Stardew Valley

Game intro: You're pretty bored working a 9 to 5 job stuck at some office all day long. Out of the blue, you get a message saying you know own a farm (I won't spoil how or why) and decide to trade your boring office life for the challenges of working your new farmlands.

(release trailer)

Stardew Valley is considered by its players a pretty relaxing game to play, as the gameplay is pretty intuitive and chill and it has a very amazing soundtrack to make it even better.

The game mechanics and goals are pretty simple to learn since you'll get quests and information from the NPCs telling you what you're supposed to do next. Building stuff and upgrading your tools is also pretty intuitive: if you want to add new buildings to your farm (such as coops and barns), you need to talk to Robin, the carpenter; if you want to upgrade the quality of your farming tools, you need to speak with Clint, the blacksmith. Also, your tools never break, so you don't need to worry about that either.

There's a lot to do in Stardew Valley: you can gather random forages around the world, tend to your farm crops and animals, go fishing, explore the mines or try to befriend the locals. Or dig into people's trashcans and see what treasures they may be hiding. There will be some quests along the way, but they're all optional really, so you can just take your time and play the game the way you want to play it.

When it comes to the actual farming, you can take care of your crops, animals or beehives. Or simply go a completely different path: some people make whole their virtual money by crafting and selling booze. It's all about finding something that you find interesting about the game and running with it.

The most important aspect of Stardew is that the whole game (concept, pixel art, dialogs, quests, music, coding) was done by only one guy! Even though it was already released a couple years ago, the game still has constant updates to introduce new content (animals, buildings, events...) and just recently got improved to also support a 4 player co-op multiplayer system.

Also, the Stardew community is one of the nicest and most helpful ones I've ever known in a gaming community, and the game fully supports mods if you're into that sort of thing.

Despite the simplicity of the game, Stardew Valley is one of my favorite of all times (I even made some mods for it) and I definitely recommend it to anyone who is looking to try out a new game.

What about you? Have you ever played Stardew Valley before? Let me know in the comments below.