time to plant a forest and journey to the depths of the mines. Built sprinklers and more kegs with wood and stone I had acquired through the previous seasons, and worked diligently to build my relationship with the comely Abigail. Spring rolled around and the year was over. With sprinklers down, a pocket full of money, and a productive barn and coop, I asked Abigail to marry me. We were wed, and my operation has moved smoothly. I spend less than half my energy per day now, a far cry from the year spent running my tank to empty. My second winter is coming up and I have big plans. My greenhouse is productive and will produce crops through the winter, as will my filled barn coop. I must venture to the bottom of the mine and I must clear the overgrown forest. I will replant, as I have been saving seeds and next winter it will be overgrown again. I need more tappers for maple syrup and oak resin. I need more sprinklers for a bigger grow operation. I need more kegs and preserves jars for my fruits and wines. I need more mayonnaise and cheese machines for my bountiful barns. I may get another pig and make another truffle oil machine. The life of a farmer is never over. I wake up some days in the game and ask myself why? What's it all for? I'm just living to make money. It's assumed I will die, though the game goes on forever. What's the point? I ask myself this question in real life, too. I wake up, go to my city job, where instead of tending to the animals and planting crops, I cultivate skills of the mind and build intangible goods, then go home and chore for the household before killing time and waiting for the day to end. But the dog needs me and my wife needs me and cat needs me and my family and friends need me. In my game, the barn animals need me and my wife needs me and my dog needs me. The goods I produce are tangible rewards for the community at large and my service to them in rebuilding Pelican town has impacts beyond my own selfish needs. Indeed, there are lessons to be learned from Stardew. Hard work pays off if you work well and plan ahead. Existential ennui is not unique to the living, and indeed all of us question our on purpose, only to be left with the answer that it is your service to others that provides meaning. A man was on an interview show recently, and was asked "What happens when we die?" And the man, a wise one versed in loss, answered perfectly: "The people who love us will miss us." The animals in Stardew are not real, nor are my crops, the trees or the farm, but it so flawlessly simulates life, that I feel missed by my animals and crops. The trees need chopping. The eggs needs collecting. Dog's bowl needs to be filled. I cannot let it go thirsty.