Since the game’s release in 2016, the items you sell in Stardew Valley have always just…been sent into a void. Sure, Lewis technically picks them up every night, but you never actually see him collecting or using the items you harvest, cook, and gather, so they can feel a bit pointless at times. Over the past six months, however, a modder has been working to change that with an ambitious new project.
On Saturday, Nexus Mods user bubuge12 uploaded a mod titled Farmers Store, which lets players manage their own supermarket. Per the game’s description, it includes “an Overcooked-style kitchen” alongside stock management, employee hiring, advertising, and compatibility with several of Stardew’s most popular mods, with multiplayer support currently on its way. Best of all, though, the Valley’s villagers actually come to your store to buy your items!
That’s a lot to put together in just six months! And, according to comments on Nexus Mods, it all works pretty well.
There are, unfortunately, a few caveats here. The mod is only partially available in English, as text in assets is limited to Chinese. But there’s already a Russian fan translation available, and commenters on bubuge12’s Reddit post are practically clawing at the modder’s door and begging them to localize it in English (or offering to do it themselves).
One more thing: some of the mod’s dialogue was generated by AI. It at least seems like there aren’t any new storylines or characters—just flavor text for things like villagers’ reactions. And bubuge12 did state that “only about 20% of the text is AI-generated” and that they’re planning to replace it with their own work in the future.
I was initially super jazzed about this mod, but it’s hard for me to feel good about playing anything with AI-generated text, so I’m holding off for now. In the meantime, at least I have the eerily similar management sim Chef RPG to tide me over.
