UHH....the hours speak for itself

As you can probably tell by the obscene number of hours I’ve put into this game, I thoroughly enjoy playing it. Stardew is the top tier cozy game for me. If there ever was a game I’d call addictive, it’s this one. Literally every single person I talked to about this game said the same thing: they started playing and got *hooked*.
When I initially played the game, I did everything by the book. Collected all the things, befriended all the people, etc. The game is downright adorable, so I had a lot of fun discovering every little corner of the map, every little thing Stardew Valley has to offer. There is a surprising number of things to do. Depending on what you end up liking best, you can end up with very different farms by the time you are a few (in-game) years into the game.
Maybe you are more into taking care of the cute animals, maybe gardening and crops is more your thing. Or maybe it’s fishing or monster hunting. Heck, even foraging is a solid option. The game plays out of the course of a year (well, as many years as you feel like playing, but you get what I mean), so there are four different seasons. Each offers unique crops, unique fish, unique foraging items. There are even seasonal in game events that happen on specific days each year. Concerned Ape thought of so many tiny little things when making this game, it’s no wonder it came out as enjoyable as it is.
However, one of the giant selling points for Stardew that I should mention is the modding community. While the base game is tons of fun, there are so many free mods out there that allow you to tweak the game to make it a perfect fit for you. For example, I don’t really like the fishing or the socializing part of the game, so I added some mods that make those parts easier. There’s also tons of new content to be discovered, ranging from mods that will just give you a few new crops or animals to some that add entire new maps to the game. Every couple of months I tend to reinstall the game, add a new bunch of mods and then I sink a ridiculous number of hours into it again. The insane variability of the game is definitely one factor that has contributed to me enjoying the game so much. Even after more than 600 hours it doesn’t get boring because of that.
By the way, the fact that Concerned Ape is still actively updating the game too is amazing. I don’t mean just bug fixes. Update 1.6 added a lot of new content. Considering how lovely the game already was and how popular it is, he could just lean back but I applaud him for still putting so much effort in.
It’s difficult to pinpoint exactly what it is that makes Stardew just so good. It’s lovely all around with many different aspects that offer something for everybody. Honestly, when I’m having a bad mental health day, this is what I choose to play. That may or may not have something to do with the opossum wearing a pumpkin costume that I added to my game after frankensteining a few different mods together which gives me so much serotonin…
But yeah, this is such a chill game to sink time into. It’s so easy to lose track of just how long you’ve been playing already as well. I know so many people who played this game and I don’t know a single person who didn’t enjoy it. Sure, there might be elements you don’t like, but the way the game is structured you can just ignore them. Sure, it means you might miss out on some content but if you don’t like fishing, nothing bad happens if you just *don’t*. Even if you don’t install any mods there is a lot of room for shaping the game the way you want it to be.
If there was only one game I would get to recommend to people, it would for sure be Stardew. I literally have not a single bad thing to say about it.

Люблю своїх курочок <3