Stardew Valley celebrated its 10 year anniversary earlier this year, and after over a decade of supplying fans with feel good farming its creator Eric "ConcernedApe" Barone has reflected over what keeps him happy and why the sim stays so affordable.

"I just genuinely value the love of the players more than the money that I could squeeze out of everyone," Barone says in an interview with GameInformer. "I just know that that would not bring me as much happiness as being beloved by the community. So it’s like, to me, it’s kind of a no-brainer. You might even call it selfish, because I’m really doing what is going to make me the happiest. You know, you can either chase the dollar or you can chase the respect and admiration of the community. And [chasing the community] is just what I prefer. That makes me feel better than having money."

There's been six major updates since Stardew Valley first released, none of which have been paid. That even goes for the massive 1.6 update which added a new farm type, bonus chickens, all accompanied by a ridiculously long list of patch notes.

It's certainly a rare trait to have in gaming right now, but Barone doesn't want it all to be blown out of proportion: "I don’t think of myself as some great, moral person. I don’t think I ever would, no matter what, because I just feel like it’s not a good way to think about yourself. It’s always better to be thinking you could do better.

"The theme of Stardew Valley itself is about returning to a more authentic way of living, more natural. I think that speaks to people across all ages. Especially as the world gets crazier and crazier. I think people look to Stardew Valley as an escape and a return to what is really human and the kinds of goals that we naturally have."

None of this is to say Barone is strapped for cash. Over the course of Stardew Valley's life the game has sold tens of millions of copies and made more money than Call of Duty in its second year. It's also gone on to inspire concerts, cookbooks, and a whole lotta merch. But a guy's got to eat, so all of this revenue is by no means a bad thing. In the end the most important aspect of this all is that a dev has been rewarded for their hard work and dedication while also valuing the player.

"Ultimately, I just want to bring magic to people", Barone adds. "I want to delight people with magical feelings. It’s the same way that when I played games when I was a kid, I felt that—and not just games but other things, movies or books or whatever—but [games] gave me this special magical feeling that it’s almost hard to describe. It’s like when you’re looking at the horizon, and the sun is coming down, there’s a certain feeling you have. It’s this ethereal feeling that it just makes—I don’t—it’s so hard to describe."

Fans have been clamouring for Eric "ConcernedApe" Barone's next game, Haunted Chocolatier, for a almost five years now, and while he's largely kept a lid on its development he has revealed in a recent interview with GameInformer that it's not taking more of his time than Stardew Valley.

"It’s kind of hard to switch gears sometimes, to be honest, but it’s just what I’ve got to do," Barone says. "It’s just another challenge, because I have two games that I’m working on. I just have to do it. It’s not my preference, but it’s just what needs to be done." Barone is now working on Haunted Chocolatier five days a week, with the remaining two being spent on Stardew Valley.

"It’s a lot harder than when I was making Stardew Valley," Barone adds. "I’ll be honest. [During the making of] Stardew Valley, I was a nobody. Nobody knew who I was. I didn’t get fan mail. I didn’t have business people asking me for this or that all the time. I could just literally lock in and work.

"I need to just disappear, go into a cabin, and work without distraction. So it is very difficult and distracting, I’ll be honest, to have Stardew Valley and have people sending me fan mail. I appreciate that people love the game so much. But it is true that it’s difficult to juggle all those things and to be able to fully lock in."

Hopes have certainly been set high for Haunted Chocolatier, Stardew Valley isn't exactly the easiest game to follow on from. But Barone isn't pulling any punches: "It’s way bigger than Stardew Valley, at least in terms of the amount of maps, the amount of monsters, the depth to the whole item system, and all the equipment slots and all the stuff like this. Everything is cranked up."

But unlike Stardew Valley's cosy farming, Haunted Chocolatier will explore slightly different, more creepy themes. "The ghosts, the haunted nature, the castle, allows for a lot of interesting, creative things that I can do that are kind of creepy," Barone says. "Not totally horrifying, but maybe slightly, you know, creepy stuff. I want people to be delighted by things that are unexpected and that they’re kind of like, 'Wow. Like, I have no idea what’s going on, but I like it.'

"There are other things I want to share, there are other ideas I have, there are other themes I want to explore, just to fully express myself as a creator. So that’s why I feel like I need to make Haunted Chocolatier and beyond. It’s part of my own need to fully express myself while I’m on this earth."

Eric "ConcernedApe" Barone, creator of Stardew Valley, one of the most impactful indie games of the last decade and dev behind the upcoming highly anticipated Haunted Chocolatier, knows a thing or two about being creative. And like many other creatives he's recently been touting the importance of human-made art and listening to your gut instead of relying on a machine to drop prompts in your lap.

"I think anything’s lost when you use AI for any creative thing, any step of the way—unless it’s being used for very specific zoomed-in cases, maybe," Barone says in an interview with GameInformer. "You’re offloading creativity to an algorithm, which I think is always gonna undermine the pure and authentic human element of what you’re doing."

AI being used as a creative tool is an unfortunate yet all too common development we've seen in this industry—whether it be in benign AI video contests, Sony using it to "augment artist capabilities, or a as glorified yassification tool. But even still there are even more artists holding steadfast in their own creative capabilities by demonstrating just how valuable human-made art is.

"For me, as someone who wants to express myself in an artistic way, I wouldn’t ever want to use AI for any sort of creative thing, because it’s beside the point of what I’m doing," Barone continues. "My goal is to express myself in a creative way. Why would I let an AI do that for me?

"At the very least, let another human being express themselves if you need help. That’s probably what I would say. There are plenty of humans out there that would like an opportunity to express themselves. I feel like that should take priority over a soulless machine."

But Barone isn't the only creative to warn against the lacklustre beast that is AI:

• Mass Effect's director dubbed it as "creatively soulless".
• Rockstar's co-founder sees AI's products as too "generic" to be any real threat.
• Take-Two's CEO not-so-lovingly refers to it as "a combination of metadata with a parlor trick".
• Baldur's Gate 3 actor Neil Newbon declares: "AI sucks".
• Larian's publishing director denounced any idea that it could replace QA workers.
• Demonschool's devs even said they'd "rather cut off our own arms" than use it.

As Barone hints at, some studios can use machine learning to actually improve the work load of their creatives, such as Warcraft using it to cut out the busywork, leaving them more time to get on with the good stuff. That's not what concerns me. I care more for retaining the complexities, imperfections, and astounding creativity of art made by fellow human beings—I enjoy playing games that have clearly been made with a passion and dedication that only a human is capable of.

Following reports claiming that Stardew Valley may soon let players divorce or cheat on their in-game spouses, Eric Barone has embarked upon a social media blitz to say no, that's not actually happening, and asking everyone to please calm down about it.

Barone mused on the topic of Stardew infidelity in a wide-ranging new interview with Game Informer, saying that some players have expressed a desire to marry Caroline, Robin, or Demetrius—but noting that in order to do so they'd have to break up families in the town. Barone said he's against that "on a moral level," but then went on to say that people should be able to do bad things in sandbox games—and suffer appropriate consequences for their actions.

"I would be open to doing something like that, but I wouldn’t baby people about it," Barone said. "There would be very serious consequences." In the context of Stardew Valley, though, he added that he also feels like such things might be "too real," and that "maybe Stardew Valley is supposed to be, to some degree, an escape from those kinds of things."

That quote caused a bit of a stir, to put it mildly, and Barone has been working hard on social media to correct the record. "I'm not going to actually do this," he wrote in response to one report on the misquote. "I was just talking theoretically, that if I WERE then I wouldn't just make it some consequence-free thing, everyone would hate you, there would be severe consequences for your moral failures.

"If you're making a sandbox game I think it's interesting to allow people to do things, even bad things. But there should be consequences. That teaches you a life lesson. If you just get away with it or everyone is chill with it, that would be bad."

Some of the uproar may have been sparked by a machine translation gone really wrong. Japanese gaming site Automaton covered the GI interview, and when its translation was flipped back to English, it came out quoting Barone as stating unequivocally, "We are considering the introduction of infidelity and divorce."

"The only thing I had ever 'considered' was allowing players to break up Pierre/Caroline or Robin/Demetrius, but even that is probably too heavy and serious, and would be a ton of work to adjust all dialogue and tone of everyone in town in consequence, and Grandpa ashamed of you," Barone wrote in response to Automaton's post.

"It was just some theoretical idea I've toyed with. I don't condone doing it either. But there is precedent for things like that in Stardew, like going to the Dark Shrine of Selfishness to turn your kids into doves, and then they haunt you forever." Yeah, that sounds pretty morally iffy, alright!

Barone posted a few shorter replies referring to the Automaton report as "fake news" or a "clickbait article," and said in one that the untranslated quotes are "taken out of context," and "if you read the actual interview it's clear that I'm not going to add it."

He also, as is his way, swerved off course momentarily to tell a disappointed Stardew Valley player that "you're born with a specific fairy godmother, I don't make the rules," and to congratulate another player who got an A+ on a presentation on the art of Stardew Valley.

I think you actually do, Eric!

So it's much ado over nothing, then, but that's probably for the best: After all, would you really want to disappoint Grandpa like that?

Stardew Valley 1.7 is a hotly anticipated patch to a game, and for good reason—it's one of the biggest indie sensations of the past decade. Riling up the anticipation is the fact that it usually takes years for big updates like this to drop, with the last major version releasing in 2024.

As such, the inescapable tide of supposed leaks has swept through the internet—which the game's creator, Eric Barone, is very keen to put a blunt full stop to: "Any claims that there are "'leaks' of 1.7 content are fake. There are no leaks," he wrote on X. Welp, there you go then.

Despite the clarity of his statement, though, one fan asked if he could verify the truth of a "leak" where unobtained bachelors and bachelorettes would supposedly get hitched without you if you took too long. Y'know, the one he just said was fake.

Either way, he was happy to oblige: "I have no plans to ever add something like that." Surprisingly, people seemed disappointed—and I can understand that. One of the weird things about life sims like Stardew is the eerie feeling the entire world is just sort of waiting for you to do something.

In real life, though, if you snooze on a potential romance? You very much lose. "Oh big sad. Forever alone Clint," writes one player, to which I'd like to remind them that Clint is becoming a romance option in the 1.7 update. Sad for the friendzoned blacksmith, but not sad enough to date him yourself, huh? I see how it is.

In seriousness, it's a relief to see the rumour mill thoroughly stopped. I'm also keen to see how Clint, who is pretty much a punching bag in the Stardew Valley fandom for his unrequited affections, is developed during his romance path. Also Sandy, who, let's face it, is likely to be the more popular of the pair.

God, Stardew Valley turned 10 this week, didn't it? That feels sort of wild to think about. I didn't jump into the game until around 12 months later, but that's still nine entire years that this game has been in my life. It's certainly not been in my regular gaming rotation anywhere near as much as some of Pelican Town's most dedicated farmers, but it's one of those I always come back to when I desperately crave some cosy warmth in my life.

The one thing that is in my regular rotation, however? That game's freakin' soundtrack, baby. Not a day has gone by this year that I haven't listened to at least one song from its fantastic OST. Seriously, it boggles my mind that Eric Barone cooked so hard in so many aspects of Stardew Valley, but to absolutely nail the music on top of all of that? Madness.

Because I don't know about you, but something I so often find with my cosy games is that I don't really remember their soundtracks. I know, I am a terrible appreciator of videogame music. Despite, you know, writing about how much I love it every week. But I think when a lot of these games are designed to feel relaxing, or comforting, their soundtracks sort of take a backseat.

Sometimes it's ambient music that fits well in the context of the game, but doesn't have much listening power beyond it. Or filled with lo-fi tracks—which, while I am a total sucker for lo-fi, I never find any one particular track burrowing its way into my brain to infinitely loop around my noggin as I go about my day.

But Stardew Valley does something special. It carefully toes the line of nostalgia and newness, bringing something that feels fresh but deeply rooted in the games that inspired Barone in the first place. Jaunty synths for bright summer days that transform into more gentle, ethereal sounds as the seasons grow colder, an almost comically stereotypical ragtime piano piece for the Stadrop Saloon, and the delightful main theme.

It's one that feels a little dreamy—funnily enough, it reminds me just a teeny-tiny bit of the Donald's Dreamland playground theme from Toontown. Not in terms of any actual melody running through either track, but just the way both of them make me feel. A little sleepy, a little happy, and very cosy. It's probably a reason why Stardew reads so nostalgic to me, since it's literally reminding me of some crusty kids' MMO that I still hold a very soft spot for.

It's a real inviting track, one that almost feels like an old friend welcoming you home. Even if it's the first time you've ever booted up the game. I don't know what Barone put in those synths to make them sound so iconic, but I've been eating it up for the last nine years.

Of course, I can't write about how wonderful Stardew Valley's soundtrack is without mentioning the absolute GOAT: Dance of the Moonlight Jellies. It's the most popular song on Spotify, and for good reason. It plays during the festival of the same name—a nighttime event where jellyfish delicately glow and bob around in the ocean, their soft blue hues lighting up the dark skies.

It's the closest I've ever gotten to crying over a track that doesn't exactly intend to hold any great emotional weight behind it. But something about how gentle a song it is, paired with the beautiful pixel art scenery, gives me ridiculous goosebumps every single time.

I think part of what makes Stardew Valley's soundtrack so special is the very fact that it comes from Barone himself. While he works alongside a team these days, the early days of the game were a solo effort. It's so clear how deeply connected Barone is to every single aspect, and how much of himself he poured into every corner of its creation. Those connections ripple out to where we can feel them ourselves, and I sincerely believe the soundtrack would not be anywhere near as special had it come from an outside source.

Nobody understands a game more than the person responsible for its existence, and that couldn't be clearer with Stardew Valley than in its music. The game is special as a whole, but the soundtrack adds so much to how special an experience living a virtual life in Pelican Town truly is.

It happens multiple times a week in online fantasy reader circles: Someone says they're new to fantasy, or a former avid reader returning as an adult, or otherwise looking to join the space by asking what they should read first. The answer that fantasy fans love to give, inevitably, is The Hobbit. I see it often enough that it almost feels like a gag, but so many fantasy lovers still really do think you should start with Tolkien.

There's a similar phenomenon in cozy gaming circles where new or returning gamers ask where they should begin and unless they give caveats that would eliminate it (and sometimes even if they do) the favorite answer from cozy gamers, perhaps even more unanimously than Middle Earth to fantasy fans, is Stardew Valley.

Stardew Valley is officially 10 years old this week and is still treated as the default entry point to this corner of the hobby. Even with its overnight success back at launch in 2016, becoming the poster child of the genre it revitalized wasn't a given.

I remember putting a lot of hours into H1Z1 around the same time as Stardew, arguably the first battle royale to really put the shrinking death circle concept on the map even though it took inspiration from things like Minecraft Hunger Games servers and Arma 2. For a variety of reasons, it was completely supplanted by Playerunknown's Battlegrounds and Fortnite within a couple years and nobody talks about H1Z1 anymore.

As the list of games like Stardew Valley kept growing, I thought the same could eventually happen. Some other indie farm sim would come along and do everything just a bit better. Or else the Story of Seasons developers, formerly of Harvest Moon, would crash into the PC market screaming "daddy's home!" Neither of those things have really happened.

In the years since Stardew I've found a few other farm life sims that I think really capture the same warmth and competency—Roots of Pacha and Fields of Mistria are the top tier in my book—but none have managed to overtake that status as the default. Even as more Story of Seasons and Harvest Moon games both come to PC, they haven't quite modernized enough to overtake Stardew's ubiquity.

More than just persisting as the de facto entry point, Stardew Valley continues to occupy a The Hobbit-like first-love space in the hearts of a lot of cozy gamers. It's the comfort game I can return to year after year when I tire of trying other new farm sims. It's the ones whose little idiosyncrasies I've memorized and the one I can quote verbatim.

I can't say exactly what it is that's kept Stardew on the cozy throne instead of accidentally drawing the blueprint for its own usurpurs. It could be that, like Minecraft, the prolific modding community has kept players engaged way past the expiration of other games. Maybe the years of free updates, with a 1.7 update still coming, have built enough goodwill to cement its indie darling status indefinitely. Maybe it's that so many games like it burn through attention with lengthy early access periods or maybe everyone just really loves the soundtrack.

At this rate, it seems pretty likely that we'll all meet back here in 2036, with Stardew Valley's spot as king of cozy games still unchallenged, to talk about how Haunted Chocolatier stacks up and what we hope Eric Barone is planning for that Stardew Valley 2 he's never ruled out working on someday.

• How well do you know Stardew Valley?
• The 10 best Stardew Valley updates
• The best games like Stardew Valley on PC
• I can't believe Eric Barone thought Harvest Moon fans would hate Stardew Valley

It's been 10 years since Stardew Valley was released, which is hard to believe, but when you look back at the update log for the game as a whole. It certainly feels like we've been through a lot in that time. Going back to the original version makes you realise just how much has been added over the last decade, and I couldn't fathom going back to play the initial version and missing out on all the features we now know and love.

There's no denying that ConcernedApe always delivers when it comes to a content update, and even though they are pretty few and far between, the wait is always worth it. There's always such a significant amount of content added to the game to breathe more life into Pelican Town, but some features still feel like they added a little more than the rest. So, let's revisit Stardew's lengthy update history and narrow down the best of the best.

1.1 Update - 2016

Divorce

Starting off strong. Pelican Town is home to 12 marriage candidates currently, and before the 1.1 update in 2016, you had to be really certain in who you wanted to devote your time to, as leaving them wasn't an option if you changed your mind. Fortunately, this update introduced the ability to initiate a divorce, but for a price. Not only do you have to fork out 50,000g, but you'll also lose all of the hearts you worked so hard to gain with them.

From the moment you divorce them, they also refuse any gifts, so you can't exactly re-gain their trust either. It certainly sounds like a negative update on paper, but if you've had a change of heart and want to pursue a different love interest, it stops you from walking into a very awkward conversation in the Stardrop Saloon at least. And clears out any of the special rooms that get tacked onto your house the minute you're married (sorry, Sebastian).

Coffee

Aside from your stamina bar, your walk speed is one of the biggest burdens in Stardew Valley. So, the introduction of Coffee in the 1.1 update certainly helped. It's not a fix-all, but it grants the player a decent speed boost for just over a minute once consumed, which is the main appeal. If you're running around late at night and need to get to bed, chugging a coffee can be the boost you need to get home in time.

If you're looking to win over Harvey, then Coffee is your most efficient way to do so. He's the only character who absolutely adores the stuff, and since you can buy a cup for 300g in the Stardrop Saloon, you basically have a constant stream of loved gifts. My one word of advice is to get a coffee maker when you can, because that 300g purchase twice a week certainly adds up.

1.3 Update - 2018

Multiplayer

After farming solo for so long, the addition of multiplayer in the 1.3 Update from 2018 felt groundbreaking. All of a sudden, your derelict farmyard could host three additional players, and boy, was it chaotic. Hard-earned funds were being spent without a word as to why, starting cabins littered the once organised farmyard, and there was an extreme lack of urgency from some players when it was bedtime. But it was a different level of fun from the solitary farming we were used to.

In fact, multiplayer is still one of my favourite ways to play. Although I definitely appreciate the ability to have separate funds now, and there are plenty of features to help you organise your space a bit better, it's still as enjoyable now as it was back in 2018. If not more so now—I'm not starting an argument after someone spends my bag upgrade fund on something stupid like a visit to the Hat Mouse.

Night Market

Winter is one of the most boring seasons in any farming simulator—not just Stardew. You can't plant anything, and I can only spend so much time in the mines before I lose my marbles. So, the Night Market, a travelling festival which occurs between the 15th and 17th of Winter, certainly makes the season more exciting. This is a great opportunity to get ahold of some rare items, fish, and decor too, and is one of the events I look forward to most over Winter.

There are eight vendors at the Night Market, including the coveted Mermaid Boat, which links to Secret Note #15 if you've found it, and the fishing submarine, which lets you catch things like the Blobfish and the Midnight Squid. They aren't quite legendary fish, but they are worth catching if you want to fill out your collections book.

1.4 Update - 2019

Four Corners Farm

Shortly after the release of multiplayer, the Four Corners Farm was introduced in 2019. This is the perfect layout for anyone looking to play with a group of friends as it designates one corner of the yard to each person. No more squabbling over land, thank goodness. With this layout, you get your own space with a starting cabin, and the best part is you don't even need four players to make the most of the space you're given.

In fact, you don't even need to have anyone else join your game to make use of this layout. If you just want to section off your farmyard without having to craft an obscene amount of fences, then you can. One corner for crops, one corner for animal grazing, one corner for buildings and your greenhouse, and one well-decorated corner for your humble abode. It's an organised farmer's dream.

Krobus as a roomie

Stardew Valley knows how to tug on your heartstrings when it comes to some of its characters, and Krobus is certainly one of the easier characters to get attached to. Over time, you can slowly befriend this sewer-dwelling creature, as long as you're willing to sacrifice all of your Void Eggs and diamonds, but unlike a marriage candidate, your relationship will never progress past a very strong friendship. However, if you are devoted to him despite all that, the 1.4 update lets you invite him to live in your house as a roommate, which I know excites a huge number of players.

When he moves in, he'll still do things a spouse would like, occasionally changing your wallpaper and flooring, alongside gifting you a Stardrop. But, he won't do any chores like feeding the animals. If you change your mind, you don't have to pay a divorce fee to get Krobus to leave, either, though he will stop talking to you and stop accepting any gifts, which is more devastating if you ask me.

1.5 Update - 2020

Ginger Island

Just as you think you've done everything you can in Pelican Town, the world gets a little bit bigger thanks to the addition of Ginger Island in 2020. When I first stepped foot on those sandy shores, I was shocked at just how much space it added to the game. Even though it costs you 1,000g for a return trip, it's well worth it. Not only does this location add new items, currency, and plenty of puzzles for you to solve, it also gives you a new cabin and farmyard to work away on in case you're bored with your Grandpa's land.

It does take quite a bit of work to get there, though. Before you can access the island, you need to have completed all of the Community Centre Bundles and repaired the boat itself with Iridium bars, Hardwood, and Batteries. It's well worth it, though, for the sheer amount of additional content it introduced to the game.

1.6 Update - 2024

Big Chest

The 1.6 update from 2024 was absolutely filled with fantastic new features, but the Big Chest was possibly the one I was the most unreasonably excited about. Storage in Stardew Valley feels more like a curse than a convenience sometimes, and the amount of time I've spent crafting new chests after returning from a trip to the mines or a forage is criminal. Luckily, the Big Chest came along in this update to change that, increasing the amount of items you can store from 36 to a whopping 70.

It's easy enough to craft too, requiring only 120 Wood and 2 Copper Bars. There's not really any excuse to craft small chests anymore because of it, and my farm organisation is certainly better off. You can even customise the colour of it, like you can with any other chest. It's just the perfect addition, and probably the feature I've gotten the most use out of since 1.6 was released.

Winter Outfits

One of the 1.6 updates has smaller changes, but for someone who has been playing for a while, it certainly feels like a big one. When you're so used to seeing the default appearance of your fellow townsfolk, especially if you don't use any mods, sometimes all it takes is a little winter outfit to make these characters feel more alive. Sure, for the most part, it's just a woolly jumper or big jacket, but it makes the seasonal change more exciting.

Raccoons

Stardew Valley loves an odd side quest, and the giant tree stump to the south of your farm and next to Marnie's is one of my favourites. The pure elation I felt when I realised restoring this log would result in a family of raccoons moving in is something I don't think I've felt since Stardew released in the first place.

There are eight quests to work through in total, all requiring different items and unlocking a new raccoon for the family. It feels like the ultimate fetch quest, but will reward you with the "Good Neighbour" achievement and a new shop. Plus, you'll have warmth in your heart knowing you helped rehome a family of raccoons and that in itself is something to celebrate.

If there's one thing I'm always saying as a PC gamer, it's "I really hope nobody takes a console-exclusive series I loved as a kid that's rarely if ever been replicated on the platform I now predominantly use as an adult and creates a modern homage to it." You know, like we said about Final Fantasy Tactics for years. More stuff like that formative thing I loved? No thank you!

That's basically the reaction Stardew Valley creator Eric Barone expected from Harvest Moon fans back in 2016 when he released his indie farm sim. Thank goodness he was wrong.

Eric "ConcernedApe" Barone sat down to chat with PC Gamer at last year's Game Developer's conference, nine years after Stardew Valley launched. Now Stardew Valley is celebrating its first decade—on February 26, specifically—and I still can't believe that Barone thought that farm sim players weren't going to like his farm sim.

"I still didn't think it was going to be super popular," Barone said of the lead up to launch. "I thought it would be maybe a niche game for Harvest Moon lovers—and I even thought a lot of them would probably hate it because they'd be like 'this isn't as good as my favorite Harvest Moon game' you know?"

We actually interviewed Barone back in March 2016, too, right as he was realizing Stardew Valley was on its way from "success" to "phenomenon." He basically said the same thing then: "I thought it would be popular with people who were fans of Harvest Moon or Rune Factory, and I thought that would pretty much be it."

I do understand Barone's suspicion that a farm sim on PC would be a bit niche. Before Stardew, people just weren't making them, not on PC anyhow. Harvest Moon had always been a console series, had recently gotten split into Harvest Moon and Story of Seasons brands, and the adults who wanted chill farm games were still rocking FarmVille on Facebook. (This is the part of the story that makes a decade feel like a lifetime ago.)

As someone who did love Harvest Moon as a kid—though admittedly my experience was with the single Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life game that I owned and not broadly across the series at that time—I loved Stardew Valley on day one. Well, close to day one. My Steam library informs me that I bought it on March 8, 2016. I loved it on day 11. Regardless, I was completely taken with Stardew as soon as I got my hands on it, as were so many others.

Stardew Valley re-popularized a style of life sim that I hadn't realized I'd been missing. I had fond memories of giving gifts to my prospective spouses and doing my daily chores in A Wonderful Life and had a real fascination with NPCs who had actual schedules I could learn and follow. Stardew Valley took the admittedly pretty slow pace of those old Harvest Moon games and kicked it up a bit with a bit more management-minded focus on profits and a greater spread of activities.

I can imagine a Harvest Moon fan being disappointed with a half-hearted attempt to mimic the qualities of an old favorite series. Lucky for us, and Barone, that's definitely not what Stardew Valley turned out to be.

In the decade since, Stardew's massive success has spawned a whole era of games like Stardew Valley cropping up, making old farm sim fans so spoiled for choice that the Harvest Moon and Story of Seasons series themselves both now have some PC releases. And Eric Barone got to meet and talk with Harvest Moon creator Yasuhiro Wada—and get his Super Nintendo copy of Harvest Moon signed. "It's one of my most cherished items," he told us last year.

If I was the developer behind one of the biggest games over the last 10 years—one arguably responsible for the huge surge in 'cosy gaming' and the return of the glorious farming sim—I'd probably reckon I was a bit of a hotshot.

Okay, I definitely wouldn't because I forever suffer from a severe case of imposter syndrome. But Stardew Valley creator Eric Barone doesn't seem to think he's all that of an advanced developer either. Something I found mighty interesting when reading through his interview with IGN for the game's 10-year anniversary is that he still very much thinks of himself as "a total amateur."

When talking about transitioning from solo development to working on the game with a team, Barone credits his fellow coworkers for their "unique sensibilities" and being able to do "so many things I couldn't have done on my own" like translating the game into multiple languages and introducing multiplayer.

"There's some technical things that are just beyond my skill level," he said. "I'm a very amateur developer. I still feel that way. I'm just a total amateur." When asked about why he feels that way, he said "I think it's because my approach to development is very scrappy. I've never really become super professional in the way I do things, but I think in a way it's part of what gives Stardew Valley—and hopefully Haunted Chocolatier—it's a, you might say indie soul, is that it's not too professional. There's a little bit of rough edges around it."

Personally, I really like Barone's thought process and approach here. Games with scrappy vibes are often some of my favourites—ones where you can really feel the heart even through any kind of visual or technical jank. Not that I'd say Stardew Valley is a particularly janky game, mind. But Barone seems keen to never become complacent.

"Also, my mindset is that I never think of myself as a master of anything," he continued. "Pixel art, I feel like I'm bad and I need to always get better. I feel that way about every aspect of the game. I'm not good enough. I need to improve.

"To me, that's a helpful mindset because that inspires me to always want to strive to improve and not just think, 'Yeah, I'm perfect. I don't need to do anything else.' It's like I always need to be working to improve and get better at every aspect of development."

I'd certainly disagree with Barone's assessment of his own skill level, especially as someone who's been playing the game for almost its entire existence. But hey, if it works, it works. Ultimately Stardew Valley is a game that's only gotten better with age and if that's down to Barone's constant push for improvement, then I'm a happy camper. Or farmer, I suppose.

Stardew Valley is basically the videogame equivalent of Star Wars at this point—even if you've never seen a single movie, you probably still know who Darth Vader is. You'd think being an all-encompassing phenomenon would mean that every stone had been turned and every secret discovered.

Well, nope. As Barone tells IGN in a recent interview celebrating the farming sim's 10-year anniversary, mysteries still lie dormant in Pelican Town. "There's still a secret that no one has ever found. I don't think they ever will," he said. How very tantalising.

"Maybe I'll reveal it someday," Barone continued. "But the problem with the secret is that it's … it's basically a secret message that's in the game and it reveals something that actually isn't even true anymore."

Of course Barone is too darn tight-lipped and has too much self-control to spill what it is. "It was revealing a thing about– Do I want to reveal it or not? Well, that's all I'll say. It was a secret message that was basically announcing something that I actually shifted gears and that thing wasn't even true anymore, but it's still in the game. I just don't know if anyone will ever discover it because it's so obscure."

Dang. So close to spilling the beans, and yet. As to how nobody's managed to discover it even with years of datamining and fans picking out even the tiniest of details from their thousands of hours playing, Barone says it's because it's a secret that can't be uncovered through sifting through the game's code.

"There's certain ways to hide messages that can't really be datamined," he said. "If you hide something in the code, it's going to all be found because people decompile the code and look at everything. If you, say, hide it in the art or something—if it's a secret message that's hidden in the artwork somehow—then people can't really discover that as easily. They have to see it."

Is this going to inspire an influx of players combing through every texture in the game to try and figure out just what the hell Barone is talking about? Maybe. It certainly won't be me, but I'm sure there are some truly dedicated people out there willing to find out exactly what the message said. "I feel like no one will ever find it," Barone teases. "But I hope someone does. It'd be interesting."

I do not envy Eric Barone. Stardew Valley remains massively popular even a decade down the line, and is easily one of the biggest catalysts in the cosy gaming craze and the renaissance of the farming simulator. That kind of reputation is bound to put some heavy expectations on his next project, Haunted Chocolatier, from both fans and Barone himself.

With all the excitement and anticipation of his work in a shiny new setting, it's no surprise that folks just want to know when the darn thing is coming out. That's not something we know yet, though Barone does pop in with the occasional reminder that yes, Haunted Chocolatier is still happening, but when he wants it to happen. Not when we want it to happen. Which, if it was up to us, it probably already would have.

For how things are coming along now, Barone told IGN in a recent interview that headway is certainly being made, though perhaps not at the pace he initially anticipated. "The progress isn't as fast as I would like. Nothing is ever as fast as I would like," he said. "The main important thing about Haunted Chocolatier is I'm not going to release anything that I'm not happy with. If I don't think it's a great game, I'm not going to release it. So even if that takes years and years, so be it. That's just what I want to do."

Honestly, I respect it. It can't be easy trying to perfect your next creation in the sea of hungry farmers-turned-wannabe-chocolatiers. "Fortunately, I don't feel like there's any real pressure," he continued. "I haven't received funding from anyone or crowdfunding. There's not going to be any pre-orders."

That makes it much easier, it seems, to take things slower. "I don't actually owe anyone the game," Barone said. "It's like when I want to do it and when I want to release it, it'll get done." He does say that announcing the game has created some pressure since he doesn't "want to disappoint the fans by taking too long," but as he says: "there's no real physical obligation with it. It's more just mental constructs, you might say."

The bulk of the pressure seems to come from Stardew Valley's success more than anything. "It's been a huge struggle for me actually," Barone said when asked if the farming sim's fame makes it harder to know when Haunted Chocolatier is ready to go. "See, what I want to do is just not care and just make the game however, just whatever, not worry about it. But it's basically impossible because I can't help but think about how this will be received."

Barone continues that the push-and-pull of wanting to make a game he likes but also a game everyone else likes is a difficult balancing act. "I want to just make the game I want to make, but I also don't want a bunch of people to not like the game because they were expecting a certain thing. That's not going to feel good. I know that."

A truly blursed position to be in, if you ask me. Either way, there's still no sign of how close Haunted Chocolatier is to completion. And you know what? That's okay. Barone is still hard at work alongside his team to continue bringing delightfully dense updates to Stardew Valley that will no doubt keep us all fed and watered until we're ready to experience spookier, more chocolatey pastures.

Stardew Valley's 1.7 patch is going to be much bigger than anyone probably expects, and that's accounting for the fact that most Stardew Valley patches end up being bigger than anyone expects. In a new interview with IGN, creator Eric Barone listed a handful of features coming in the update, and one of them answers an oft-made demand from Stardew Valley die-hards: make kids interesting.

Stardew Valley kids—ie, the children you raise yourself, not the diminutive NPCs roaming around town—are very boring. They just walk around your house and don't do much else. They don't grow, and they have few demands. They're quite unlike real children.

"What I will say without maybe being too specific is that with this update, one of the things we're trying to do is... Well, there is a popular fan request, which has to do with the children, trying to make the children a little more interesting," Barone said. "So I'm trying to do something with that, but there's a lot of other things in the update as well that no one's really asked for, but I think people will appreciate it."

Another confirmed new feature is two new marriage candidates. (Krobus, anyone?) Barone also talked about the potential for a farm map editor "so you could basically make your own," though he's unsure yet whether it'll actually materialise in 1.7.

"Because with every update, it's traditional to add a new farm type," Barone said. "When the game first came out, there was just standard farm, that was it. And then 1.1, I added four different farms or something. And then with every update, there's been one added. What if we opened this up to the community and it was like now you could press an extra button, go into a browser and look at everyone's farm creation? That now adds almost infinite replayability to Stardew Valley. So I'm interested in ways to make the game more just infinitely replayable without the use of AI. That's never going to happen."

As Andy Chalk reported back in December, Barone has already vaguely confirmed "some more character/social stuff" and that "it's also traditional to add a new farm type". But as always, the full scale of 1.7 won't be clear until just before launch.

Stardew Valley debuted 10 years ago this month, but creator Eric Barone is still hammering away on it. He's also working on a whole new game called Haunted Chocolatier. It's a lot for one guy, and so you might reasonably think that there's not much room in there for thoughts of a full-on Stardew Valley sequel. But maybe there is.

"I would love to [make Stardew Valley 2] because it would just 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, when I started working with Stardew Valley," Barone said in a wide-ranging interview with IGN. "There's something fun about the number of possibilities in a whole new world, which I think would be fun for me. It'd be fun for my team. We'd be really excited about it."

Barone said one concern he has about a potential sequel is that Stardew Valley fans are really attached to Pelican Town and its villagers: "I do fear a little bit that if it's a whole new cast of characters, people might feel put off by that." Another possible approach would be to use the same cast in a new adventure, he continued, although that approach would leave him "stuck with the same thing," presumably meaning that fans would miss the familiar confines of Pelican Town. "I'd have to think about that one," Barone said.

In fact, Stardew Valley 2 almost became a real thing at one point: Barone said he was starting to work on it, but "for various reasons" opted to go with Haunted Chocolatier instead. "Haunted Chocolatier you could say is like the Stardew Valley 2, but it's a bit different of a game, so we'll see."

And it might actually happen. Barone said in 2025, for instance, that he "might eventually make a Stardew Valley 2," although he also said that "it's so much easier to just add more stuff to Stardew Valley than to make a whole new game from scratch."

One of the things that could open the door to an all-new Stardew Valley is that while Barone is one of the most famous solo game developers of all time (possibly the most famous), he's not "just one guy" anymore: He put a team together to help with development back in 2018, and "it's been really great," he told in IGN. "They do great work. They add their own unique sensibilities and ideas to the melting pot of Stardew Valley. There's just so many things that I couldn't have done on my own."

For the immediate future, though, I think it's safe to say that Barone's hands are full, even with the support of a team. He's still working on Haunted Chocolatier, which he recently confirmed is still in development and 100% going to happen, and he's also got the Stardew Valley 1.7 update on the go, which is looking like another big one.

Good news: Eric Barone says in his latest Haunted Chocolatier update that he's "been very productive lately" on the game. Bad news: Release date? Haha, no.

Okay, it's not really "bad news" in the way of all the actual bad news out there, and I'm not sure it even counts as mildly disappointing: Barone's been very up-front about taking his time with Haunted Chocolatier, and also that he remains deeply invested in Stardew Valley, the monstrously successful farm-life sim that's still drawing huge player numbers a decade after release.

There's not much said about the status of Haunted Chocolatier in this update, except that Barone is "still working like always," but he does "debunk a few myths and false assumptions" he's seen floating around: Haunted Chocolatier will not be abandoned and incorporated into Stardew Valley, he is not using Stardew Valley updates to test ideas for Haunted Chocolatier, he's not still futzing around with Stardew Valley because he's burned out on Haunted Chocolatier, and no, he did not say that Haunted Chocolatier won't be out until 2030.

"I was asked in 2025 if it would come out within the next five years, and I said 'I hope so'," Barone wrote. "This is very different than saying 'it’s coming out in 2030.' The bottom line is, I don’t want to give a release date. The game will come out when it’s done."

What I find most interesting in the post, though, is a little throwaway line leading up to all that. After acknowledging that "it's taking a while to finish" Haunted Chocolatier, Barone writes, "I know, I know, I shouldn’t have announced the game so early. But I had my reasons."

And then he proceeds to say nothing further on the matter. I get that it's maybe not my business but I'm also naturally curious (and actually, it kind of is my business, in a very literal sense), and since he's the one who put it out there in the first place, I'm just going to say it: Tell us the reasons, Eric!

I'm not going to hold my breath on that, and I'm also not going to hold my breath on Haunted Chocolatier. Which is fine: As Barone concluded, "the only thing that really matters is that I keep making progress on the game and release it," and that will happen when it's ready.

Alongside Haunted Chocolatier, Barone is also working on Stardew Valley's 1.7 update. That's looking like it might be another big one, but he's trying to be less hands-on with it than he has with past updates. Alas, there's still no release date on that yet, either.

Eric Barone, the developer behind all-time great farming sim Stardew Valley, has had his head down working on the upcoming Haunted Chocolatier since it was announced in 2021. But he's also flirted with a bit of gaming-minded philanthropy, publicly musing about whether he'd save the Minecraft-like Hytale before it was sold back to its original owners; and today, the open-source C# framework MonoGame announced it received a sizable donation from Barone that kicks off a long-term relationship.

MonoGame announced in a post on X that Barone "has made a very generous initial donation of $125,000 and an ongoing monthly commitment to the project. This extraordinary show of support, alongside ongoing contributions from other studios and individuals, helps ensure MonoGame continues to be the open-source C# framework that game developers of all sizes can rely on."

While Stardew Valley wasn't initially built using MonoGame—it switched to the framework from XNA in 2021—it has been used to make all sorts of indie hits. You can find a list of games that utilize the framework on its website, ranging from reverse-horror game Carrion to Celeste to cutesy RTS Tooth and Tail.

I can't speak to the specific advantages offered by XNA or derivatives like MonoGame as I am no programmer, but it seems like a net positive for prospective game developers to have open-source options like this win the support of figures like Barone. It reminds me a bit of when the Terraria dev dunked on Unity by donating to open-source game engines Godot and FNA.

It looks like Stardew Valley creator Eric Barone may be getting up to his old shenanigans again, and by 'old shenanigans' I mean turning a small, just one more thing update into a big, beefy add-on. Barone said shortly after confirming the Stardew Valley 1.7 update is on the way that "it’s hard to just stop improving it when there are still things that can be improved," but in a more recent post he pretty strongly implied that there's a lot more in the pipe than just improvements.

"There will be some more character/social stuff, it's also traditional to add a new farm type," Barone wrote in response to a user who asked for a hint about the update. "Lots more but I don't want to reveal much yet."

Keeping his cards close to the vest is Barone's way: We didn't get the full skinny on the 1.6 update until it went live in March 2024, although Barone did have fun winding everyone up with "one patch note per day" teases. You can get away with that sort of thing when you've made what is basically the most popular indie videogame in the history of humanity.

The irony here is that Barone said just a few months ago that he doesn't want "too much hype" for Stardew Valley 1.7, which is a bit like telling the entire world to guard the History Eraser Button: The post confirming the existence of the update has drawn more than 164,000 likes on X since it went up at the end of August, after all.

Of course, gamers eager for Barone's next game, Haunted Chocolatier, may be a little less than hype about the whole thing. After mashing the brakes on that one so he could focus on the Stardew 1.6 update, Barone committed to finishing Haunted Chocolatier before doing any more work on Stardew. Four months later, that'd softened to a compromise position: Yes, the new Stardew update will probably slow down work on Chocolatier, "but not as much as you might think" because Barone is trying to be less directly hands-on with it. Will that work out? We'll see how things are going in December 2026.

Eric "ConcernedApe" Barone can't help himself. The long and glorious journey of Stardew Valley development was supposed to be capped off with the major 1.6 update, which in Barone's words this April left the game in "a good place"—so good he wouldn't be "working on Stardew Valley until I'm done with Haunted Chocolatier."

But then in August our green-fingered hero announced he was going back… for one (point seven) last job.

Barone managed to keep away for four whole months, before speaking at a live concert of Stardew Valley music and blurting out that 1.7 was gonna happen. "Okay, I revealed this at the concert last night and now the cat's out of the bag," Barone followed-up on X. "So I will confirm for everyone: There will be a Stardew Valley 1.7 update. No release date, no estimate. But it's happening."

Our man then answered the question most would want asked: Yes, it will slow down work on his next game Haunted Chocolatier, "but not as much as you might think."

That's because, surprise surprise, such a massive hit now has a team working alongside Barone to maintain it: even if this bucolic Willy Wonka "need[s] my hand to touch every piece of new content," he's still spending plenty of time in the (haunted) chocolate factory.

Stardew Valley does seem like one of those games that, for whatever reason, just appeals across generations. I loved it way back when I first played it, which would be almost a decade ago now, and was delighted when it was the first game my eldest kid really clicked with: and fascinated by how differently she played the game to me, and how it accommodated and rewarded that different approach. Perhaps that's why it is, from the horse's mouth, "still so popular (in fact, still growing) that it's hard to just stop improving it."

In a new response to a fan request for a "sneak peek" Barone says "More will come. I just don't want too much hype at this point. It's going to be a while before the update is ready." The only other thing Barone added to this was an assurance they'd try to avoid the six-month gap between the PC and console release of 1.6: "I will do my best to minimize the delay between the two so as not to have the same problem as last update."

Avoiding the hype is impossible: too many people love Stardew Valley, to the extent that Barone and co. could probably push a 1.7 update that added a new vegetable, and we'd all go bananas. But then it is, by the most objective metric on the planet, the ninth-best game ever made.

In an interview with PC Gamer earlier this year, Eric Barone, beloved creator of Stardew Valley, mused that he might need to go hole up in a cabin in the woods to be able to fully focus on making his next game, Haunted Chocolatier. Considering he's recently announced that Stardew Valley will be getting a 1.7 update and apparently done a little moonlighting as a bug, I think he might've been onto something.

I checked Silksong's credits today to see how many folks contributed to the long-awaited metroidvania outside Team Cherry's core trio, and there's Barone, right alongside several members of designer William Pellen's family. Considering Stardew Valley and Hollow Knight released within a year of each other and both went on to become some of the most successful indie games of all time, I'm not too surprised to see they travel in the same circles.

Or at least they're friendly enough that when Team Cherry was in need of "additional character voices" for Silksong's new cast of characters, Barone got the call. Or perhaps Barone is such a massive Hollow Knight fan that he begged to go bug mode for the sequel?

If you harbor any doubt that it's the Barone, The Verge confirmed with the Stardew team that Eric did indeed lend his voice to the Nintendo-esque little barks and mumbles of one of denizens of the kingdom of Parloom. Which one, though? That he's keeping secret.

I'm now going to be scrutinizing every scrap of voice acting in the game wondering which Barone might be playing. Team Cherry recently posted artwork of (I assume just a small portion) of Silksong's NPCs; if Barone voices one of the below, do you think you could guess just by looking at them?

Given the voice acting in Silksong doesn't involve recording actual dialogue, it of course wasn't actually a meaningful distraction from Barone working on Haunted Chocolatier. And given Silksong's lengthy development, who knows how long ago he submitted his lines?

I am now chuckling at the possibility of Barone unexpectedly finding his true calling as an actor after making a bunch of hrmms and bapanadas into a Blue Yeti. Next thing you know he actually will be putting his next game aside to pursue a Broadway career, an album deal, an Oscar-winning voice role in an animated movie—if you want that EGOT you have to start going for it while you're still young!

Stardew Valley creator Eric Barone, who said in April that he's "committed to not working on Stardew Valley until I'm done with Haunted Chocolatier," announced last week that he's working on Stardew Valley again. Well, hey, these things happen. But the good news (aside from more Stardew Valley) is that while Haunted Chocolatier might take a little longer to arrive as a result of the ongoing Stardew efforts, it probably (maybe) won't make a huge difference.

"Maybe a little," Barone said about the possibility of Haunted Chocolatier being pushed back because of this new Stardew Valley update. "But not as much as you might think."

The reason, Barone explained, is that he has a team helping with the Stardew Valley updates—something that's been the case since the 1.3 update, which debuted on PC back in 2018—and he's "trying to take more of a 'creative director' role" on this update than he has in the past, when he was "fully, personally locked-in on content development the whole time."

That means Barone can stay mostly focused on Haunted Chocolatier, although he acknowledged that at some point he'll have to turn a little more of his attention to Stardew Valley.

"In order for me to maintain a full connection to the game, I need my hand to touch every piece of new content," Barone wrote. "And there are some aspects of content development which I insist on doing myself, like the music. But with our 'no release date' approach to the 1.7 update, it’s not certain when that time will come. It might even be after Haunted Chocolatier comes out."

But it might not be, too: Presumably anticipating the inevitability of Haunted hype, he double-hedged against committing to anything specific, writing, "no guarantees though," immediately followed by "also, any of this may change in the future."

As he has in the past, Barone said the persistent popularity of Stardew Valley makes it difficult for him to let it go when there are still ways he could make it better. "The reality of my life is that I have a very popular first game that I still want to take care of, which means that my second game might take a little longer. It is what it is," he wrote.

"I didn’t have to make a 1.7 update for Stardew Valley, but the game is still so popular (in fact, still growing), that it’s hard to just stop improving it when there are still things that can be improved. But I hope the approach I am taking for Stardew Valley 1.7 will help keep Haunted Chocolatier on track."

Barone also took a minute to throw props to his Stardew Valley team, saying "they are awesome, all very talented, hard-working, and contribute unique things to the development process." But, he added, "I am still working completely solo on Haunted Chocolatier without any plans to change that for the time being."

I sympathize with Barone to an extent: It's hard to quit a thing you love, and doubly so, I'm sure, when that love is shared by people around the world. The good news for him is that Stardew fans are surely used to this by now (Barone's been saying 'never say never' for a while now), and as eager as they are for Haunted Chocolatier, I don't think anyone's going to be leaning on him too hard to get it on with it.

"I'm committed to not working on Stardew Valley until I'm done with Haunted Chocolatier," Eric 'ConcernedApe' Barone told us earlier this year. And that commitment lasted all of four months, I guess.

At one of the recent Stardew Valley Symphony of Seasons live concerts, Barone addressed the audience to say that after the 1.6 update he wasn't sure if he'd ever do another, but more recently he'd changed his mind. "I wanted to share something with you tonight, it's kind of a secret," he continued. "There's going to be another update."

It was not a secret for long, and Barone confirmed on Twitter that 1.7 is definitely coming. "Okay, I revealed this at the concert last night and now the cat's out of the bag," he wrote, "so I will confirm for everyone: There will be a Stardew Valley 1.7 update. No release date, no estimate. But it's happening".

Of course Haunted Chocolatier is still happening too, though. In the replies, Barone commented, "My plan is that this will not hinder Haunted Chocolatier development".

We don't know a huge amount about Barone's next game, but we do know that Haunted Chocolatier will include the obvious chocolate-making and shop-simming, as well as archery, boss fights, books, and a larger world than Stardew Valley. And of course, there will be fishing. If Stardew Valley is anything to go by, it'll probably be well-supported after release as well.

Haunted Chocolatier is the eagerly-awaited next outing from Stardew Valley creator Eric "ConcernedApe" Barone, which you could probably tell from a quick glance. While there's a strong resemblance with the beloved farm life sim, Haunted Chocolatier's ditching the farm business for sweeter pastures: It's chocolate shop sim time. Also, there are ghosts.

Barone revealed Haunted Chocolatier with a surprise announcement back in 2021. While the unveiling immediately sent the frothing masses of Stardew fans into a frenzy of excitement, Barone quickly retreated back behind the curtain to work on the life sim in secret. Can't blame him, really. Frothing masses can be a lot. Still, we've gotten a few brief glimpses at what to expect from the Stardew successor. Here's everything we know about Haunted Chocolatier.

Is there a Haunted Chocolatier release date? 

Unfortunately, no, we don't have an expected release date or even an expected release year for Haunted Chocolatier yet. If you've somehow heard "2030" from somewhere, Barone reminded us all in one of his Haunted Chocolatier blog posts that this is a misunderstanding from him answering "I hope so" when asked if Haunted Chocolatier will come out within the next five years. But hey, at least Barone is working on Haunted Chocolatier five days a week now.

If you're looking for anything more solid than than, then sorry, all Barone adds to the release date topic is: "I'm not going to release anything that I'm not happy with. If I don't think it's a great game, I'm not going to release it. So even if that takes years and years, so be it. That's just what I want to do."

In the same post linked above, Barone also addressed some negative fan speculations about Haunted Chocolatier. Such as it was going to be canceled and just added to Stardew Valley. While Barone shot this down, there's so denying that the looming shadow of Stardew Valley is never far behind.

Not long after announcing that 1.6 would be the last update the farming sim would get... Barone revealed that there will actually be a 1.7 update for Stardew Valley. When asked if this would slow down development of Haunted Chocolatier, Barone responded with "maybe a little. But not as much as you might think."

This is due to Stardew Valley having a team that works on it now—it's not a solo project for Barone anymore. Instead, he's trying to take on more of a "creative director role".

The latest Haunted Chocolatier trailer

The first trailer for Haunted Chocolatier looks incredibly similar to Stardew Valley in terms of environment and character design, but instead of tending to a farm you're decorating a shop and crafting sugary treats instead of animal products. The trailer also shows off a pretty detailed look at combat with new gear like shields and bows, and how that plays into collecting resources to make your chocolate. We're also seen some interactions with a few of the townsfolk, who ConcernedApe has confirmed you'll be able to pursue romance with.

Since the gameplay trailer, our only updates have come from the occasional surprise reveal of new Haunted Chocolatier screenshots shared by ConcernedApe (which you can check out further down.) Once again, these are pretty limited in what they reveal about the game, but they have still fuelled the anticipation toward the eventual release.

Haunted Chocolatier gameplay

So what kind of game is Haunted Chocolatier?

Instead of a farming simulation, Chocolatier is a shop sim where you'll be creating chocolate and selling it in your store. Like Stardew, Chocolatier has a local town full of stores and NPCs with their own stories that you'll get to know as you grow your shop.

"I’m not sure how best to describe it," Barone said in his announcement blog post, "but at its core, the gameplay loop involves gathering ingredients, making chocolate, and running a chocolate shop."

One thing that Barone has gone a little deeper on is the combat, which he says is a greater focus in his next game. Chocolatier will have shields, which you can use to block attacks and stun enemies as a result. Barone says there will be other off-hand items as alternatives to shields to complement different play styles.

The reveal trailer also showed a player using a bow and arrow. Neat!

We haven't gotten much explanation on exactly how running your chocolate shop works, but there are some snippets to catch in the reveal trailer. You can spot a player choosing from different countertop styles, setting out different types of chocolate on the counters in their shop, and a crowd of characters walking around the shop while it's open as your ghost friends carry chocolate over their heads.

There will be romance

Barone also mentioned in an interview with VGKami that Chocolatier will have romantic relationships again. "There will be relationships like in Stardew Valley. I haven’t decided exactly how the system will work, yet. And I expect to approach some things differently this time around."

Haunted Chocolatier will have boss fights

Casually revealed in a livestream back in April 2022, Haunted Chocolatier will, evidently, feature boss fights in its combat. Surprise! Barone joined the composing software developers at Reason Studios to talk about the soundtrack process for Stardew Valley. Along the way, Barone debuted a track for a bossfight in Haunted Chocolatier—no, we didn't know there were any.

The track in question, judging from the title "beeboss," indicates that there'll be a boss fight against a bee enemy. Probably encountered while gathering honey. For chocolate. Barone also revealed some of the game's general background music, with a more somber track called Pristine Snow.

Haunted Chocolatier will be bigger than Stardew Valley

A post made by Barone on X confirmed that the world of Haunted Chocolatier will be larger than Stardew Valley. I wish I could expand on that for you, but that's all Barone tweeted out. No accompanying screenshots, videos, or details. Just a "The world of Haunted Chocolatier is larger than Stardew Valley," then a tweet drought.

Although, what we can work out from this is that yes, Haunted Chocolatie will take place across a pretty substantial area, as Stardew Valley's world is already quite big. We can also surmise that some of this land mass might be made up by the different realms you traverse to gather chocolate ingredients.

Haunted Chocolatier screenshots

Earning a response like it was a rare gift from a benevolent but distant god, after months without sign or symbol of Haunted Chocolatier, Barone descended to Twitter in September 2023 to bestow a blessing on this weary world. By which I mean he uploaded a Haunted Chocolatier screenshot, followed by four more in early October. Here they are:

While there are no hauntings or chocolates pictured, the old man bears a strong resemblance to the player's Grandpa in Stardew Valley, as do the later screenshots of the countryside. This has ignited theories about a connection between the two games. A sequel? A prequel? A sidequel? An AU? We'll have to wait and see.

As you might expect, the first screenshot also generated discussion about Barone's infrequent development updates. Responding in a Tweet, Barone said "there's plenty more that I haven't revealed, I just like to work in secret mainly."

But wait, there's more

After having a go at "Gamer journalists," on X for writing "an article every time i tweet", ConcernedApe (Barone) then posted a very autumnal screenshot of Haunted Chocolatier, forcing gamer journalists to write an article about one of his tweets. How could ConcernedApe do this?

In all seriousness, the screenshot does look pretty beautiful. And after a fan asked about the status of fishing below the picture, Barone confirmed that you can fish in Haunted Chocolatier. Something that'll either thrill, or despair, Stardew Valley players. (Fishing is hard, y'all.)

Haunted Chocolatier characters

You can check out our dedicated Haunted Chocolatier characters page for even more details and speculation. But at a glance, here's all of the cast of characters in Haunted Chocolatier that we know about so far:

• Lily - She lives in a neon, plant-filled home, and as seen within the reveal trailer, sends you an invitation of some sort. Ooo, mysterious.
• Burk - He appears to be a blacksmith, as he runs a forge and shop that sells weapons.
• Maddie - A dark-haired villager who remains a bit of a mystery for now.
• Jett - Works in a research lab for Dr. Tungsten.
• Dr. Tungsten - A spikey grey-haired doctor who works in a lab.
• Nigel - A local bartender in what looks like an underground bar.
• An unnamed old man - Only referred to as '???' so far, all we know is that this old man tells you about a "terrbile dream" he had.

More Haunted Chocolatier info

Will Haunted Chocolatier have mods?

Barone hasn't specifically mentioned modding support or tools for Haunted Chocolatier yet, but I think it's a very safe bet to assume there will be mods for Chocolatier regardless. Barone was supportive of modders during his years of Stardew Valley updates, and the same will likely be true with Chocolatier. Given just how many Stardew Valley mods exist, fans of Barone's second game will likely be just as keen to start adding their own custom pieces.

Is Haunted Chocolatier co-op?

Nope, Haunted Chocolatier is going to be singleplayer only. With Stardew Valley, multiplayer was added as a major game update after launch. Barone isn't planning to do the same thing this time around. As with Stardew's early days though, it's possible that modders will find a way to add multiplayer even without official support.

Haunted Chocolatier won't use AI

Although there were never any real concerns that it would implement AI in the first place, Baron has assured us that he "wouldn't ever want to use AI for any sort of creative thing," because his goal is to express himself in a creative way. "Why would I let AI do that for me?"

So me can all look at those screenshots for the 1000th time secure in the knowledge that not a lick of AI went into producing them. Lovely.

Every couple of weeks my daughter asks if Haunted Chocolatier is out yet. I always have to say no, but at least next time I'll be able to confirm that Haunted Chocolatier will have fishing, and also show her a new screenshot, which is embedded above.

Eric "ConcernedApe" Barone shared the image today and it's lovely. The detail in the pixel art, especially on the surface of that homely looking tree house, is gorgeous. As for fishing, the revelation came after a fan, perhaps noticing water in the above screenshot, asked for a "status report on a fishing mechanic". To which Barone replied "there is fishing".

This is good news for people who like to fish in games, but be careful what you wish for: Stardew Valley's fishing minigame has attracted a lot of hate, even though it's just a fishing minigame. In a recent interview, Barone expressed regret about how it "starts out too hard", so perhaps Haunted Chocolatier's fishing will be much better.

Barone is happily working away on Haunted Chocolatier, which doesn't have a release date yet. Barone recently tweeted that whenever "I'm about to write a whole essay on Twitter, on the nature of good and evil or some other self indulgent philosophy slop, I'll just add a new book to Haunted Chocolatier's library instead. It's a win win". So there you have it: books confirmed too! And wouldn't it be nice if we could all deposit our philosophical musings onto pages, whether real or virtual, instead of the brainrot feeds.

Whereas Stardew Valley was about "the fundamentals of human sustenance", Haunted Chocolatier is about "what's next". Barone said in April that he's now fully focused on his in-development game now that Stardew Valley 1.6 is out, but we've heard that before.

We learned earlier today that Stardew Valley and Infinity Nikki are teaming up for a collaboration of some sort that's set to land on September 1—a crossover that PC Gamer's Infinity Nikki superfan Mollie Taylor as "surprising," because "Stardew Valley doesn't do this sort of thing very often."

A little while later, Stardew Valley creator Eric Barone took to X to say that while such crossovers are a relative rarity, it's something he likes to do now and then—but not for the money.

"There have been a few collaborations between Stardew Valley and other games over the years," Barone wrote. "To be clear, I never receive any money from these collabs. I've only done them because I was a fan of the other games, or because I genuinely thought the players would like it."

Barone also said that all his past collaborations, like the addition of Stardew Valley card backs to Balatro in 2024, have been one-way affairs, with a single exception: The "legendary indie game" Terraria, which—as Mollie noted—hooked up with Stardew Valley for a collaboration in 2022.

"It was great," Barone said in reply to one of his followers. "I love Terraria."

Responding to others who said he should take the collab cashola and not feel bad about it, Barone said bluntly that he's "made enough from sales of [Stardew Valley]," and isn't after more: "I wouldn't want to make money from a collaboration."

Under just about any other circumstances, I would be screaming—psychically, at least—I don't buy it from the bottom of my cold, cynical heart. But nobody does wholesome quite like Eric Barone, and if he says he doesn't want any more money, well, okay. (And with Stardew Valley now standing at north of 35 million copies sold, I will also buy that Barone doesn't really need any bonus collab cash.)

And yes, Barone also gave a nod to his next game, Haunted Chocolatier, which he recently said he's now fully committed to after years of being sidetracked by Stardew. "Working on it," he wrote. "I'm glad you're looking forward to it. And I will be VERY happy to share it with everyone when it's finished."

There's been a lot of talk about resurrecting Hytale since Riot cancelled development of the Minecraft-inspired sandbox RPG last week. Most of it is originating from original Hypixel Studios founder Simon Collins-Laflamme, who recently committed to reaching out to Riot to see what can be done. But there's an unexpected name in the conversation, too: Stardew Valley creator Eric Barone.

Barone's interest in Hytale came to light through a Discord message, shared on X by YouTuber Myne. "Possibly," Barone wrote in response to a user who enquired about his interest (and suggested Barone could make some money from it). "But I would have to hear more about what the plan is, why it failed initially (behind the scenes), etc."

It's a smart position to take. Hytale seemed to be progressing well even before it gained access to Riot's nigh-limitless resources, yet five years down the road it all came to naught, and the likelihood of that situation changing in the workable future was so remote that Riot opted to take a bath on the whole thing rather than pour more money into it. Asking how that happened, and how developers will turn the ship around in some hypothetical 'Hytale lives again' future, is just common sense.

These early days of efforts to 'Save Hytale' are no time to splash the cold waters of reality on your face, of course, and Barone's statement drew eyeballs and excitement. One or two die-hards even dared dream of some kind of Hulk Hogan/Mr T-style tag team-up between Barone and Collins-Laflamme.

For myself, though, a more pressing question leapt to mind: Did Barone actually say that? Yes he did, as it turns out, although he clarified in an email sent to PC Gamer that he was only responding to a question, not making any sort of public pronouncement. He also suggested, gently as is his way, that people expecting him to ride in and save the day should probably rein it in a bit.

"I'm not actively doing anything to make this happen," Barone said. "If something were presented to me, I would be open to entertaining the idea, that's all.

"It's not something I am thinking about too much, since I'm focused on working on my next game."

So Barone might be interested in helping out with the Hytale situation, but he is definitely working on Haunted Chocolatier, the game he's been on-and-off ignoring for years because he was also still working on Stardew Valley. He's gotten more serious about Haunted Chocolatier in recent months, though: In April he mused about going out to a cabin in the woods and cutting himself off from the world for two years until it's finished.

Given all that, It doesn't seem too likely to me that Barone will involve himself in Hytale—the man's hands are full enough as it is with games he's genuinely passionate about. That may be a little disappointing—a Hytale happy ending written by the man behind Stardew Valley would be pretty cool—but it's okay too, for two reasons: One, because Collins-Laflamme is serious about getting involved in the Hytale situation, and more importantly is taking concrete steps toward making it happen; and two, because it means Barone is actually seriously working on Haunted Chocolatier, and we might really get to play it someday.

Every time any updates on Haunted Chocolatier drop I feel like I spend hours dissecting exactly what they mean. After all, when you're so desperate for a game to release and there's no sign of launch on the horizon, you'll do what you can to get your fix. But when creator Eric Barone decides to throw out an update on the game in a random Tweet consisting of ten words, there's only so much you can get out of it.

Thanks to a post made to X by Barone, it has been confirmed that the world of Haunted Chocolatier will be larger than Stardew Valley. But instead of drumming up more excitement by sharing any additional screenshots or videos to support this statement, that's literally all we've been given. It does make me think that what we have seen from Haunted Chocolatier so far is a mere fraction of what's to come, though. Especially since most of the screenshots we have seem to be from the same snowy location.

Stardew Valley is by no means a small map either. When you take the Desert, as well as Ginger Island into account there is plenty of world to make your way around. When I started playing back when it launched, it took me an almost unreasonable amount of hours to memorise the map, which doesn't fill me with a huge amount of hope if Haunted Chocolatier is significantly larger.

From what we do already know, outside of its town—which seems to serve as a central hub—Haunted Chocolatier will have multiple realms you can visit to farm for chocolate ingredients. So I guess it's not too surprising that the map will be larger than what we're used to. I'm desperate to see what exactly these different locations have in store, especially since each one we've seen is home to a new enemy we'll have to inevitably defeat. But I don't doubt I'll be left wondering for some time before I get to see them.

With that said, even though Barone has shared that Haunted Chocolatier still won't be released for a while, it does sound like development is making pretty massive strides. A finished map could mean we are closer to at least another trailer or some more screenshots. Maybe I'm too optimistic for my own good though. I just know I really want to make some chocolate and I don't care how many miles I have to walk to do so.

Stardew Valley creator Eric Barone, who's presently considering hiding away in a cabin to finish his long awaited next game, Haunted Chocolatier, says he might one day get around to making a sequel to the farming life sim that made him famous.

Stardew Valley 2 could "eventually" happen, Barone told comedian Bobby Lee on a recent episode of the TigerBelly podcast (via GamesRadar).

The topic comes up at around 43 minutes into the episode, after Lee asks Barone why he keeps adding free updates to Stardew Valley rather than making Stardew Valley 2.

"It's so much easier to just add more stuff to Stardew Valley than to make a whole new game from scratch," Barone said. "Because Stardew Valley, all the systems, the major systems, are already all done. That's the stuff that's not fun to do. When I make an update, it's like, throw in this, throw in that, let's add green rain. These random ideas I have, whimsical ideas.

"Because I'll play Stardew Valley myself, and when I'm playing, I'm like, 'Oh, wouldn't it be cool if there was this or that?' And then I can just do it, and that's a new update. It's really just fun and creative and spontaneous to do it that way."

Pressed to consider how much money a Stardew Valley sequel could make, Barone said that it could happen, but not because he wants to get richer.

"I might eventually make a Stardew Valley 2, to be honest," he said, adding after a follow-up question about why he doesn't charge for Stardew Valley updates, "I just don't care about money that much to be honest."

Responding to friendly mock applause from the podcasters, Barone added, "Alright, I'm not trying to virtue signal. But I honestly don't care about money that much. It's never been the driving, motivating factor. What I care about is people loving the game."

Barone doesn't strike me as the type to have blown his Stardew Valley fortune on yachts, so it helps that affording necessities is unlikely to be a concern of his for the foreseeable future. But another reason he hasn't made a sequel, he says, is that he doesn't want to "just be the Stardew Valley guy," which is why he's working on Haunted Chocolatier.

At GDC earlier this year, Barone told PC Gamer that he's now fully focused on the candy-themed life sim.

"I think at some point I'm going to have to completely cut off everything else," Barone said. "Honestly, I've thought about, maybe I should just go into a cabin in the woods and completely get off the internet, and just say, 'Okay guys, I'll see you in two years. You won't hear from me at all and I'm going to finish this game.'"

PC Gamer's Wes Fenlon recently sat down with Stardew Valley creator Eric Barone to discuss everything from Jojamart to his next game, Haunted Chocolatier. One question was what Barone himself is playing, and the man is as old school as it comes.

"Well recently I've been playing chess which is a great game," says Barone. "It's one of the original games, it's very deep, it's a really good game in terms of game design. It is unfortunate that AI has kind of broken it in a way.

"I was kind of depressed about that for a bit, but now I'm over it and I feel like who cares? I'm not interested in AI playing chess, I'm interested in humans playing chess. But I'm not like a huge chess guy, it's just always been something that I've wanted to be decent at. So I've been doing that lately."

Barone goes on to discuss a few other games, which we'll circle back to because he later returns to chess, prompted by Elon Musk's rather bananas assertion last year that chess is bad because, among other things, it lacks fog of war.

"I mean, a lot of chess grandmasters have criticized classical chess throughout the years," says Barone, "because it does end up [where] you just have to remember all the theory, the openings, and it ends up being, 'Oh, did you remember this line 27 moves in or not?' And you only remember it 26 moves in, so gotcha.

"So that's why someone like Magnus Carlsen, he's playing freestyle chess, they call it now, which is where they randomize the pieces, essentially. So basically there's 960 different variants [of starting position]. So it's not really feasible that you're going to remember openings for 960 different variants. So you have to just play real chess. You have to think about tactics. And I feel like that might be more of an interesting game, actually."

Freestyle chess, also called Chess960, was invented by the American grandmaster and world champion Bobby Fischer, one of the most brilliant players that chess has ever seen, and was borne of exactly the frustrations Barone talks about. If you had a misspent youth memorising openings and theory, it's a truly refreshing way to play the game, and is becoming increasingly popular as chess itself morphs into a more fast-paced online spectacle.

But what about Musk's wilder ideas? Does chess need a tech tree?

"I don't know about that, but I actually think it could be interesting," says Barone. "I was actually thinking because I was playing chess race, and thought, what if someone did a Balatro treatment to chess, like where you're basically playing a chess roguelike? I feel like that could be interesting. And sure enough, there is someone making such a game. I think it's called Passant or something like that."

I'm not sure what variant Barone's referring to as "chess race", possibly this board game, though it might also be the Racing Kings variant of the game. Passant: A Chess Roguelike does indeed try out some of these ideas: it's not out yet, but there is a demo, and players seem to dig it.

As for what else Barone's playing, he's spending time with some other classics.

"I've also been playing WarCraft 3 Reforged," says Barone. "A little bit of the campaign, and I've actually been playing custom maps with my friend, we play random custom games, which feels very old school.

"That's what I did in high school a lot with Warcraft 2 and Age of Empires, especially Age of Kings. I played a ton of Age of Kings when I was in high school and would just go to my friend's house, we'd have LAN parties and that was so fun. I feel like real time strategy needs to come back, you know? I don't know if you feel like [that], kind of no-one plays those games anymore."

Outside of cultivating the season's most profitable veggies or endlessly fainting in the mines, a lot of the time you spend in Stardew Valley is working alongside its townspeople. You develop friendships and relationships with Pelican Town's villagers over the years, but no matter how long you spend giving gifts and completing requests, Stardew doesn't really offer a final ending to a lot of its storylines.

There are a surprising number of questions Stardew has left unanswered which Eric Barone has regrets about, but there's a good reason nothing has changed in the nine years since Stardew launched. In an interview with PC Gamer, when asked if there was anything he would've liked to do differently during development, Barone stated "I think I would have probably spent more time fleshing out the characters more.

"This is something I actually have mixed feelings about, because some of the character story lines, they're kind of left as cliffhangers almost. There's no resolution to certain things, like Mayor Lewis and Marnie's secret relationship."

Even though you don't get the answers you want from the game, that hasn't stopped players from sharing lore ideas and deep dives ever since Stardew Valley's launch in 2016. We've seen mods created to help round-off some of the storylines left unanswered or give characters more cutscenes and dialogue too.

Creating these sought-after endings is something Barone has considered, too, but the idea of having something so final is offputing when it could be left open for interpretation. Especially given the creativity inspired by these open endings already on show.

"I have ideas for how I could resolve these things," ends Barone, "but part of me is almost like, I wonder if I should, because it's closing the book in a way.

"I kind of like that it's open ended, and it gives people the ability to kind of, themselves, like finish the story in their head, which makes Stardew Valley more personal to every person, because there's a lot of room for your own interpretation on things."

Stardew Valley's fishing minigame gets a surprising amount of hate, whether it's because of how annoying it is to find all the legendary fish or because fishing minigames are a dime a dozen nowadays. But I've always loved it as a way to break up my farming hyperfixation, and it sounds like Eric Barone, the creator of Stardew Valley, is also backing this system.

"I like fishing minigames, and I like Stardew Valley's fishing minigame," Barone says. "I know it's controversial, a lot of people hate it, but I think it's fun." This minigame can get really repetitive, and it's pretty infuriating when you snag a fish that ends up doing a gymnastics routine worthy of a gold medal at the Olympics to escape your clutches. But it's nothing a fibreglass or iridium rod and some elbow grease can't help.

That said, with a simple bamboo pole, fishing in Stardew Valley can be quite difficult, especially if it's your first time trying to impress Willy. "My regret with the Stardew Valley fishing minigame is that I think it starts out too hard," Barone continues. "I think there should have been a better curve, so it starts out easy and then it gets a little harder. Because you're catching more difficult fish. But the way I did it, you start out with this tiny little bar, and it's like, 'Ah, I should have started with the bar a little bit bigger. ' But I still think the fishing game is good overall."

But for those of you who never watched River Monsters or simply don't want to get put through the wringer the first couple of times you fish in Stardew Valley, there is a secret tip that Barone says will help somewhat.

"I know a lot of people really hate it, so I tried to mitigate it a little bit by adding the training rod, which a lot of people don't know about," Barone says. "You can buy it for like five gold at Willy's shop, and it makes the fishing a lot easier. Although you can only catch fish below a certain tier and quality. But it's good for training. You can level up, and then when you switch to the regular rod, your bar will be a lot bigger."

The training rod is a good way to avoid a trial by fire, making Stardew Valley's fishing a lot more approachable. But I still think the mechanics for fishing in Stardew are perfect. However, that's no surprise, considering its humble origins.

"Stardew Valley's fishing minigame—I think I've said this before in interviews—but it was actually inspired by Donkey Kong Country, Tropical Freeze," Barone says. "You're flying on the barrel, and it's like you press one button to go up, and then you release it, and you go down. I thought that these controls were fun. There's a lot of depth to a Donkey Kong level like this with just one button. And I was like, maybe I can turn that into a fishing minigame."

Sometimes the best ideas really do come from someone pointing at something and going, "I like this, it's cool, I'm going to incorporate it into my work." In that sense, Stardew Valley's fishing minigame has come full circle with Stardew Valley's fishing minigame, for better or worse, as it's gone on to inspire a whole lot of new fishing minigames while also raising Lauren's blood pressure.

It's hard to imagine Eric Barone saying that he failed in any aspect regarding Stardew Valley. What started out as a simple Harvest Moon clone, a way to teach him how to code and perfect pixel art, evolved into a phenomenon that is still having a lasting impact on the cosy farming sim genre. But nothing in life can be perfect, and everyone has regrets.

Talking to PC Gamer at GDC, Barone discussed a couple of areas in which he would improve, if given the chance to revisit 2012, when his work on Stardew Valley first began, namely how on the nose the game's villain, JojaMart, is.

"That's one of the things I kind of regret about Stardew Valley," Barone says. "I feel like it's a little bit too on the nose with Joja being the bad guys, and the community centre being the right way to do it. If I made Stardew Valley again, I would try to be a little more nuanced.

"Maybe there are some positives to JoJa, you know. Nothing is that black and white. In reality, there's usually nuance to everything. It's something that I wanted to have with Stardew Valley, but I kind of failed in that particular aspect."

It is blindingly obvious in Stardew Valley that JojaMart, a chain supermarket, is the villain. Not only is this the company that the protagonist leaves to start a new life on their grandpa's farm, trading in dull and grey for the exciting and colourful world of farming, but when a new store opens up in Pelican Town, it starts to wreak havoc.

At the eastern edge of the town, in the woods near where JojaMart is set up, there's loads of trash and litter scattered around, most of it being Joja Cola and other supermarket junk. Additionally, there is the fact that Pierre, the local shopkeeper, is being gradually put out of business by the chain store.

Pierre doesn't lose the store or anything if you just stick with JojaMart, but that ending will turn the community centre into a warehouse, and you'll lose out on a couple of the perks that the Community Centre ending will give you. Siding with JojaMart also feels like you lose the spirit of the game, as it supports large corporations over small businesses, local produce, and community-focused initiatives. But siding with Joja isn't all bad, if you can forgive yourself, that is.

The Joja ending will give you a soda machine instead of a trophy, an auto-petter, and a movie theatre. Another unintended perk also seems to be sticking it to Pierre by choosing Joja over his general store.

Pierre may seem like just a normal shopkeeper, but a lot of players have a problem with his priorities and character in general. Those who dislike him believe that he should spend more time with his family, take up a hobby, and find a job that offers a better work-life balance. But Barone seems to think the Pierre hate is a bit too harsh.

"I assumed people wouldn't like Pierre, but I didn't realise the extent to which they would hate Pierre," Barone says. "I kind of advocate for Pierre a little bit. I think he is not as bad as some people think. I mean, he does after all—I don't want to spoil it—but he plays a crucial role in the Community Centre path at the end of the game."

I also don't really get all the Pierre hate. I understand he's not a great person, but running your own business is stressful, especially when a big chain is poised to take it all away from you.

I've only ever gone with the JojaMart ending once, just to get the achievement. And while I won't be doing that again, regardless of how unhealthy Pierre's work-life balance is, I will say that Joja Cola has saved me a couple of times when I've gone too far down in the mines, so I'll give them that.

Stardew Valley has become the backbone of farming simulators since its launch in 2016, and the impact it had on the genre and the games that followed is clear as day. As soon as a trailer for a new farming simulator drops, someone will make a comparison with Stardew Valley, no matter how far a stretch that might be. But this impact has caused a lot of similar Stardew-esque games to be produced, which Eric Barone, the creator of Stardew Valley, is aware of.

In an interview with PC Gamer, Barone shared that he hadn't really played many other farming and life simulators, although he did give Sun Haven and Graveyard Keeper a special mention. One stood out among the rest though, but not because it looked like an attempt to be the next Stardew Valley, only because the name was similar.

Barone shared "I did boot up Disney Dreamlight Valley. Because I was like, Wait, it's called Dreamlight Valley. Like, what? What are they? What's going on here? So I had to check it out. And it's like, it's more, I'd say it's more like Animal Crossing than Stardew."

It takes two seconds to boot up Steam and immediately be inundated with farming simulator recommendations. Don't get me wrong, I love the genre as much as the next person, if not more so having spent thousands of hours tilling soil and raising chickens. But it's becoming harder to sift through the masses to find something unique, and a lot of that is due to so many developers drawing inspiration from the success of Stardew Valley and trying to replicate it in their own way.

Barone recognises the impact Stardew has had on the genre, saying "I can't take all the credit for this, but Stardew, it seems to have inspired a lot more people to consider this kind of game. Like farming game life sim kind of games. Which, you know, I loved those kinds of games growing up.

I mean, Harvest Moon was my favorite. I played Rune Factory, I played the Sims. I did play a little bit of Animal Crossing, but I was more into, like, Harvest Moon, that's my big one. But it's great to see, like, a resurgence of that kind of game, and see that, you know, maybe you started to inspire other developers to make games in this style. I think it's cool."

After spending much of last year dedicated to Stardew Valley's big 1.6 update, Eric Barone is ready to buckle down on Haunted Chocolatier. Though he's not ready to talk too many hard details about his next game, in a recent interview with PC Gamer Barone said that what he's interested in exploring with Haunted Chocolatier has "evolved with the game" over the last few years.

"One thing lately that I've been interested in is intuition," he said. "You might even say a spiritual aspect. You have the left brain, which is the mechanical engineering thing, and then you have this kind of intuitive, psychic, paranormal side. I feel like games are very left brain-focused, like: 'Here's your ingredients, now engineer the perfect chocolate.'"

You can certainly see what Barone is talking about reflected in most games with crafting systems, including Stardew Valley—input X components and you'll always get Y result. One piece of wood and two pieces of sap in Stardew is guaranteed to make a torch.

With Haunted Chocolatier, he's exploring the idea of making baking less concrete.

"Instead I'm thinking, well, what if you do intuitive chocolate making?" he said. "What if it's not such a mechanical process and it's more creative? You have to let go of your designer to engineer the perfect chocolate, and just accept there's a mystery and a whimsy. Maybe that's an important part of being human that needs to be explored a little bit more. I don't even know if it needs to be, but it's something that I'm interested in doing right now."

Barone's rumination on intuition and spirituality feels in line with the concept the game has had from the beginning, though it seems like he's still figuring out exactly what the "haunted" in Haunted Chocolatier will entail. In the real world chocolatiers might make plain chocolate or elaborate truffles; in Haunted Chocolatier, you might make "ghost chocolates" or "paranormal chocolates."

"Stardew Valley was a very grounded game—it's about growing things in the earth. These are the basics, the fundamentals of human sustenance and existence, and something I care about deeply. But with Haunted Chocolatier, I wanted to explore what's next. We have our basic needs met with Stardew Valley. Now let's take it beyond, into the realm of the ethereal and the creative. You might even say luxury—things that are beyond the very basics. I think it's another realm of the human experience which I'm interested in exploring."

I had to ask Barone what his go-to is when it comes to eating plain ol' non-ghost chocolate, and like all people of good taste, he said dark chocolate—though he's not actually a "huge chocolate guy."

"I think [dark chocolate] is healthy in moderation. I worry about that with Haunted Chocolatier: am I going to ruin the teeth of a whole generation with this? I'm trying to think about that. I'm thinking about doing it so you can only eat two chocolates per day and it fills up your stomach, and then you have the system work around that… Maybe there needs to be a dentist in town. I want to have healthy chocolates, too, like superfood, ashwagandha, maca root chocolate. Special stuff."

Haunted Chocolatier will, at least in the macro view, still be "similar to Stardew Valley in many ways," Barone said—it's a life sim, which is the kind of game he likes to make.

"But I'm really interested in really cranking up the imagination, the creativity," he said. "I want to go all-out doing weird, interesting things… Stardew Valley is very sunny and bright and lush. Haunted Chocolatier is more dark and mysterious, a little bit paranormal. You're not sure what this is all about, but it's exciting your imagination."

Eric Barone has a problem: He wants to make his new game, Haunted Chocolatier, but he also has a deep love for his indie mega-hit Stardew Valley—and, more to the point, a seeming inability to stop working on it. It's a tough spot alright, one he's talked about before, but speaking to PC Gamer's Wes Fenlon at GDC recently, Barone said he's got a plan, or at least an idea: Run away into the forest and stay there until it's done.

Barone's continued to work on the "vertical slice" of Haunted Chocolatier, while at the same time "trying to stay relaxed and stress free," and avoid rushing too much. But the pressure of Stardew Valley is always hanging overhead: Even though the game has been out for nine years and remains massively popular, he just can't stop. Barone said last year that he could work on Stardew Valley "for the rest of my life" and it sure doesn't seem like he was kidding.

"I do love Stardew Valley and I care about the fans and I want the fans to have a great experience," Barone said during our GDC chat. "So I'm always concerned with Stardew Valley and making sure that it's doing well, and that pulls me away from devoting all my time to Haunted Chocolatier.

"I think at some point I'm going to have to completely cut off everything else. Honestly, I've thought about, maybe I should just go into a cabin in the woods and completely get off the internet, and just say, 'Okay guys, I'll see you in two years. You won't hear from me at all and I'm going to finish this game'."

Barone spent much of 2024 working on Stardew Valley's big 1.6 update, which he said would need to be "bug-free" and out on both PC and consoles before he could shift his focus back to Haunted Chocolatier. Now, he said, he's finally ready to take time away from the farm.

"The 1.6 update is pretty settled at this point. There were ongoing console ports and bug fixes, but it's pretty settled now. I'm committed to not working on Stardew Valley until I'm done with Haunted Chocolatier… I think it's in a good place. I feel very solid about it. I think if anyone picks up Stardew Valley for the first time in 2025, I'm very proud of it, and I think they'll have fun with it if they like this kind of game."

But Stardew Valley isn't the only stumbling block Barone faces on the road to his next game. The long development process of Haunted Chocolatier, he said, is in part the result of, well, the long development process of Haunted Chocolatier.

"It's been a few years that I've been working on it now and it's like, I look at some of the stuff I did at the beginning and I'm like, 'Oh man, here we go again. I'm gonna have to redo all of this'," Barone said. "And it's not it's not like it's even bad, it's just—part of the problem of being, like especially a solo dev, is it takes so long to make a game. I'm literally a different person in four years, so it's like my whole feelings about everything have changed—my aesthetic sensibilities have evolved."

Sounds like exactly the sort of problem a couple years in an isolated cabin would fix.

Stardew Valley creator Eric Barone acknowledged earlier this year that his long-awaited next game, Haunted Chocolatier, started "getting dusty on the shelf" while he worked on Stardew Valley's 1.6 patch. As much as I'm looking forward to his ghosts and ganache life sim, I don't think there are many among us who'd fault Barone for continuing to tinker with the beloved farm sim that made him famous.

He's hardly the only one who's struggled to move on from a hit game. His story echoes that of Terraria developers Andrew "Redigit" Spinks and ReLogic, who keep making that game's "last" update only to make yet another huge one every time. I'm also reminded of George Lucas' famous inability to quit messing with Star Wars, although the controversial film re-releases aren't quite the same thing as well-received Stardew Valley additions and bug fixes—I don't think anyone's really complaining in this case.

I imagine it was especially satisfying for Barone to squash the harvesting bug back in March: If you missed that one, it turns out left-to-right harvesting had been 100ms faster than right-to-left harvesting for the past eight years. It was a tiny error that most people never noticed, but I bet someone out there was being driven mad by it this whole time.

I've never spent years updating a hit game, but it's easy to relate to the cycle of fixing, tweaking, building, and rebuilding that can turn any project into a forever project. Every time you fix one thing, you notice something else that could use improvement, and each addition generates ideas for more possible additions. Legend has it that turn-of-the-century eccentric Sarah Winchester had workers continuously add rooms to her bizarre California mansion for decades to confuse vengeful spirits, but I think she just kept noticing walls that would look better with doors on them, and it all got out of control.

And, of course, Barone has Stardew Valley's immense popularity to contend with.

"Stardew Valley is a big and popular game, and I have a lot of attachment to it," Barone said earlier this month. "I also feel a strong sense of duty and obligation to all the people who have bought Stardew Valley over the years, granting me this rare opportunity to be an indie game developer. So it's hard to 'let go' of Stardew, even temporarily, to work on something that isn't already established and meaningful to people."

Despite his choice not to let go of Stardew just yet, it doesn't sound like Haunted Chocolatier is in danger of being put on the back-burner for eternity. Barone said he's got "essentially a skeleton of the game with most (not all) of its bones in place" and has reassured fans that the game is "still going to be a thing." How soon it'll become a thing is another question, but we can always play more Stardew in the meantime. The big 1.6 update went out in March—patch notes here if you missed 'em—and by November we were at version 1.6.9, which made even more additions. 

Stardew Valley creator Eric Barone knows his fans are eager for his next game, Haunted Chocolatier, and that some of them are disappointed in the apparent lack of progress and news on that front. He's sorry about that, but in a new update says he's been obligated to keep his focus on Stardew Valley—and while Haunted Chocolatier is still a long way off, he promises it's going to happen.

Stardew Valley's 1.6 update was originally meant to be mainly a technical update, but Barone said it "kind of snowballed" once he started adding new content. He's stuck with it since the release of the update on PC in March, saying he's "been heavily involved with bug fixing, porting, and more," all of which have kept him from Haunted Chocolatier.

"It’s been a little sad to see Haunted Chocolatier getting dusty on the shelf," Barone wrote, "but this is the reality of my situation. Stardew Valley is a big and popular game, and I have a lot of attachment to it. I also feel a strong sense of duty and obligation to all the people who have bought Stardew Valley over the years, granting me this rare opportunity to be an indie game developer. So it’s hard to 'let go' of Stardew, even temporarily, to work on something that isn’t already established and meaningful to people."

Still, Barone said he has "a strong desire to make more games," and even though little of it has been seen publicly, he's grown very attached to Haunted Chocolatier's "characters, themes, and ideas." And significant work on the game has already been completed, culminating in a vertical slice he described as "essentially a skeleton of the game with most (not all) of its bones in place."

A lot of work remains to build it out from there, but Barone said he doesn't mind—"I'm addicted to the grind"—and he's not going to change the processes that worked so well for him on Stardew Valley. Along with the actual development of the game, that also means there will be no early access period, crowdfunding, or preorders, "so I don’t feel a ton of external pressure to finish the game on a timeline." That doesn't mean he won't share insights into Haunted Chocolatier's development, but only when the urge strikes, or if he's got something particularly cool to show off.

Barone acknowledged that the update repeats a lot of points he's made previously—Barone said back in August that he had "not touched Haunted Chocolatier in a long time" because he was focused on Stardew's 1.6 update—but said he "wanted to check in with all of you, let you know that Haunted Chocolatier is still going to be a thing, and re-affirm some of the stuff I’ve said before."

"I look forward to sharing this new world with you," Barone wrote. "When it's ready."

Stardew Valley's 1.6.9 update has arrived with a few hiccups, including missing chickens and a sudden announcement to remove all hats from pets to avoid performance issues, and these peculiar problems aren't slowing down. Fortunately, ConcernedApe has reassured us with various responses that things will be taken care of in the next update, but when that will be remains a mystery. 

The newest issue raised by a player on X states that the hat mouse, the beloved character responsible for selling you new hats, is completely missing from its usual location southeast of the Wizard Tower. But rather than stopping players from buying hats, the door to its shed can still be interacted with to open the shop menu. Bizarrely, the issue is only affecting players with their language set to Spanish, which ConcernedApe warned in response to the bug being flagged, alongside the confirmation that it will be resolved in the next update alongside everything else.

There was no reason shared as to why this is affecting players in Spanish exclusively. But, the consensus is that the banner for the shop is different in Spanish since it says 'Sombreros' rather than 'Hats' which may have caused the sprite of the mouse and the banner to not appear. You'll still receive the letter from the hat mouse saying you can come and buy hats, but the shack will continue to look closed. Basically, the mouse has scampered off and left an honesty box in the shed for you to drop your gold into in exchange for a stylish new cap. 

Unlike the other issues raised as part of this update, like the case of missing chickens being stolen by "invisible coyotes" or the rash affecting dogs and cats resulting in needing to remove hats from pets, the mystery of the hat mouse doesn't come with any lore. I like to think that our favourite accessory-wielding rodent is taking some well-deserved time off since I can't imagine selling hats to overworked farmers is a forgiving business. A lot of other players are suggesting that the mouse is having a siesta, which is equally as wholesome. Generally, it's nice to see players interacting with bugs in a fun way rather than kicking off about a missing sprite. 

Hopefully, an update fixing these problems comes sooner rather than later, but I can't lie, I love seeing how ConcernedApe is responding to the player reports. I can only imagine how stressful it is to have a barrage of people sharing everything going wrong with a game you've created, but there is something admirable about how he's handling it. The stories that Barone is creating to coincide with each bug make them feel less like a problem and part of Stardew's story instead, and I look forward to the reasoning behind them more than the fix itself. Even though the hat mouse didn't get the same treatment, which yes, I am slightly bitter about.

Stardew Valley's major 1.6 update is now live on all platforms and, as so often happens with these things, there are a few problems cropping up. None of them seem too major, which is good news, but there does appear to be some performance issues cropping up for some players. Luckily, there is a workaround, and it may be the purest, most Stardew-like fix of all time.

"PSA: if you are experiencing performance issues in Stardew Valley 1.6, remove all hats from pets," Stardew Valley creator Eric Barone posted on X. "We will address the problem as soon as possible."

This is important, but maybe not for the reason you might think. Yes, degraded game performance is a problem, but the real issue here is the pets who are no longer wearing hats. It is vital in the Stardew world that pets be appropriately chapeau'd, and the longer your furry little buds go without their stylish lids, the worse the experience becomes for everyone.

As with the disappearing chickens, who it turns out were being stolen by invisible coyotes, Barone has a lore explanation for the pet-hat crisis: "There's rumors of a strange rash affecting pets' ears in Zuzu City and we just want to make sure those ears can breathe for a few days."

I won't say that Barone's lore-ification of Stardew Valley bugs has me hoping that other small technical troubles crop up just to see how he rolls with it, but I do hope he keeps it up. Bugs are inevitable anyway so we all might as well have some fun with them, and who knows what might emerge? The "invisible coyotes stealing chickens" bit led to a call for actual coyotes (of the adoptable, non-chicken-stealing kind) to be added to the game for real, and honestly that's not a bad idea at all. Barone hasn't yet commented on the likelihood of that actually happening, but given his can't stop, won't stop approach to Stardew Valley, I won't be at all surprised if it does.

Stardew Valley creator Eric Barone, the man who just will not cut it out, has revealed that the newly-released 1.6 update contains, on top of everything else, a "secret, experimental mobile multiplayer feature" that enables players on mobile platforms to join in on the fun with others.

The big 1.6 update went live on PC in March, but didn't make it to console and mobile platforms until November 4, which also saw more new stuff plowed in on top of what was already included in the original update. But there was even more to it than we realized, hidden amidst the title screen's lush greenery.

"With the release of Stardew Valley 1.6 on mobile, there is now a hidden multiplayer feature which you can access," Barone wrote in the new Stardew Valley mobile multiplayer guide. "Mobile multiplayer works pretty much the same as on other platforms, except there is no farm 'discovery' capability. You can only connect via IP. You can, however, join a PC-hosted farm from a mobile device via IP."

Barone warned that trying to host or connect to a game over a mobile network will likely not work well. The "best-case scenario" for mobile players looking to connect with others is one in which players on a "high-end mobile device" connect to a PC-hosted game via WiFi.

The other end of the scale "would be if someone were to host a game from a low-performance phone, on a cell network (you would probably have to create a mobile wi-fi hotspot for others to connect to locally), and they were on a train or something, going through tunnels. And then the host is also getting calls, causing the app to be interrupted repeatedly." In that oddly specific scenario, Barone said the multiplayer experience would be "potentially frustrating," which I would imagine is a bit of understatement.

On the other hand, Barone also respects the fact that you're a grown-ass adult. "If you want to try these things out, there’s nothing stopping you," he wrote. "Just be aware that there are inherent connectivity issues that can arise when attempting to host a multiplayer game from a mobile device."

The mobile multiplayer mode is hidden because it's still "experimental" and may have bugs or other issues, and may just not be much fun depending on how you try to use it. To unlock it, you'll need to use—and at first I thought Eric was kidding here, but no—the Konami code, as translated onto leaves on the Stardew Valley logo.

Once that's done, exit the "?" menu and you should see a new co-op button on the title screen that gives you an option to either host or join a game. If you're hosting a game you'll need to set up your farm first and make cabins available for other players; if you're joining, you'll need the IP address of the host in order to connect.

Alongside the mobile multiplayer surprise, Barone also dropped a 1.6.10 bug fix patch for PC today that, I'm very sorry to say, did away with the invisible coyotes. I continue to hold out hope for adoptable Canis latrans in the entirely speculative (but we all know it's going to happen) Stardew Valley 1.7 update.

After months of waiting, Stardew Valley's big 1.6 update is finally live on consoles and mobile, and as if that wasn't enough creator Eric Barone also surprised the world by rolling out yet another update on top of the update: Stardew Valley 1.6.9, which introduces a fresh array of fixes, tweaks, updates, and new content—and on top of that, some surprise Stardew lore: Wild coyotes!

"PSA: there is currently an issue, if you start a new farm on the meadowlands farm and open the animal door on the coop day 1, your chickens will disappear," Barone wrote on X. "If you leave the door closed for one day, it should save them. We will fix this.

"Lore: There is a wild coyote on the farm day 1 rn"

Okay, so it's not exactly new lore in the strictest sense, but I love the way Barone turns a bug into a feature by just waving his hands and declaring "environmental storytelling" in a deep, spooky voice. Not entirely seriously, of course, but given how Barone rolls I would be less than surprised to see wild coyotes added to the game in the inevitable Stardew Valley 1.7 update we'll all be talking about in spring 2025.

(For the record, I am not aware of any actual Stardew 1.7 update in the works, but I made the prediction in March and I'm not backing off.)

I'm not the only one who thinks it would be a good idea:

Yeah, we're never getting Haunted Chocolatier.

"I have this problem where once I start, I can't stop," Eric Barone said in an interview earlier this year, and boy, he wasn't kidding. Case in point: Stardew Valley, which Barone started in 2012, released in 2016, and has relentlessly hammered away on since, despite having plenty of other things he's supposed to be doing.

"1.6 ended up being a little larger in scope than originally planned. I'm done adding major new content to it now, though," Barone said a few months prior to that "can't stop" comment, and that was at least technically true in the sense that the 1.6 update rolled out for PC in March. But calling it "a little larger" was a bit off the mark: The thing was massive.

Console and mobile players unfortunately had to wait for the update, as Barone said in May that those versions "require extra work," but the ports are finally out today—and it turns out that Barone was working on even more stuff to pile on top of it in the 1.6.9 patch, which is also now live on all platforms. Guess he didn't want PC players to feel left out today.

Make no mistake, this is a pretty beefy addition to the 1.6 update, with balance and quality of life changes, a slew of fixes, and—you guessed it—more new content, including new Easter eggs, a mysterious new friend who will appear in the secret woods to help you recover lost items (for a price, of course), and "hidden cheat commands," although that will only work on platforms that allow save edits, which I would assume excludes consoles.)

The cheats, detailed on the Stardew Valley wiki, are powerful tools: One enables players to instantly grant themselves whatever amount of money they want, while the other enables the use of any debug command through the chat console—something you should do with all appropriate caution, as the wiki warns that debug commands "may crash your game, permanently corrupt or break your save, or cause other problems. Using these in a save you care about is not recommended." Back up your saves first.

The addition I find more intriguing, though, is the "new friend" who will do you a solid if you lose something important. "If a player has unlocked a unique item and then lost it, a secret shop appears overnight behind the fallen column to buy it back," the wiki explains. "The shop sells items that can't be re-obtained any other way. In multiplayer, any player can purchase an item that was lost (not only the player that lost theirs)."

The one downside? Each item costs 10,000 gold. Be careful with your stuff.

Barone said in September that he hasn't worked on his next game, Haunted Chocolatier, "in a long time" because he's been focused on the Stardew 1.6 update. That might be disappointing for people eager to explore his new world, but the general consensus reaction is one of excitement and appreciation that Barone is still doing so much for a game he could've justifiably washed his hands of years ago. "He better be wearing a chef's hat the way he cooked with this update," MaximusJDo wrote on Steam, nicely summarizing the mood.

The big question now is whether Barone will quit horsing around and get back to work on Haunted Chocolatier, or if more Stardew is in the stars. I don't know, but I will point out that I called a Stardew Valley 1.7 update back in March, and I think I'm going stand by that prediction.

The full Stardew Valley 1.6.9 patch notes are below.

New content & features

• If you lost an item that can’t be found again, a new friend appears in the secret woods who can get it back (for a price).
• You can now put legendary fish in fish ponds. These are limited to one per pond and produce legendary fish roe. Each fish has a unique water color.
• You can now place beds and sleep inside any constructed buildings that allow furniture.
• Items dropped in water now float for a short time, so you can collect them if you’re quick or have a magnet ring.
• Sam and Shane now have work portraits while working at JojaMart.
• Slightly tweaked some dialogues.
• Added new Easter eggs.
• Added hidden cheat commands. (Only on platforms where a save edit is possible)

Balance changes

• Blue grass no longer grows slower than normal grass.
• Fruit tree growth is no longer blocked by grass and seed spots.
• Pine trees now drop one extra wood when chopped down.
• The initiation quest now counts wild slimes killed on the farm.
• Thorns ring damage now stacks if you equip two of them, and monsters killed by a thorns ring now drop loot like regular kills.
• With the Gatherer skill, the chance to double harvested forage now applies when using an iridium scythe too.
• Son of Crimsonfish can now be caught during the night market.
• Robin no longer constructs buildings during green rain in year 1.
• Placing a bomb and then switching to a weapon no longer applies its enchantments to the bomb damage.
• Added some items to shops:
  • Adventurer’s Guild: Rusty Sword, Femur, Elf Blade, Steel Smallsword, Crystal Dagger, Obsidian Edge, and Work Boots. These unlock after you reach a certain mine level, regardless of whether you found them in a mine chest.
  • Marnie’s shop: Cow Decal.
  • Hat mouse: Sports Cap.
  • Willy’s shop: Advanced Iridium Rod.
• Passing trains are now more likely to happen multiple times in the same session, but can no longer appear on consecutive days.
• Willy’s shop now opens on spring 2 in the first year even if you didn’t read his letter.
• Fixed Queen of Sauce reruns being affected by the recipes needed by unclaimed farmhands in empty cabins.
• Fixed being able to receive monster damage while jumping down a mine shaft before the screen fades to black.
• Fixed spa not fully recovering energy when a max-energy buff is active.
• Fixed sleeping late while exhausted not reducing stamina as intended.
• Fixed the catalogue and Furniture Catalogue selling items from themed catalogues like Retro Catalogue.
• Fixed exploit where a fish pond with a golden cracker could produce unlimited output. Fish pond output bonuses are now applied once when the output is created.
• Fixed exploit where you could cancel cow milking and still get the friendship boost.
• Fixed unintended extra chance of spontaneous green rain trees when loading a save in fall.
• Fixed skill buffs affecting shop item requirements in 1.6.
• Fixed sturdy ring no longer halving debuff times in 1.6.
• Fixed lower chance of catching lava eels in caldera after 1.6.
• Fixed forage crops harvested from garden pots always being low-quality and providing no XP.
• Fixed iridium scythe with forage crops not giving XP or applying the forage level quality boost.
• Fixed some weapons never dropping from crates when legacy randomization is enabled.

Quality of life changes

• The game now recovers most saves automatically if they’re broken, corrupted, or missing the SaveGameInfo file.
• The game now resends most achievements, recipes, and important mail if you somehow missed them. For PlayStation/Xbox players, missed trophies are readded when perform a specific action instead.
• Fish ponds now show the number of roe or other output items to collect.
• The wedding event now replays if you exit & reload the day.
• The tailoring UI is now a bit more intuitive: slots that can’t accept the held item are now disabled, and you can no longer pick up some items that can’t be tailored.
• Colored items like flowers now also sort by color. That avoids items being reordered randomly each time you sort your inventory.
• You can now only sell books to the bookseller via the book purchase menu, not the trade-in menu. This reduces the chance of accidentally selling a book when trying to trade it in.
• The collections tab now shows artifacts, gems, and minerals once they’re donated to the museum (not as soon as you find it).
• Clint now refills your watering can when upgrading it.
• Tweaked save process to reduce the chance of corruption.
• Anvils no longer accept parrot eggs if you can’t re-roll their level yet.
• Improved chatbox commands:
  • Chat commands are now case-insensitive.
  • Changed /help format to make room for more commands.
  • Added /help descriptions for /emote, /mapScreenshot, and /unbanAll.
  • Added consistent messages when you can’t use a multiplayer-only or host-only command.
• Performance optimizations.

Technical changes

• Migrated from FAudio to OpenAL, which should improve performance when playing audio.
• Updated SDL from 2.0.x to 2.30.4 (used for input and windowing).
• Fixed compatibility with newer Windows systems when using some older GPUs.

Gameplay fixes

• You can no longer swap a chest’s type if the new type is too small to store its current items.
• Fixed NPC issues:
  • NPCs no longer avoid passable terrain features like flooring and grass when pathfinding.
  • Fixed kicking Krobus out of the house triggering divorce dialogues.
  • Fixed Leo following his island schedule after moving to the mainland.
  • Fixed a Lewis schedule where he would overlap Marnie.
  • Fixed a Penny resort dialogue when married that was never shown.
  • Fixed Pierre sometimes showing a closed-on-Wednesday dialogue after his shop hours are extended.
  • Fixed mom or dad sending duplicate mail if you change gender later.
  • Fixed some dialogue based on location + heart level only being shown if you have 10 or more hearts with the NPC.
  • Fixed special NPC gift reaction dialogue sometimes not matching their gift taste (e.g. Willy giving a positive dialogue for triple shot espresso).
  • Fixed unable to talk to Robin after accepting a house upgrade.
  • Fixed incorrectly split dialogue in Linus’ first heart event.
  • Fixed NPCs unable to pathfind through tiles that had a tent at the start of the day.
  • Fixed NPCs not loading their green rain dialogue if you started the day on the island.
  • Fixed NPCs saying “…” in 1.6 if they bought an item you sold to a shop but they don’t have a relevant dialogue for it.
  • Fixed your spouse sometimes saying “…” instead of the intended neutral dialogue.
  • Fixed your fiancée/spouse reacting to a mermaid’s pendant as if you’re engaged/married to someone else.
• Fixed UI issues:
  • Fixed world map not always showing players at the right spot when they’re inside a constructed building.
  • Fixed links in credits no longer opening a browser page.
  • Fixed able to interact with HUD elements like the toolbar when they’re hidden (e.g. when the game is paused).
  • Fixed issues when resizing the game window:
    • advanced game options layout being messed up;
    • collections page losing its selected tab and page;
    • social page losing its scroll position.
  • Fixed themed catalogues not having category tabs.
  • Fixed forge UI destroying any item held by the cursor after unforging.
  • Fixed museum menu clicks on the OK button sometimes grabbing the artifact behind it instead.
  • Fixed tailoring menu letting you trash some non-trashable items.
  • Fixed organize button in inventory UIs letting you put any item in special chests like enrichers.
  • Fixed issue where phoning Robin to get building prices and then resizing the window would enable the build/demolish/etc options as if you’d visited the shop directly.
• Fixed specific items and machines:
  • Fixed chest color getting reset when you swap chest type.
  • Fixed crab pots not producing double catches correctly with wild bait.
  • Fixed crab pots duplicating bait when loaded by a hopper.
  • Fixed crab pots not applying deluxe bait and wild bait bonuses in some cases.
  • Fixed fences destroyed on click when surrounded by impassable objects on three sides (above + left + right) instead of four as intended.
  • Fixed geode crushers incrementing the ‘geodes crushed’ stat when hovering, which allowed unintended RNG manipulation.
  • Fixed magic quiver trinket sometimes doing nothing if both a valid and invalid target are in range.
  • Fixed mannequins losing their clothes if they’re moved into storage to make space (e.g. for an event). They now re-equip their previous clothes when they’re put back down.
  • Fixed tents not blocking item placement.
  • Fixed watering cans with bottomless enchantment sometimes shown with a half-empty meter. Bottomless watering cans are now always full.
• Fixed building upgrades not placing interior items (like the coop incubator) if…
  • furniture is in the way. The furniture is now moved just like other objects.
  • an item blocking placement can’t be moved. It’s now moved into the lost & found in that case.
• Fixed cases where the Pirate’s Wife quest chain could lock you out:
  • If you have the quest but lost the required item, you now get a new War Memento overnight.
  • If the quest was cancelled, you can now talk to Birdie to restart it.
  • NPCs can no longer mistakenly accept the quest items as gifts or refuse to accept their quest item.
• Fixed location/map issues:
  • Fixed screen viewport at wrong position right after warping on horseback in some cases.
  • Fixed wilderness farm not pre-building the first cabin in separate-cabins mode.
  • Fixed grass in Marnie’s cow field never regrowing.
  • Fixed Willy’s bait barrel missing during night market.
  • Fixed some missing map tiles which let you walk off-screen.
  • Fixed able to leave Stardew Valley Fair’s festival area in odd years.
  • Fixed weed/stone debris spawning on top of placed paths in some cases.
  • Fixed able to dig up buried treasure from non-diggable tiles in some cases.
  • Fixed forest fish no longer catchable on the four corners farm.
  • Fixed bug where using the standard farm’s wallpaper/flooring in farmhouses of another farm type would reset them to that farm’s themed defaults.
• Fixed pre-1.6 saves sometimes losing the Dwarvish Translation Guide. The fix is retroactive for affected players.
• Fixed pre-1.6 farmhand stats not migrated correctly. The fix is retroactive for affected farmhands.
• Fixed pre-1.6 tubs o’ flowers never blooming again if their first day in 1.6 was in fall or winter.
• Fixed raccoon bundle accepting anything for preserve items.
• Fixed level requirement for farmer titles lowered by one in 1.6.
• Fixed fish ponds accepting multiple golden crackers before the first one lands in the water. They now register the first golden cracker immediately (but still delay the visual change until it lands).
• Fixed two Desert Festival makeover outfits that applied male shirts to female players.
• Fixed strange behavior of shop items with both a stock limit and stack size (e.g. items in several desert festival shops).
• Fixed edge cases where viewing a previous year’s secret santa letter in the collections tab would show the current year’s secret santa in the game menu during the Feast of the Winter Star week.
• Fixed the throw-item-into-shipping-bin animation drawing the base uncolored sprite for colored items like roe.
• Fixed error loading mobile saves on other platforms.
• Fixed crash when loading a save file in some rare cases.
• Fixed crash when using a tent on Ginger Island during a night event.
• Fixed some cat gifts applying fishing bonuses from the main player’s equipped fishing rod.
• Fixed movie theater scene failing in some cases when players have previously unequipped trinkets.
• Fixed Junimo harvesters losing the item color when dropping a crop on the ground due to their hut being full.
• Fixed rare edge case where a Junimo hut output chest has too many item slots.

Multiplayer fixes

• Added an /unlinkPlayer [name] chat command, which lets the host player release a farmhand so it can be reclaimed by the next person who connects.
• Fixed being able to steal another player’s roommate.
• Fixed farmhands able to claim multiple Desert Festival fishing quests per day.
• Fixed crash when reconnecting later in the day after leaving a festival.
• Fixed host crash if a farmhand disconnects while they’re between locations.
• Fixed NPC duplication in multiplayer fish derbies.
• Fixed crab pots & farm animals owned by an offline farmhand checking the main player’s professions instead.
• Fixed crab pots with no owner checking professions from the main player instead of the player adding bait.
• Fixed farmhands sometimes not seing the message when they can’t enter an NPC’s bedroom.
• Fixed Marlon’s desert festival quests not displaying the Calico Egg reward to farmhands.
• Fixed some multiplayer logic not handling an offline/invalid player correctly.
• Fixed some potential ‘null reference exception’ crashes in multiplayer code.
• Fixed crab pots with no owner checking the Mariner profession instead of Luremaster for the bait requirement in some cases.
• Fixed Willy not sending fishing rod mail to farmhands who join after spring 2.
• Fixed ‘waiting for players’ check including disconnecting players.
• Fixed trains not playing chugga chugga sounds for farmhands.

Display text and localization fixes

• In the credits, replaced the Reddit/Twitter links with a “News & Community” link.
• Fixed a huge number of translation issues for non-English players, and added automated tests to keep translations more in sync going forward. For example, this fixes…
  • dialogue/event changes in 1.6 which weren’t applied in some languages;
  • missing dialogues and event actions;
  • missing, outdated, or incorrect translations;
  • missing event preconditions (e.g. Leah’s 10-heart event could play on a rainy day in some languages);
  • events playing the wrong music, not being skippable, or placing players or NPCs at the wrong spot;
  • translations having different dialogue portraits/breaks/etc;
  • conversation topics not started when something happens;
  • text being shown with one word per dialogue box;
  • improved grammar (e.g. gender conjugation);
  • various errors and typos;
  • and many other issues.
• Many improvements and fixes to translations and sprites, including some re-translated item names.
• Renamed “cranberries jelly/juice/wine” to “cranberry jelly/juice/wine”.
• Fixed some bad words being produced by the random name generator.
• Fixed NPC text signs and some chat/UI messages in multiplayer not always shown in your language.
• Fixed flavored items in some chat/UI messages not shown correctly (like “Player put ‘Smoked’ into the potluck soup“).
• Fixed various typos in English text.
• Fixed special order objectives not re-translated when the language changes. (This fix only applies to new special orders going forward.)
• Fixed Robin showing the wrong number of hardwood required for a house upgrade in some languages.
• Fixed some languages showing Willy’s back room invite mail as “???” in the collections tab.
• Fixed some languages having inconsistent hat hair behavior.
• Fixed some languages producing items with a different internal name.
• Fixed French players not seeing prismatic effect for Magic Cowboy Hat and Magic Turban.
• Fixed French and Japanese showing a ‘needs 5 coal’ message for the dehydrator.
• Fixed Russian club coin and slots offset issues.
• Fixed Russian Joja movie theater tilesheet not showing up.
• Fixed Russian tool tooltips having overlapped names.
• Fixed Spanish jukebox showing blank name for ‘Ginger Island’ song.
• Fixed buy-ticket messages showing an unformatted price (like 1000g instead of 1,000g).

Cosmetic fixes

• Added lights to Marcello’s book stand.
• Sam now changes uniform when he enters JojaMart, instead of only when he reaches his work tile.
• Fixed many bugs related to light sources (e.g. lights stuck on screen, shown in the wrong location, removed before they should be, etc).
• Fixed issues with the golden walnut & Qi gem drop-down display:
  • Added support for showing both at once (e.g. another player finds a golden walnut while you’re in the Qi gem shop).
  • Fixed display sometimes stuck on screen permanently.
  • Fixed display showing the wrong type in some cases.
  • Fixed display sometimes appearing in multiplayer when the value didn’t change.
• Fixed line wrapping for movie concession description tooltips.
• Fixed visual glitch during the even-year Spirit’s Eve if you have the Joja movie theater.
• Fixed issue with padding on the edge of maximized game windows on Windows.
• Fixed a shirt that looked weird.
• Fixed tooltip display issues, like an empty space for edible items that don’t recover any stamina/health (like sweet pea and crocus) or an unintended double space in tooltip buff names.
• Fixed missing shadows behind some colored items (like wine) in menus.
• Fixed texture wrapping issue with Joja door.
• Fixed glitched hidden emote animations in NPC profile menu in some cases. NPCs now use always their default sprite in the profile view.
• Fixed red slime item sprite drawn one pixel lower than other colors.
• Fixed missing pixels in anvil sprite’s outline.
• Fixed stray pixel in dried mushroom color mask.
• Fixed Krobus showing a gift icon for the void ghost pendant when he can’t accept it.
• Fixed the item-received message cutting off part of the item name if it contains a # character (like ‘Tropical Fish #173’).
• Fixed the item-received message sometimes showing no count or a wrong count.
• Fixed some farm animals having double shadows.
• Fixed stardrop tooltips showing incorrect health/energy recovery amounts.
• Fixed timing of Easter egg in summit event.

Gamepad fixes

• Fixed various issues/crashes with gamepad support.
• When buying animals or buildings with a gamepad, you can now use the D-pad to move the cursor.
• In the community center bundle UI, using gamepad triggers to move to donation slots and back now returns you to the same spot.
• Added a small delay before you can cancel a waiting-for-players dialogue using a gamepad, to prevent accidentally closing it immediately after pressing the OK button.
• Fixed gamepad issues on the new game screen.
• Fixed dresser tabs not selectable with a gamepad.

Changes for modded players

• Added a Content/ContentHashes.json file containing the MD5 hash for every vanilla content asset. This can be used by SMAPI and other tools to detect corrupted or modified game files.
• Improved debug console commands.
• When you leave a horse/mount in a temporary location, it now returns home when that location is removed.
• Fixed ‘Jewels Of The Sea’ book producing roe for custom fishing catches that normally don’t have roe.
• Fixed forage crops outside the farm being removed each week.
• Fixed meteorite, strange capsule, and stone owl only appearing in the top-left 64×64 tile area on large custom farm maps.
• Fixed pagination in powers tab when mods add more powers.
• Fixed edge cases throughout the game code related to items whose stacks can’t be reduced to zero (e.g. tools).
• Fixed various errors when custom items have no name.
• Fixed error when mods apply audio changes if there’s no audio device available.
• Fixed error if there are no movies available due to a mod bug. The game will now log a warning and choose from the full list of movies instead.
• Fixed crash if a farm animal is in a broken building or location.
• Fixed crash if a smoked fish’s original fish data no longer exists. You now get a delicious smoked Error Item instead.
• Fixed crash when custom sounds loaded from a mod’s .ogg files are paused/resumed many times.
• Fixed map tilesheet crash in some cases when playing split-screen mode with mods.
• Fixed issues when the game’s whichFarm and whichModFarm fields are out of sync.
• Fixed ‘light source already exists’ and ‘changing net field parent’ warnings in some cases.
• Fixed mod data getting reset on chest type swap.
• Fixed berry bushes showing wrong sprite in locations where seeds can be planted in any season.
• Fixed stardrop gift reaction dialogue for custom NPCs defaulting to some raw data instead of their loved dialogue.
• Fixed able to enter the Adventurer’s Guild back room without meeting the requirement if the door is open after a custom event.
• Fixed triggered actions being logged twice.

Changes for mod authors

• See the 1.6.9 mod author migration guide for new APIs, dialogue keys, game state queries, debug commands, map properties, C# constants/fields/methods, data fields, and many other technical changes.

I told you it's a lot.

It turns out that the scariest thing I encountered this Halloween was the fear of missing out on Stardew Valley Creator, Eric "ConcernedApe" Barone's folder of Krobus-themed Jack o' lanterns. If I had known this was a thing, then I would've been first in line with my own janky creation (which probably wouldn't have made the list, if I'm honest).

Yesterday, on Halloween, Barone announced to his followers that "I will add every Stardew pumpkin to my folder." This post was also accompanied by a folder full of Krobus pumpkins, 46 to be exact.

Krobus is a pretty fitting monster for players to use as inspiration for their Jack o' lanterns, as he's the only friendly monster to be found in Stardew Valley. If you haven't met this delightful creature yet, then you should head to the sewer where he lives after obtaining the rusty key from Gunther. Once you find him, you can buy some rare goods from his shop and give him presents to lure him out of the sewers and into your farm.

But the folder isn't just restricted to Krobus pumpkins: "My little sis made a Junimo pumpkin holding a 'melon' pumpkin," one player says. "Another one for the collection? (She'd be absolutely thrilled if you saw it)." To which Barone responded: "Very cool! Added to the Folder."

Other creations included more Junimo, Krobus, and Joja-themed jack-o-lanterns, as well as an incredibly impressive Stardew Valley loading screen-inspired pumpkin which has far too much detail for me to comprehend: "Do you like mine," the creator and artist who goes by Corie asks. "I'm an artist at a local Jack o' lantern festival, and my Stardew Valley pumpkin was a crowd favourite this year!!"

Naturally, this also got a really positive response from Barone, as did many, many other creations. My personal favourite had to be this little pixel art Junimo that one fan painted on the side of a pumpkin. While this was from a couple of years ago (and technically wasn't a Jack o' lantern because nothing was actually carved into it), it's just too adorable to ignore.

So, if you still haven't taken down your Halloween decorations yet and have a Stardew Valley-themed pumpkin lying around outside, you should snap a photo before it completely crumples in on itself and send it over to Barone. Who knows? You too could make the spooky Stardew Valley Jack o' lantern folder.

Stardew Valley's 1.6 update has been an ongoing venture for creator Eric "ConcernedApe" Barone for most of this year, ever since the patch was released on PC in March. 

150,000 players flooded back into the cosy game when the update went live, but for the longest time, 1.6 has only been accessible to those playing on PC. 

Work on porting the update to console and mobile has taken a lot of time, so much so that Barone even admitted it was encroaching on Haunted Chocolatier's development. But even after Barone announced the release date for console and mobile (November 4), some players were wondering why it's taken so long when the PC update was ready months ago. 

"I've always released on PC first because it's sort of a 'beta test' to make sure there are no critical (eg, save-destroying) bugs, which are a much bigger deal on consoles because they can't be patched out as quickly," Barone says in a tweet. "However, I never intended for the delay to be this long." 

There have been a few small patches on PC after the Stardew Valley 1.6 update. These have mostly addressed minor bugs and issues players found in the game. The 1.6.3 patch that went live days after 1.6 fixed a "creepy face" on a bear and adjusted some of the drop rates for various items. The most recent 1.6.6 patch addressed a long list of balance and bug fixes, including a disappearing raccoon, an inaccessible area in the volcano dungeon, and the game crashing if you spoke to Penny in French. 

While 1.6 is clearly an incredible achievement and full of wonderful new features, it's clear that this massive update has needed a ton of work to fix little issues ahead of its launch on console and mobile. Barone is also renowned for being a perfectionist who takes a lot of time and care working on Stardew Valley, so a long wait isn't surprising or a bad thing. 

Luckily, most players are taking the long wait well. "Don't worry about people being impatient or mean even though you've been working so hard on that update," one player says. "Thank you for the set date, and I can't wait to play!"

If there's one thing that Stardew Valley players and Lego builders have in common, it's an impressive level of dedication to executing a creative vision. Stardew players are known for optimizing farm layouts that are equal parts beauty and efficiency, so it's no surprise that one of them went and built the entirety of Pelican Town in Lego. The feat took about 2 years to complete, its creator told PC Gamer.

Steve Jensen has been posting in-progress photos of the build over on the Stardew Valley forums since last year, and brought it out to the Lego fan exhibition BrickCon 2024 last weekend. It's an amazing build with tons of detail, covering everything in Pelican Town from the player's farm over to JojaMart and the forest down to the beach. It even has the giant "Stardew Valley" title screen in the back. You can see a view of the full build up above or check out this video by Beyond The Brick, which quotes the build at a total of 75,000 pieces and zooms in on various parts.

As for favorite parts of the build, Jensen has a few. "One is the Hat Shop, because I was able to make [it] almost entirely hollow, so you can look through the cracks and broken parts, and see through to more such openings on the other side. Just as a rundown, abandoned structure would be.

"Another fav is the wizard's tower. I was able to get the shape I wanted, including a peaked door, and vines growing up the sides, the cone-shaped roof in blue, everything!" 

I just can't stop zooming in on all the wonderful little details: the pink traveling merchant cart, Pam's bus, all the machinery coming out of Clint's workshop. All the characters are there too, which Jensen has also shared photos of. My favorite part might actually be the elevation changes. This isn't all laid out flat. It starts at its lowest point on the beach and builds up to the hills and mountain pass in the back.

What boggles my mind is just how much familiarity this took with Stardew Valley but also with specific Lego sets. Looking back through the forum posts, I spotted Jensen explaining which sets certain pieces came from, like the leaves on the main Stardew Valley sign which were apparently from a relatively new Lego set last year.

Jensen's build won a well-deserved "People's Choice" award at the convention, and Stardew Valley's developer, Eric "ConcernedApe" Barone, even made a surprise appearance. Which, as Jensen put it on the forums, is "even BIGGER news than an award." There's a charming photo of the two of them posing behind the 75,000 piece Pelican Town.

Jensen is planning to share more about the individual buildings over on Instagram.

Stardew Valley's 1.6 update was released earlier this year for PC. But it wasn't an average patch, as it added a ridiculous amount of new features like a brand new farm, more festivals, and tons of quirky secrets for players to uncover. It was so popular with fans that 150,000 players flooded back into the game. 

Unfortunately, the fun has been restricted to PC players as creator Eric "ConcernedApe" Barone has been hard at work since March trying to get the mobile and console 1.6 patch ready. Barone is still incredibly involved with patching and porting and has been giving small updates for months now. 

"I know that the console and mobile players are eager to play 1.6, and I am doing everything within my power to have the ports ready as soon as possible," Barone says. "The ports require extra work beyond the PC version. There is also another patch for PC underway, which mainly [consists of] some bug fixes." Basically, Barone's spinning plates on plates. 

But with all this time and effort being sunk into Stardew Valley, some fans are worried that Barone has forgotten about his upcoming RPG, Haunted Chocolatier. Barone announced this upcoming game back in October 2021: "After dedicating 10 years of my life to Stardew Valley (and counting), the time has finally come to announce my next game," he said in a blog post. "It's called ConcernedApe's Haunted Chocolatier." 

There were a couple of progress updates following the announcement, but sadly, we've not really heard anything new since October 2023, and even that was just a couple of screenshots. But Barone clearly has enough on his plate with Stardew Valley; he even noted that his obsession with perfecting Stardew Valley is eating into Haunted Chocolatier's development. 

So it doesn't really come as a surprise that Barone's latest Stardew Valley progress update also includes an apology to Haunted Chocolatier fans. "Console and mobile ports are still in progress," Barone says. "I acknowledge that they are taking a long time. There are reasons for this, but the bottom line is that they are not out yet. We are still working on them, and they have been our primary focus since 1.6 came out for PC. It would be a huge relief to me if they were ready for today, but they aren't, so all we can do is continue working on them until they are ready. 

"I have not touched Haunted Chocolatier in a long time because I am committed to finalising Stardew 1.6 first. To those who are frustrated or even angry about the timeline, I understand and accept full responsibility. To those who are patient and understanding, thank you. You make life better and reduce stress, and I appreciate it. Back to work." 

Barone can take as much time as he needs to get work on Haunted Chocolatier done. Would I like to play the game as soon as possible? Sure. But do I want it at the expense of his or anyone else's mental or physical health? Of course not. Barone and his small team are and have been doing stellar work on Stardew Valley, and I'm just excited to see what they'll go on to achieve with Haunted Chocolatier in the future, whenever that may be. 

In what scientists will someday call "a marketing collabo of supernatural potency," Stardew Valley creator Eric Barone has revealed that he wants to get some kind of crossover going with Fortnite. Specifically, he'd like to transplant a few of the citizens of his sedate farming sim into Epic's Omniverse, handing them a combat shotgun and letting them go ham on other people's licenced trademarks.

Barone was asked about his willingness to do a Stardew/Fortnite crossover by YouTuber Panedwards (via IGN). "I've been trying to," came Barone's reply, who particularly wants "Pam in Fortnite" but is "open to doing a collab" in general.

If you're not up to date with the latest edition of the Stardew Yellow Pages, Pam is the character who's a crusty, jaded old diner waitress in everything but, ah, her actual career. She's the Pelican Town bus driver and Penny's mother, a salt-of-the-earth working class kind of person who's seen it all and knows what it's like when times get tough. She could also, apparently, split open Solid Snake's head like a ripe watermelon at 400 metres with a reaper sniper rifle if given the chance.

Alas, it doesn't sound like Epic has gotten on board with the idea just yet. To make matters easier, Barone says it could even be another character. "It doesn't have to be Pam though" he wrote, "I would be open to anything." He's even got a few pitches: "Abigail & Sebastian could be good. Stardrop or Joja cola item? Galaxy sword or slingshot?"

But let's be honest, it's a tooled-up Pam that we all really want to see. In a statement to IGN, Barone pointed out that he's currently enjoying playing Fortnite with a few people who help him out with Stardew updates and admin. "One time we were playing and someone said 'what if there was a Pam skin in Fortnite?' And it kind of became a meme for us, like we were imagining us all playing as a squad with identical Pam skins.

"There's nothing official in the works or anything like that, but yea we would find it amusing and fun if we were able to play as Pam (or any other Stardew character, really) someday." To be honest, I reckon it's only a matter of time. Combining the dedicated fanbases of both Fortnite and Stardew is surely too juicy an opportunity for Epic to pass up.

Stardew Valley's international concert tour, Festival of Seasons, has been a pretty substantial success as tickets quickly sold out—the Chicago show reportedly sold out in less than two minutes. With that success, Stardew creator Eric Barone has taken some time to reflect on the tour, specifically the New York show and what it means to him. 

"It feels good, it feels really good because music has always been my primary thing even before I even conceived of possibly being a game developer. I wanted to be a musician," Barone says in a behind-the-scenes interview with NYC Town Hall (via GamesRadar). "Music has always been very special to me. I've always dreamed of people appreciating my music. So this tour, being here, and just seeing people come who are so excited to listen to the music is really satisfying to me; it's like my dream come true."

We all know that Stardew Valley took a lot of inspiration from Harvest Moon. Still, it also turns out that Barone made the soundtrack trying to emulate classic RPGs: "I wanted to create something that was kind of evocative of those classic Super Nintendo and PlayStation 1 era RPGs." 

Barone has previously joked about the lengths that he had to go to for people to listen to his music: "Growing up, I always wanted to be a composer, but no one ever wanted to listen to my music. So, after many years of failure, I finally discovered the secret. All I had to do was develop an entire video game from scratch, and then you'd finally listen to my music."  

It's certainly an extreme way of achieving your dreams, but honestly, the end result is pretty great. Not only do we get to enjoy Stardew Valley, but now there's also another way to appreciate the brilliant music. "Bringing the music to as many people as possible, whether that's through more people playing the game or through concert tours like this, is really satisfying for me," Barone says. 

But no matter how difficult it seems, the Festival of Seasons is proof that where there's a will, there's a way. Not only did Barone have to create an entire game just to showcase his music but he did it and made the soundtrack with no formal musical training. "I've always been into playing [music], but I never learned anything," Barone explains. "I don't know how to read notation, I don't know anything about music theory, it's all just by feeling." 

It's no secret that the developer of Stardew Valley, Eric "ConcernedApe" Barone, has poured his heart and soul into creating and refining the beautiful life-sim game. But like most things, this dedication can be a double-edged sword, as it has also stopped him from working on Haunted Chocolatier, his next game. 

"[Fan expectation] definitely puts pressure on me," Barone says in an interview with Aftermath, "but it's better to have a delayed game that's actually good than a bad game that's on time. When it's ready, that's when I'll release it. I'm not too concerned with the pressure. I don't feel like I owe anyone anything when it comes to Haunted Chocolatier. It's a game that I'm deciding to make. I don't need to make it."

Recently, Barone took time off from working on Haunted Chocolatier development to focus on  Stardew Valley's 1.6 update, which added a ton of new features and festivals.  "I was like, 'I can't just release a technical update because if I say there's a new Stardew Valley update, and there's literally no new content, I feel like people will be disappointed.' So, at first, it was just the Desert Festival, but I have this problem where once I start, I can't stop. I'm thinking, 'Oh, this isn't enough. It'd be really cool to add this. I would love to add this.'"

Even after the patch was released Barone said that he wanted to wait a bit longer until it was "bug-free and out to all platforms" before returning to work on Haunted Chocolatier. "Once I reopen the book on Stardew, I always have a hard time closing it again because I always want to add more things, make it better, make it cooler, make people happy," Barone says. "It's exciting. Every single thing I'm adding, I'm thinking about how people are going to play this, talk about it, and love it. It's gonna be part of their experience. It could make a memory that they might cherish forever."

Although there is undoubtedly a lot of pressure from fans who get excited by every tiny new detail about Haunted Chocolatier, most fans are just happy to see Barone carrying on with what he loves to do, confident that things are only going to get better. "You can tell from Stardew Valley how much he loves the game and its community, and I know he will be bringing that same energy to Haunted Chocolatier," one player says in a Reddit thread. Honestly, I'd be happy if Haunted Chocolatier turns out to be half the game that Stardew Valley is right now.

Yet another Stardew Valley patch has arrived, this one "mostly bug fixes and translation changes" according to creator Eric Barone. But that doesn't mean it's not important: This one keeps Mr. Raccoon from disappearing during the raccoon cutscene in multiplayer. I think we can all agree that's vital stuff.

I don't play Stardew Valley, but even so I really enjoy the patch notes. They're often inscrutable, yet somehow undeniably wholesome—which characterizes the game itself pretty well, too. Some of the changes are fairly conventional gameplay tweaks, but the fixes are quite often the sort of thing you just don't see elsewhere.

A few examples that catch my eye:

🦝 Fixed a case where Mr. raccoon could disappear during the raccoon cutscene in multiplayer

🦝 Fixed being able to give a wilted bouquet to your spouse

🦝 Fixed cases where you’d see Mayor Lewis’ giftbox note again when collecting 15 parsnips from a different chest.

🦝 Fixed prismatic hat effects not working in French

🦝 Fixed sewer event in German

🦝 Fixed soft lock when watching weather TV channel if tomorrow’s weather is custom

It's almost like a bizarre free verse haiku, inspired by either the best or the worst hallucinogens known to humanity. Is that too much of a stretch? At the very least, much of it is delightfully whimsical, even if I'm not entirely sure what "prismatic hat effects not working in French" means.

Barone has been on quite a tear since releasing the major Stardew Valley 1.6 update in March: The 1.6.4 update landed just last week, adding "two inappropriate names to the list to exclude from the name generator." That's maybe not whimsical in the strictest sense, but it is pretty funny. I'm sorry to say, however, that there's still no word on when the 1.6 update will come to consoles and mobile devices: Barone said those ports "are still in progress."

The full Stardew Valley 1.6.6 patch notes are below:

Balance and Gameplay changes:

-Bee houses now work with flowers in garden pots.
-“Minecart depot” alternative layout now only appears in the upper or lava mine areas.
-You can now turn the gold clock on or off
-Added coal -> mahogany seed trade at raccoons
-50% mastery XP now only applies to farming, as originally intended.

Translation changes:

-Reverted Chinese text to 1.6.3
-Reverted Chinese default font to the original
-Added an option to use the smooth font introduced in 1.6.4
-Added a dialogue font size slider for Chinese
-Added complete Russian translated movie & desert festival sprites
-Added option for Russian to use the “old” font

Bug fixes:

-Fixed a case where Mr. raccoon could disappear during the raccoon cutscene in multiplayer
-Fixed being able to trash Pierre’s Missing Stocklist, or give it away at the Feast of the Winter Star.
-Fixed being able to give a wilted bouquet to your spouse.
-Fixed issue causing only 1 omni geode to be produced from the skull cavern chest.
-Fixed crash when a save contains some invalid animal home data.
-Fixed a crash when talking to Penny in French.
-Fixed a malformed Willy farm event in German.
-Fixed an incorrectly blocking map tile in the Forest Farm map.
-Fixed some machines and some desert festival logic not working for Linux/macOS players using the compatibility branch.
-Fixed a case where an area was inaccessible in the volcano dungeon
-Fixed sewer event in German
-Fixed cases where you’d see Mayor Lewis’ giftbox note again when collecting 15 parsnips from a different chest.
-Fixed emily makeover event from being hard to skip
-Fixed Calico Egg Rating prize edge cases for farmhands
-Fixed prismatic hat effects not working in French.
-Fixed being able to “advance” the ready check menu by pressing Y, which lead to many issues.
-Fixed island outfits not being loaded for farmhands
-Minor optimizations.

Fixes for modded players:

-Fixed error showing non-flavored roe items.
-Fixed error if a mod sets an NPC’s ‘friends and family’ data to null.
-Fixed error loading a save containing enchanted weapons whose ID changed or data was removed.
-Fixed soft lock when watching weather TV channel if tomorrow’s weather is custom.
-Fixed temporary maps that aren’t part of a location not using seasonal tilesheets.
-Fixed summit cutscene showing custom fish with wrong sprites.

Changes for mod authors:

-In Data/Objects, added two new fields: CanBeGivenAsGift and CanBeTrashed. Setting CanBeGivenAsGift: false adds the not_giftable context tag automatically.

The Stardew Valley 1.6.4 update is now live on PC and it is surprisingly beefy, including new content, balance changes, visual improvements, fixes, and gameplay tweaks.

The 1.6.4 update was announced on April 10 with virtually no detail, as is the Eric Barone way, except that it would include "a new fishing thing, and some new mining-related stuff" and was expected to be ready "sometime next week," which of course is now this week.

The mine stuff includes 20 new "alternate" mine layouts and 20 new volcano mine layouts, which appear after you've met certain conditions, while the fishing thing is a "fish frenzy," which I assume means something like a group of piranha going bonkers, minus any actual deboning of cows—this is Stardew Valley, after all.

There are also four new "fairy styles," a new cutscene that will play after you've helped your new neighbors expand their family, space for eight additional non-fish items in fish tanks, and more options in the Raccoon Shop. The Chinese, Russian, Portuguese, Hungarian, Turkish, and Korean translations of the game have undergone edits, and there are numerous fixes for mod makers and users.

One of the more interesting items in the patch notes (for me, at least) is the addition of "two inappropriate names to the list to exclude from the name generator." Call me a Nosy Nelly if you will, but I am really curious what those names are.

Other bits in the patch notes, quite frankly I just do not understand, but I'm glad everyone is having fun.

No one can accuse Barone of goofing off since the release of the big 1.6 update to Stardew Valley that landed in March, but some players are wondering about the status of 1.6 on consoles, which is still pending. Barone said earlier this month that work on the 1.6.4 update "will not slow down the console release" of the 1.6 update, nor will it have any impact on the mobile version, but there's been no further word on when they'll be out.

The full Stardew Valley 1.6.4 patch notes are below.

New content & features

– Added 20 new ‘alternate’ mine layouts, which can start appearing after reaching the bottom of the mines.
– Added 20 new volcano mines layouts, which can appear after you’ve unlocked the shortcut between the caldera and the volcano entrance.
– Added fish frenzies.
– Added a special cutscene after you’ve helped your new neighbors grow their family to the max.
– Added 4 new fairy styles.
– You can now place 8 additional non-fish items into fish tanks.
– Raccoon shop now includes a trade for mystery boxes and golden mystery boxes.
– Vinegar can now be poured onto trees to stop them from ever growing moss.
– Shaving enchantment now causes tree-specific drops: (fern → fiddlehead fern, mushroom → red mushroom, mahogany → hardwood)

 Translation changes

– Many edits and improvements to the Chinese version (中文翻译问题说明和修改日志)
– Edits to the Russian, Portuguese, Hungarian, Turkish, and Korean translations.
– Changed the Chinese fonts to make them more appealing and readable.
– Changed Hungarian number spacing character from a comma to a period.
– Some improvements to Russian font.

Balance changes

– When you load a save, you’ll now unlock missed Steam achievements if needed (e.g. achievements gained while playing offline).
– Added mini-shipping bin as an expensive Qi gem shop purchase.
– Added more variety, and improvements, to Skull Cave treasure chests.
– Life elixirs now only restore health, and energy tonics now only restore energy.
– Wild seed spots are now rarer, but yield more seeds.
– Doubled the Iridium Golem’s chance to drop iridium.
– The monsters in the volcano entry level are now randomized each day.
– Using a treasure totem indoors no longer works. This prevents them from being wasted.
– Going down a level in the mines now makes you invulnerable for 1 second.
– Increased raccoon mystery box reward from 4 to 5.
– Farming experience now contributes to mastery experience at a 50% rate.
– Ice orb will no longer freeze a spider while it is in the air jumping.
– Removed red snapper from winter fishing quest pool, and sardines from the summer quest pool.
– You will no longer get calico rating points from going down the normal mines.
– Golden mystery boxes now have a small chance to yield an auto petter.
– Slightly reduced chance to find mystery boxes.
– Mine barrels and coal carts will now “refresh” at the start of each year.
– The order of mystery box rewards is now randomized per-player instead of per-save.

Visual improvements

– Qi club coins now show up in the shop menu.
– Various map edits and fixes.
– Removed Maru’s glasses from all beach portraits for consistency.
– Improvements to signage in some non-english languages (i.e. Chinese, French, and Russian)

Quality of life changes

– Added a 1.2-second delay after dropping an item, before it’s picked back up by the same player.
– Napalm rings are now non-destructive on the farm and inside the slime hutch (i.e. the explosion will only damage monsters).
– Added ctrl + right-click as an alternate toolbar drop hotkey.
– Receiving a “special notification” (e.g. first geode message) will no longer cancel out player actions such as eating or warping.
– Flopping fish no longer fall back into fish ponds.
– Crab pots now have a short time period after harvesting from them during which they can’t be removed (750ms).
– The Junimo bundle menu now only highlights items that can actually be placed in the selected bundle.

Other changes

– Minor optimizations.
– Added two inappropriate names to the list to exclude from the name generator.
– You can no longer give gifts to NPC’s during green rain year 1 (prevents incongruous attitudes). This also prevents a portrait issue with Demetrius.

Gameplay fixes

– Fixed disappearing pets bug.
– Fishing splash zones and ore pan points are now removed overnight.
– The prize ticket machine now consumes your ticket when you get the reward, rather than when you first press the button.
– For the purposes of perfection, the level 100 mines stardrop now has a more robust way to check if it’s been acquired.
– Fixed Monster Compendium not actually doubling all loot.
– Fixed geodes no longer dropping on the farm in normal circumstances.
– Fixed rare crash when spawning items overnight.
– Fixed player colliding with stuff during event cutscenes.
– Fixed pre-1.6 forged weapons having reduced stats.
– Fixed not being able to put a torch on the sprinkler you get as a CC reward.
– Fixed various bugs/crashes related to building a cabin.
– Fixed wild seeds in garden pots putting their final crop in the top-left corner of the map instead of the pot.
– Fixed “lost and found” chests (from night market and elsewhere) not working anymore in 1.6.
– Fixed a duplication bug with the “lost and found” chests.
– Fixed slime hutch floors reverting to the default after reloading a game.
– Fixed malformed casino shop red fireworks ID.
– Fixed pet adoption catch-all case only working with the animal catalogue, and only applying in year 2 specifically, rather than for any year 2 or beyond.
– Fixed ‘use legacy randomization’ option applied inconsistently when loading a save, which caused weird issues like broken green rain days.
– Fixed the case where you could permanently miss the ancient seed recipe if you grabbed the ancient seed packet but not the associated recipe, and then closed the museum rewards menu. Missing recipes will also be restored upon loading a file.
– Fixed issue with duplicated animals & building interiors from pre ~1.3 saves.
– Fixed end tables not being rotateable.
– Fixed an issue where empty barns/coops could not be removed by Robin on old saves.
– Fixed slime egg incubators letting you reclaim the egg before it hatches.
– Fixed farmhouse placement bounds to match the object placement restrictions around it.

Multiplayer fixes

– Synced some NPC Gift data in other languages.
– Fixed fireworks (and possibly other sprites) drawing behind stuff in multiplayer.
– Fixed “Build a Silo” quest not being completed for farmhands.
– Fixed Raccoon quest not being removed for all players.
– Fixed double trinket issue when a farmhand disconnects/reconnects.
– Fixed double and/or missing derby participants sprite issue in multiplayer.

Display text and localization fixes

– Many edits and fixes in translation text.
– Fixed a text parsing error for Asian languages which caused them to incorrectly wrap in some cases.
– Fixed spacing issues in Asian languages.
– Fixed several localization issues
– Fixed Russian line break issue.
– Fixed events not consistently handling gender-dependent text.

Cosmetic fixes

– Adjusted the draw order of basic objects so that debris will not be drawn underneath them as often.
– Placeable grass now offsets vertically a little if it would clip through a front-layer tile.
– Fixed seasonal world map not working for non-English players.
– Fixed flying monsters not being draw above things on the farm & volcano.
– Fixed reward icon in completed quest menu being visually offset.
– Fixed george’s TV clipping with farmer during green rain.
– Fixed movies not showing layered sprites (e.g. the eyeball in Mysterium).
– Fixed Qi club coins drawn below the lightmap.
– Fixed Qi coin overlay drawn during minigames.
– Fixed crane game audio not stopping when the game is forcefully closed.
– Fixed some tooltip padding issues.
– Fixed movie theater display issues on the world map.
– Fixed repeated dialogue selection sound if a control was plugged in but you are using a mouse.
– Fixed quest reward icon input offset issue.
– Fixed Joja Warehouse roof drawing above the weather (and possibly other similar cases).
– Fixed various map tile issues.
– Fixed a visual issue with a shadow in the farm house.
– Fixed able to swap two chests of the same type.
– Fixed machines sometimes wobbling when they’re not processing anything.

Changes for modded players

– Improved debug commands:

– Added debug commands to change pet types/breeds, to allow migrating older saves (setPreferredPet and changePet). This replaces the former toggleCatPerson command.
– The filterLoadMenu