Finding games like Stardew Valley.

Many of our team have spent countless hours searching Steam, sorting by newest entries with the tag ‘pixel art’ and ‘indie games’ currently in early access with the hopes of finding games like Stardew Valley.

Many of us started our career as indie developers and understand the relationship the indie developer has with their game.

Playing it every single day over countless years gives you insight into every aspect of the game that traditional game studios don't have due to their size and the complexity. So when we're looking for games like Stardew Valley, really what we're looking for is a game where someone has sat and thought about this game over and over and over again to the point where in Concerned Apes situation, they've even rebuilt parts of the system or the game multiple times. Why? Just to make it that much better, or even better, because after years of playing it, they’re bored and want to make it eve better.

What is it really that we love about games like Stardew Valley?

Firstly, what did Stardew Valley do as a game? It created this environment where you just wanted to hang out. It started a cosy game adventure for many indie game lovers. For the first time ever, you could create this beautiful world for yourself, but also explore. And Stardew Valley had a bit of everything for everyone. You had this fun, almost roguelike dungeon combat. Jumping into the mines, progressing deeper through the levels to extract better resources, which you could then take to further your idle meta progression with your farm. And for those that love base builders, building that farm was extremely exciting and uniquely creative. Never have I thought so deeply about where I wanted to place my strawberrys in relation to my green beans. In those moments, I felt like a farmer as I balanced the aesthetics with the optimal sprinkler formation. Then you had the relationship side of it, trying to manage different relationships in Stardew Valley to progress and ulimately complete the gam. And for the diehard achievement hunters, you had the community centre, which was the checklist of tasks you had to complete gifting us with 100% completion on Steam in reward for our devotion.

But that's all just nitty gritty game developer justification.

If we really think about what made Stardew Valley so wonderful, and why there are so many games like Stardew Valley emerging, it was because it created an emotional attachment to the world. One of the ways it did that was through its graphics, its environmental storytelling, the sound effects. Sitting at the dock and fishing for hours, just so you could hear the seagulls and watch the waves. There was a calming nature to it, which many games strive to achieve, but few capture. Stardew Valley also brought back the pixel art genre in a very serious way. It showed us that you could create a game in pixel art that would be a work of art, that players love and play time and time again. It reignited the pixel art genre, and I think many games like Stardew Valley try to capture that pixel art aesthetic. Firstly because it's timeless, but also it's a signal to gamers that the person making this maybe didn't have millions of dollars, and maybe aren't the world's greatest artists, but they have an idea and are passionate about trying to make that idea come to life. And more often than not, it's the idea that's more important than, say, the graphics. And pixel art affords the developer the opportunity to create something whilst also making it look kind of good without the massive overheads of traditional AAA 3D games.

If I was to pinpoint other games like Stardew Valley, my first guess is, or the first game that comes to mind is Spiritfarer.

Spiritfarer is a magical game like Stardew Valley which expands on the adventure and exploration elements of Stardew Valley, whilst capturing the base builder and relationship management.

You could in essence argue that they are fairly similar like-for-like games, but what really sets Spiritfarer apart is its narrative and grander narrative structure. What it does so well, however, is provide a couch-coop experience for gamers to sit down and play with a friend or play with their partner, and I think this is a genre that isn't discussed often enough, and in truth, I believe at least that couch co-op games or co-op games are far more powerful than many gamers anticipate. The ability to play Stardew Valley with a spouse was a great way to introduce your partner into gaming, it was a gateway into serious gaming, and Spiritfarer did a similar thing.

When we look at games like Stardew Valley, we also have to look at co-op games

Or games that allow you to collaborate or play with someone else, because that's one of the beauties of Stardew, and with their recent update adding cross-platform multiplayer support, it’s clear it has reignited the Stardew fanbase quite heavily.

At the same time, if you love Stardew Valley, another game that comes to mind is Factorio. The reason for that is Factorio feels a lot more like a very hardcore version of some of the Stardew mechanics. You could argue they're completely dissimilar, but if you love Stardew, and you think of yourself asa hardcore Starcraft fan or part-time base builder then you probably will love Factorio. Instead of managing a farm, you're managing a base on a different planet, and instead of going out into the mines, you're going and taking out aliens nearby that are trying to attack you. There isn't any narrative, there isn't any thematic overture. However, if you've played Stardew Valley and you love the farming, then Factorio will probably provide you with that level of base building at a far grander level.

Speaking of games like Stardew Valley, I think we also have to discuss some of the games like Unpacking

Unpacking is a pixel art game that is quite literally a game about unpacking items from cardboard boxes and placing them in a bedroom. The whole game is a beautiful pixel art experience. You'd think a game about unpacking would be boring, but actually what it does is create a cozy environment for you to enjoy something you would traditionally find quite boring and monotonous, which is a fascinating experience. As you play Unpacking, you realise that the game, through its game mechanic of unpacking items, quickly reveals a grander narrative following the life of a woman who's transitioning through different stages of her life. As she grows up, and it's a beautiful story, you can understand so much from the subtle changes in items moving in and out of her life, or just the organisation of them. But it's a cozy game.

If we're going to talk about the cooperative elements of games like Stardew Valley, then we should probably talk about Cupman and Mughead

If you enjoyed going into the mines with a friend in Stardew Valley, then you're likely going to enjoy Cupman and Mughead. It's a far more hardcore, souls-like, co-op platformer, where you take on a series of bosses, but the beauty of it is it's built to be played with a friend. It's a couch co-op game, and so you can sit and play with a friend and dive deeper into a more complex combat and boss fight mechanic. It doesn't have farming, it doesn't have the exploration, but the narrative and the art are fantastic, and one would argue that of all of the soul-like games or platformers that require these complex mechanics in order to beat raid bosses, Cupman and Mughead is the coziest of them all.

So to conclude

Stardew Valley has brought light to many genres and reignited others, from introducing a cozy game genre, a co-op rebirth, or a reignition of the couch co-op genre, and also farming sims in general, which I think now there are too many. It's going to be exciting to see what games like Stardew Valley try to do to push the farming sim to the next level. We had Farmville, we had Stardew. What’s next?