Stardew Valley is on the verge of turning 10, but it’s not slowing down any time soon. While developer Eric “ConcernedApe” Barone previously stated he was shifting away from development on Stardew to work on his next game, Haunted Chocolatier, he’s now doubling down on Stardew Valley with news about an upcoming update.
In a massive interview with IGN published on Tuesday, Barone revealed some exciting details about the game’s 1.7 update. Possibly most importantly, he revealed that he’s adding two more marriage candidates, though just who they are will remain under wraps until the game’s tenth anniversary on February 26. He also teased long-awaited improvements to the game’s children, which are considered notoriously boring by…most of the game’s players.
Other features possibly headed to 1.7 include a farm map editor, which would allow players to build their own maps instead of using the game’s presets. He even raised the idea of adding a social feature to let players share their map designs, which he tied to a staunch refusal of generative AI: “I’m interested in ways to make the game more just infinitely replayable without the use of AI. That’s never going to happen.”
Barone has been occasionally teasing 1.7 since September, but prior to Tuesday, he’s only vaguely hinted at “new character/social stuff” as well as the update’s obligatory new farm type.
Aside from 1.7, he also said he’d consider developing Stardew Valley 2 (and even started work on a sequel at one point but seemingly abandoned it). “In fact, I would love to because it would be fun to work on a whole new set of characters, a whole new world, maybe capture some of that original energy that I had back in 2012,” he said.
Chocolate Versus Countryside
While Barone clearly has big plans for Stardew Valley, he’s also spent the past few weeks opening up about the struggle to balance new Stardew content with work on Haunted Chocolatier. In a blog post late last month, he revealed he feels that he “shouldn’t have announced the game so early.”
Barone has seemingly flipped between development on the two games quite a bit. Initially, Stardew wasn’t even supposed to receive a 1.7 update—in 2025, Barone assured us that he was “committed to not working on Stardew Valley until I’m done with Haunted Chocolatier.” In this latest interview, though, he said that he’s still working on both and has even expanded his team in order to delegate work on Stardew updates. While he admitted “the progress isn’t as fast as I would like,” he stated he feels he’s able to take his sweet time on Haunted Chocolatier thanks to its lack of preorders and crowdfunding.
In the meantime, Stardew’s 1.7 should tide us over. I’m especially intrigued by the promise of new marriage candidates. Is he adding entirely new characters to the game? Does the addition of exactly two candidates imply that there was some big, juicy divorce in town? We’ll have to wait until the game’s anniversary rolls around on February 26 to find out.
