legitimately, i played this game for 32 hours in 3.5 days. my sleep schedule was irreparably fucked and i missed at least 1 alarm.

despite my rather… diminutive levels of sleep, i had an absolute blast playing through stardew valley! this game is fun as all hell, full of personality and charm, and is a nice change of pace from other “cozy” games.

i’m not even sure i can classify this as a cozy game; there’s always another task to do, another item to check off. every day has a minimum of 4-5 different tasks you’ve gotta do, alongside becoming closer with the townsfolk through gifts. it’s a good bit of pressure to get that all done in a rather short day, and it doesn’t necessarily feel calm a good chunk of the time. that kind of works to its benefit a lot of the time; there’s a lot less downtime than in comparable games, which makes each moment feel more engaging through a rather long main quest.

i also really like the aforementioned friendship mechanics. marrying someone is absolutely adorable, and each character feels fleshed out and real. their arcs are reasonable and down-to-earth. i personally married sebastian, and his arc of… basically having depression and being stuck at home… felt a little too close to home, sometimes. the fact that a farming game has one of the least dramatized representations of day-to-day depression is extremely funny to me. needless to say, the writing is really, really well done.

my largest issue comes kind of comes with the genre as a whole: this game becomes EXTREMELY grindy. i think my brother put it best: “everything ramps up in price really fast.” that checklist of things to do each day becomes extremely repetitive, as the optimal ways to grind for stuff aren’t very interesting.

either way, i still had a great time with stardew valley. it’s likely the best farming game i’ve ever played (which granted is a relatively low bar), and fits a different pace and style than most other games in the genre, which is nice. a very solid game. :)