Stardew Valley

You inherit your grandfather's overgrown farm, leave a miserable office job, and move to Pelican Town. That is the entire premise, and it is the reason half the people reading this have four hundred hours in it.

Underneath the cozy it is a very well built optimisation game. You have limited energy and limited daylight, and every day is a small puzzle about what is worth doing. The genius is that the game never punishes you for solving it badly. There is no fail state, no debt collector, no timer on anything that matters.

• Five skills: Farming, Mining, Foraging, Fishing and Combat. Each goes to level 10 and branches into professions.
• A town of villagers with birthdays, schedules, likes, dislikes and their own storylines.
• A mine, a desert, a jungle island, and a long endgame of perfecting things.
• Nothing is missable forever. Every season comes back around.

1. 1

   Clear a small patch, not the whole farm

   You have 15 parsnip seeds. Clear enough space for those, plus room to grow, and leave the rest of the debris for when you have better tools.

2. 2

   Water every single day

   Unwatered crops do not die, but they do not grow either. Watering is your morning routine until sprinklers arrive.

3. 3

   Forage everything you walk past

   Spring onions, daffodils, wild horseradish. Free money, free energy, and several of them are bundle items.

4. 4

   Meet everyone

   Talk to every villager once. It costs nothing, it starts friendship, and the town map fills in as you go.

5. 5

   Go into the mines on day 5

   The mines open once the landslide clears. Copper first, and take the elevator floors as checkpoints.

6. 6

   Sleep before 2am

   Passing out costs you money and a chunk of the next morning. Be in bed by midnight while you are learning.

The derelict building in town is the closest thing Stardew has to a main quest. Junimos live in it, and they will restore the valley's infrastructure in exchange for bundles of items: crops, fish, forage, minerals, artisan goods.

• Completing bundles gives you the greenhouse, the minecarts, the bus to the desert and the bridge to the quarry. These are real quality of life unlocks.
• The alternative is a Joja membership: pay money, get the same unlocks, and the Community Center becomes a warehouse.
• You can do either. Most players do the Center on their first save because the Joja route is deliberately, pointedly bleak.
• Bundles span all four seasons, so a full year is a realistic target rather than a failure.

Farming is the engine, but the multiplier is processing. Raw crops sell for a little. The same crop in a keg or a preserves jar sells for a lot.

• Spring: parsnips to start, then cauliflower and potatoes. Strawberry seeds from the Egg Festival are the best spring investment in the game.
• Summer: blueberries. They yield repeatedly from one planting and pay for everything else.
• Fall: cranberries for the same reason, plus pumpkins if you want big single payouts.
• Winter: nothing grows outside. Winter is for mining, fishing, relationships and building.
• Artisan goods: kegs for fruit into wine, preserves jars for vegetables into pickles, mayo and cheese from animals.
• Ancient Fruit is the long game: a rare seed, then wine, then a greenhouse full of it.

Every villager has a friendship meter measured in hearts, raised by talking daily and by gifts. Two gifts a week per person, plus their birthday, which counts eight times as much.

• Hearts unlock cutscenes, and the cutscenes are where the actual writing lives. Several of them reframe a character entirely.
• Twelve villagers are romanceable. Give a bouquet to move from friendship to dating, a Mermaid's Pendant to marry.
• Universally loved gifts exist (a Rabbit's Foot, a Prismatic Shard), but a liked gift someone actually cares about is cheaper and just as effective.
• Do not neglect the villagers nobody romances. Some of the best storylines in the game belong to people you cannot date.

Under the farming sim is a quiet, sad, occasionally supernatural story about a town that a corporation is slowly eating.

• Joja Corporation is the antagonist and it never once acts like one. It just offers convenience, and the Community Center route is the game asking whether you want that.
• The Junimos are forest spirits who work for gifts and vanish when the work is done. The Wizard translates for them, mostly.
• There is a shadow society under the mountain, a dwarf in the mines who needs a translation guide, and a monster in the sewer who becomes a roommate.
• The Mines, the desert, and Ginger Island each carry a different piece of the world's history, and the museum is where you assemble it.

Grandpa's shrine evaluates your farm at the start of year three. It is not a score you can fail in any meaningful way, and it is the closest the game comes to telling you it is proud of you.

• Build cabins on your farm and friends move in. Everyone shares the farm, the money (or separate wallets, your choice at setup) and the calendar.
• Everyone must sleep to advance the day, which is either charming or the source of every co-op argument.
• Split the labour: one person farms, one mines, one fishes, one handles the town relationships.
• Marriage between players is possible, with a Wedding Ring, and it is exactly as delightful as it sounds.

• Upgrade tools in winter or on rainy days. The blacksmith takes them for two days and you will miss them less.
• Rain means no watering. Spend rainy days in the mines or fishing.
• Fishing is hard until it is not. Practise on the small fish in the town river, and eat food that raises your fishing level.
• Check the TV every morning: weather tomorrow, and the Fortune Teller for luck, which matters in the mines.
• Stairs from clay and stone let you skip mine floors when your luck is bad.
• Do not sell your first Prismatic Shard.
• Play at your own pace. The game will still be there in year four.

• The Stardew Valley Wiki is exhaustive and accurate: gift tastes, bundle lists, crop profit tables.
• The in-game calendar in Pierre's shop shows every birthday and festival for the season.
• Ask in our Discord. This is the game the whole server has opinions about.