I want to play Stardew Valley all the time, but I don’t have all the time to play Stardew Valley. Yup, it’s a double-edged sword. Or perhaps a tilling grub hoe would work better in this instance. Anyways, I’ll do my best to explain.
Stardew Valley is capable of devouring hours of your life. In your mind, you might think that this is the sort of game you can sit down and play for a little bit and then stop. That is false. Oh so wrong. It is amazingly difficult, at least for me, to not continue into a new day after the rooster crows and I check the TV for the weather report, my fortune, and if any new kitchen recipes are available to learn. I don’t even have a kitchen yet. If I step outside my house, it is inevitable that I’ll see something that needs my attention, whether there is a letter in the mailbox or crops to harvest or just the fact that my kitty cat’s bowl is empty. Unlike Animal Crossing: New Leaf, where a day in-game was identical time-wise to a day of real life, one could play a number of in-game Stardew Valley days over the course of a few hours. With so many things to do, it’s easy to lose yourself in your pixelated farm.
I won’t go into much detail about how Stardew Valley plays, as I think I covered most of it in my last post. In terms of progress on Perdido Farm, I just finished the summer season of my first year in Pelican Town, and autumn is now working its magic spell on me. Falling leaves and swirls of reds, oranges, and yellows–it really is the best season, and I’ll hear no other argument about it. I’m excited to grow some fall-only crops, which will help in my progress to upgrade the community center. Bring on all the gourds and stalks of corn and weird, other worldly mushrooms. I should also begin preparing for the winter, which is most likely a season where you can’t grow a ton of crops. Hmm.
However, I’d really like to talk layouts today. I’m terrible at them, as well as terrible about planning ahead. This is definitely the case in Stardew Valley, but I’ve also run into the same problem in games like Terraria, Minecraft, and Fallout 4. You’re given all these elaborate and open-ended tools to create things–farms, houses, settlements, etc.–and then it is up to you to either get creative or smartly efficient. In fact, my favorite update to Minecraft was when they added in NPC-occupied villages, so that I never had to worry about constructing a functional house for myself. The answer is always squatting, I guess. I mean, I’m okay on the creative side of things, and if you don’t believe me please come over to my house in Fallout 4‘s Diamond City to see how many paintings of cats I was able to hang up on the walls.
Unfortunately, went it comes to farms, efficiency is key. Sure, there’s merit in being creative and laying everything out in an eye-pleasing, organized manner, but you need to place a greater emphasis on ensuring your crops grow and can be cared for with ease. For Perdido Farm, this is not the case. I just sort of dug up the ground directly in front of my house, built some stone paths around it, and threw scarecrows and sprinklers in probably not the best spots because…well, I got the items and wanted to immediately place them into action without pausing to think for a split second where they could best be used. And now I feel somewhat stuck in what I’ve started, as it can be dangerous to unearth some of the items you placed and replace them. If I was better at all this, I’d have planned out my farm from day one and created something much more effective. I mean, look at some of these things.
Perhaps this is something I can focus on in the winter, in preparation for an even better spring harvest. Y’know, when I’m, at the same time, trying to worm my way into Maru‘s heart, of which, I am currently rocking four hearts with her. Also, if you are curious where that nifty turn of phrase in this blog’s title came from, check out the poem “Ode to Autumn” by John Keats.
Grinding Down 