How Stardew Valley ushered in the farming sim renaissance
It feels like with every new batch of gaming news streams we get, they’re accompanied by memes about whichever game genre dominates the announcements and updates. Over the summer, there was an endless stream of dark space marine shooters, and after the news streams that rolled through this week, it seems there’s a new genre taking over the industry for the next few months: farming simulators.
Ooblets, I Am Future, Dreamlight Valley, Potion Permit, Bear and Breakfast, Witchbrook, My Time at Portia, Wytchwood, Homestead Arcana, Little Witch in the Woods, Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life — the list of upcoming or newly released farming/community sims never-ending these days. This is excellent news for me, considering it’s one of my favorite genres ever, and you can bet your bottom dollar I’m playing as many of them as I can.
While farming/community sims have been around for a long, long time, I think we can accredit a lot of their recent resurgence to the success of one stellar indie game: Stardew Valley. It’s one of those games that’s simple enough to pick up and start playing regardless of your skill level and even regardless of where you are in any given save file, yet still complex enough for players to challenge themselves and min-max the crap out of it if they want to.
The controls are simple and you can run it on anything, which means it’s available (as well as affordably priced) on every conceivable platform. The game has fostered a rich modding community, who enjoy putting a fresh spin on the gameplay, story, characters, aesthetics, and so on.
Plus, it’s the passion project of a single developer, and has all of the charm and care you might expect from someone who truly loves what they’re making. All of these
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