Video games exist in so many different forms and genres, but one thing that ties a lot of them together is the concept of an ending or a logical stopping point. While games like Stardew Valley might not have a traditional climax, aside from a nice credit roll for achieving perfection, many people find themselves putting the game down once they reach a certain level of satisfaction. You might decide that after marriage, kids, and burning through the dozens of checklists, it is time to hang it up, but ConcernedApe is deciding to question those existing endpoints and potentially open the doors for far more content down the line.
What we know so far comes from a teaser riddle that states “two paths will be extended, three will become four, the mermaid’s fruit will go free”, alongside a few other improvements to the family system. As obscure as that may be, there has been a steady stream of family-related information teases that have led many to believe that Stardew Valley may be getting far more than just a couple of content additions. Instead, there could be a world where your existing save files with dozens of hours could suddenly have a lot more to do, as those previous paths that were once stopping points now become extended into something more.
Stardew Valley 1.7 Changes How We See the End
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Cozy farming games often follow a very similar formula to one another when it comes to deciding when the game ends. It doesn’t matter if the goal is to expand your land into the horizon or to complete hundreds of individual quests; at some point, you are going to feel happy with your creation and the work you have done with the people, and either choose to start all over again or to move on to something else. For Stardew Valley, the game has had quite a few incremental updates that have added content at all tiers of play, some affecting your entire journey and others focusing more on late-game additions and systems that pad out those longer save files with a little more game time.
Guess the games from the emojis.
Guess the games from the emojis.
Easy (120s)Medium (90s)Hard (60s)
However, even as you farm all these new crops and attend the different festivals and events, the inevitability of the end is always looming. After marrying a villager and having children, the game effectively slows to a halt, as the kids remain at a certain age and everything else like farming becomes a cyclical act of upkeep instead of having any sense of progress. That’s why so many people start over or introduce mods into the game, choosing to leave their existing world in this end state and create a new one where they can try different approaches or experiment in ways they never thought to before.
There could be a world where your existing save files with dozens of hours could suddenly have a lot more to do, as those previous paths that were once stopping points now become extended into something more.
That’s exactly what makes this new 1.7 update so interesting, as the wording is very specifically referencing this issue of late-game conclusions. People have frequently taken issue with the way relationships are handled in Stardew Valley, as while it is nice to be able to marry and to follow that arc far beyond friendship, it still ends up hitting a wall down the line once you have effectively finished building out your life. So, if certain paths are being extended, then that could mean this decade-old goal may be replaced by another end state, with its own set of milestones for people to strive for across all their save files.
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A Stardew Valley character running in the farm Credits: Eric Barone/ConcernedApe -
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Additionally, by extending the playtime beyond the softer endings that appear in the late game, it encourages a lot of people to return who have otherwise left to play newer, more expansive games. Your kids may end up becoming a much larger part of the story and experience, or the new marriage options may introduce countless routes to take that can only be accessed in those relationships, but most importantly, it gives longtime players a more engaging kind of content that isn’t just another fish to catch or another crop to harvest.
Haunted Chocolatier Is the Question Hanging Over Stardew Valley’s Future
As great as it is to hear about all these new Stardew Valley updates, there is still a sweet-flavored elephant in the room that remains a topic of debate. ConcernedApe’s upcoming game, Haunted Chocolatier, has been talked about sparingly, but what we do know is that the gameplay style is very akin to the developer’s original project, which begs the question as to when development for one game ends to focus on the other.
As of right now, attention is clearly being placed onto this newer project. ConcernedApe is putting everything into Haunted Chocolatier, and Stardew Valley is taking a backseat, at least in terms of his involvement. There are already a few additional team members helping with updates for Stardew Valley, and as time goes on, it is hard to tell just how the content will be split between the two games. I can see a world where, whenever this new game drops, it sees a similar pace of content updates over the coming years, but, with only so many hands on deck, it may come at a cost.
Given how successful Stardew Valley has been up until this point, after the next few updates, the devs may decide that it is time to move on and place their development efforts on something new for people to get excited about. This problem is far from new, and we even saw it most recently with Diablo 4, where the sequel comes in and almost instantly axes any chances of future content for the existing game. However, Stardew Valley was never set up as a live-service game that was destined to be patched until the end of time, which means that any updates we get from now can be considered bonuses.
I think that is what all this boils down to at the end of the day. Stardew Valley is a monumental success, and these continuous updates are a blessing that could go on for another decade or stop with the next release. But regardless of what the future holds, we know that ConcernedApe and all the other people working on the game are simply trying to create the best possible experience for their players, and if they see room for something more, then they are clearly more than happy to jump back in and make the changes. And, as paths are extended and existing ones branch out, who knows, we may eventually see a bridge that takes us from Stardew Valley all the way to Haunted Chocolatier, perhaps not physically but as a way to guide us over to the next chapter.
Stardew Valley
- Released
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February 26, 2016
- ESRB
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Everyone 10+ / Fantasy Violence, Mild Blood, Mild Language, Simulated Gambling, Use of Alcohol and Tobacco
- Developer(s)
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ConcernedApe
- Publisher(s)
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ConcernedApe
