Over the past 10 years, Stardew Valley has risen from indie darling to the most popular farming sim ever made. It’s also apparently been a huge labor of love for its creator, Eric “ConcernedApe” Barone, who keeps returning to release new major updates after claiming he’s done. Now, on the game’s 10th anniversary, Barone is looking both to the future and the past with two big reveals: additions to its romanceable cast, and some pretty neat looks back at its development history.
On Thursday, in a video commemorating Stardew’s 10th anniversary, Barone revealed two marriage candidates heading to the game’s 1.7 update: Clint and Sandy. Clint is the town’s blacksmith, and he’s almost universally despised (and occasionally even panned as an incel). On the other hand, Sandy, who lives in the game’s desert area and runs the store there, is pretty cool and mysterious!
Barone revealed that the game would receive new marriage candidates earlier this month. Players, of course, spent the whole month speculating who they could be—if they’d be new characters entirely, if the Wizard would finally become romanceable, or if there would be a divorce in town that rendered a married couple eligible. Quite a few people hoped it would be Sandy (although her addition seemed unlikely because she lives so far away), while mostly nobody wanted Clint.
The video is also packed with some pretty charming peeks back at the game’s development timeline, especially from the game’s 2012 iteration called Sprout Valley. As far as I’m aware, this is the first time he’s shown off so much of that version. The layout of Sprout Valley’s world resembles that of the one we know today pretty closely, but the art is vastly different and (sorry) a lot less cohesive. Barone himself didn’t have too many kind words to say about the game’s earlier version either, calling the pixel art “crap” and speculating on what his life would have been like if he hadn’t put more time into development.
“If I had just released this game after 6 months,” he said, “where would I be right now?”
However, the footage he showed off later revealed that the game pretty quickly turned into the Stardew we all know and love, with the build he showed off from just one year later looking almost identical to the game as it exists today. That’s just a really, really impressive turnaround for a developer to make. “Stardew Valley hit puberty here,” he joked.
Footage of the older builds also revealed a few massive features that were completely scrapped. He let on that the mines were initially procedurally generated and inspired by Terraria, and there was also an entire underground goblin village that was axed.
It was really neat to get a peek at this older gameplay, especially the axed features, the latter of which I’m sure will spawn plenty of theories about the game’s lore. I’m less happy about the marriage candidates, though. As someone who’s married to Emily in the game, I’m absolutely repulsed by Clint, who still flirts with Emily constantly despite my farmer literally having two children with her. Maybe it’s good that he can finally find a partner who’s not my freaking wife, I guess? Sandy, on the other hand, is fun! I can definitely see her newfound status as a marriage candidate sparking new challenge runs since players don’t meet her until much later in the game.
Out of everything today, though, I’m most shocked by Barone’s pronunciation of Qi, the last name of an endgame character who provides the game’s most challenging quests. His last name is apparently pronounced “qwee,” which is possibly the worst thing I’ve learned all week. Thanks, Barone.