The nights are getting longer, colder, and more dreary as Edinburgh winter looms. In times like these, I need my favourite games to warm me up.
Stardew Valley is that game – a farming sim where you move to a countryside village and take over your late grandfather’s farm.
It’s not just about raising animals or growing crops (although a lot of it is about that if you want to make a living). You get to meet people, discover new places and become increasingly entwined with the world of magic.
There’s also infinite possibilities for customisation – my house is currently a giant aquarium filled with puffer fish, I have a cat (a video-game version of my own cat, Jorah) and all my chickens are named after things precious to me – Grogu, Egg and Gary (The Snail).
Stardew Valley often gets a bad rep in the gaming community, it’s sometimes seen as a ‘girly’ game – in other words, it’s not a proper video game – and to that I say, bullshit.
The game is a genuinely beautiful exploration of what community means, of changing relationships and our own connection to the natural world.
Your progress in the game is dependent on your interaction with nature and the ‘hidden’ world within. You get to experience all the seasons in such a short span of time, something I really appreciate as the days are getting colder, shorter and darker.
You also celebrate all sorts of festive occasions, such as the annual gathering of the jellyfish – just as awesome as it sounds – and the winter night market.
Stardew Valley gives you a choice – engage with nature, or take the easy way out and feed into the growling engine of capitalism. There are different journeys you can take depending on what you want to get out of the game, which means hundreds of hours can be spent discovering new things.
Sure, at the end of the day it’s a cozy farming sim. But there’s nothing wrong with that, and that leads me on to a wider point.
We need to stop being ashamed of the games we play, or feel like we have to play a certain genre of games to be considered cool. We should just play games because we like playing them.
This isn’t really a ‘defence’ of Stardew Valley. My playing of it, or its popularity in the gaming community, needs no justification.
As the world is becoming increasingly abysmal, it’s really nice to be able to spend a couple of hours escaping somewhere where your biggest concerns are feeding your chickens and checking in on the resident wizard.
“Stardew Valley” by DePictM is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.