Your Favourite Game Of All Time

I've touched on Stardew Valley many times throughout this challenge but it's hard to avoid when it is my favourite game of all time, and after idle games whose playtime is skewed, Stardew Valley is the most played game in my Steam library coming in at just under 800 hours of gameplay, that's quite an achievement consider there are over 150 games in my Steam library at this point.

I love Stardew Valley so much because it has a premise and an environment, there is a story you can follow but it's up to you whether you do or not. You can play the game whatever way you want to play it and there's a wealth of content on YouTube from creators like SeanieDew that take the game and play it a million different ways.

Stardew Valley was developed by Eric Barone who I mentioned in a previous post as my favourite game developer, the actual production of Stardew Valley goes beyond the base game however, through the SMAPI interface, [Stardew Modding API] which opens the game to limitless possibilities. The game has hundreds of mods all community developed available, originally released in 2016, the game is 9 years old and has a thriving community, so much so that you can imagine if you have an idea, there's probably a mod for that.

Some of the mods available for the game are a little odd to say the least and some are just outright bonkers. If you want to take a deep dive, I'd recommend Turin on YouTube who has covered quite a few of them at this point with a particular focus on some of the mods that are let's just say, eyebrow raising and leave it at that.

In the 9 years that the game has been released however, from version 1.0 the game has had several major updates made available for free to anyone who already has the game, these made changes to the game that range from small quality of life improvements, to hours of new content, an entirely new region, new characters, and story elements.

Above all else, one of the things I love about Eric's development strategy is that he never opposed modding, in fact the 1.6 update to the game was specifically designed to make the game easier to mod, extending the life of community created content and creating an explosion of opportunity - especially for Stardew Valley Expanded, arguably the most substantial mod that exists at present, so significant that Eric engaged directly with its developer consulting them on things the Modding Community would like to see in the game.

In my post about Eric I mentioned that one of the things I admired most about him was that his devotion to the game wasn't motivated by profit. How I came to own Stardew Valley is quite bittersweet, back in 2017 during the orange twat's first term as President in the US he instituted an Executive Order that imposed an unconstitutional travel ban. Soon after the order was imposed there was a concerted backlash and in an effort to gain momentum and funding for the legal battle against his executive overreach. To that end, Humble Bundle launched a game bundle with over 50 games, the proceeds from which were donated to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) referred to as the Freedom Bundle, it was this through this bundle that I would come to own Stardew Valley.

There were one or two games in the bundle I had my eye on, most notably The Witness by Jonathan Blow which retailed at the time for £49.99 and was never on sale and never discounted. I knew I would like the game but I didn't want to pay £50 for it. When the Freedom Bundle came along The Witness was one of the games that was included in it, as for the bundle price if I recall it had a minimum donation of £2.50 but allowed you to set your own price.

I ended up buying the bundle feeling much happier about paying £50 when I considered how many other games I was getting in the process and the cause the money was going to. The bundle had over 50 games in it, and Stardew Valley was among them, which at the time was a game that I was only vaguely aware of, I had never played it. When I initially bought the bundle the game sat in my library for a while partly because I was busy playing the other games in the bundle. It wasn't until a Youtuber I watch called ZombieCleo, a member of Hermitcraft, played Stardew Valley co-op with their friend Corpse who now streams on Twitch as GobboAbby.

I first played Stardew Valley and loved the art style, the relaxed nature of the game, the freedom to do what I want and the optional story to follow, and I was hooked. I would sit down to play, blink, and 8 hours would have passed. "One more day" and "I'll finish the season then stop" became the mantra of each play session and time wiled away. To date I have spent almost 800 hours playing this game, explored numerous mods, created more save files than I can recall, and explored almost everything the game has to offer and yet I still come back to play more. This is a comfort game, to play it feels like a warm hug on a cold winter's night as the snow falls outside.

There are many soundtracks I could have mentioned earlier in this challenge when I had to pick my favourite, for how remarkably talented Eric is as a game developer he is equally talented in his composition. The soundtrack composed by him ranks high in my Spotify library, "Raven's Descent" and "The Smell of Mushroom" are two of my favourite tracks, they both play in Fall and both inspire such a sense of nostalgia in me whenever I hear them. I find it hard to believe in a few days I will be 37 years old and that Stardew Valley has only been a part of my life for 9 years or so, it feels like a game that was always there. I can't explain why, because I never played games like it as a kid, and I never played Harvest Moon the SNES title that inspired the game in the first place, and still there's something about it that strikes a chord within me and gives me a happy feeling, which few things still manage to do.