The ‘Stardew Valley Board Game’ Perfectly Captures the Cozy Magic of the Video Game
Through a hard day’s work and valuable friendships, you can save Stardew Valley from the clutches of the nefarious Joja Corp!
Everyone hates doing chores, except if they’re digital and cute. I can’t speak for everyone, but I jumped on that Animal Crossing: New Horizons train the moment it left the station. Inevitably, that train brought me back to my ultimate Simple Life Simulator: Stardew Valley. The popular video game drops you on an untended farm and asks you to clean it up, turn a profit, and hopefully make enough to keep the duplicitous Joja Corporation from buying up the whole valley.
Stardew Valley is a few years old but has remained relevant since its release. But now, with everything happening in the world, it’s picked up Steam again, this time headed up by a board game that perfectly encapsulates the vibes of the video game.
What is Stardew Valley?
Stardew Valley is a farming and community simulator that released back in 2016. However, unlike most popular games, it doesn’t really have any objectives or goals. It’s a life simulator and you can basically play however you want. Sure there are the sprites in the town hall, and the mines filled with monsters, but none of those are required to win.
Still, there are a couple of big things people tend to focus on: farming, mining and making friends. Beyond that, there’s fishing, cracking open geodes, and donating hidden treasures to the museum. The biggest draw, perhaps, is the ability to romance one of the many wonderful townsfolk. You can even romance a lovely purple-haired girl who, either from a quirk of coding or perhaps the game’s strangeness, likes to eat rocks.
How Does the Stardew Valley Board Game Work?
Stardew Valley is a cooperative worker placement, resource collecting game, much like the video game. Players hope to complete all the objectives set out by Grandpa and rebuild the community center. Each of Grandpa’s objectives is something like “fully explore the mines,” “catch a legendary fish,” or “earn a bunch of money.” They are all very concrete within the rules of the game. To rebuild the community center is a multi-step process.
Each room of the community center requires a bundle of resources to be turned in a number of times equal to the number of players. Players must harvest crops, fish, and forage for mushrooms to complete the bundles. However, these bundle cards are hidden at the start of the game. Revealing a bundle requires friendship. During their turns, players can give gifts to the town’s other residents, earning heart tokens. Each heart token earned can be spent to reveal community center bundles.
Does it Play Like the Video Game?
Yes, in so much as a board game can play like a video game. Stardew Valley is like a half dozen mini games packed into one. Players can spend their turn taking actions in the various spots around the valley. They can buy seeds to turn into crops, then harvest the crops, to sell for money to buy more seeds. Or they can tend to the animals by rolling the animal dice, collecting a resource for each animal rolled that the player has. Earning additional resources, if the player spent an action petting their animal to make them happy first. Like I said, this game is adorable.
But for the folks who shun the farmer’s lifestyle in favor of the epic pro-gamer hack-n-slash action of the mines, they can spend their turn fighting the monsters there. They roll 2 Stardew Dice and reference the current Mine card. They can take the resource at either cross-section of the results of their dice.
If that’s too thrilling, players can also spend their days fishing. By rolling the Stardew dice, the player can match the dice to any symbols on the fish tokens, taking multiple if they can.
Stardew Valley: An Endless Adventure
This isn’t even everything Stardew Valley has to offer. The rules are not complicated in the least. But there’s just so much to do and so many options for everyone. It’s like a worker placement game but there’s enough space for everyone. With plenty of objective cards and community bundles to spare, each game will require new things of the players. Discussion and planning is paramount. I love that this game has so many mechanics and options that everyone can be off doing their own thing. You’re still ultimately working together towards a common goal.
That’s the real heart of Stardew Valley.
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