Introduce me to…

Stardew Valley is an indie farming simulator that mixes a chunk of rpg goodness, dungeon crawling, crafting, and city building to create something that will suck your life away. In a good way of course!

Designed and developed over 4 years by Eric Barone, Stardew harks back to a golden age in 2d pixelated graphics that made consoles such as the Super Nintendo such an enduring fan favourite.

Heavily inspired by the classic Harvest Moon series, Eric’s farming opus offers a welcome change in pace from modern twitch gaming offering hundreds of hours of relaxed, play at your own pace, farming fun.

So get your boots on.
Grab your shovel.
It’s time to start sowing and reaping.

Rat Race Relief

On first starting a new game, I was treated to a beautifully animated intro that explains a little back story behind the main characters reasons for starting their own farm.

It shows you a dire existence where I was locked in a corporate world surround by eye site destroying computer screens, endless desks, and 24/7 fluorescent lighting.

That rat race had gripped me, sunk its claws in deep, bleeding me of any will to escape.

But an opportunity to shake free of modern life’s crushing grasp presented itself to me. My in game grandfather had left me a small farm situated on the outskirts of sleepy village.

Dilapidated and run down, the town sits waiting for a saviour. For something, someone to ignite a spark on their fire and rekindle the ‘good-old-days.’

But in spite of the obvious hardship, it a little home to call my own. A welcome retreat from the concrete mega-jungle. A move away from the chase-your-own tail madness of modern living. I traded in pen and keyboard. Instead of working the office, my calling is to work the land. I can smell the silage already.

And so, this is where my journey begins. This is where my life away from the tangle of roads starts.

My first main issue to decide was whether to play as man or a woman. Of course, being man, I felt my in-game avatar should mirror this.

After choosing to play as a generic young fellow I was given the choice of 5 different maps to start my farm on.

Each one comes with pros and cons but each offered a chance to enhance the way I wished to play.

You see Stardew isn’t just a farming game, it offers the chance to partake in many different professions. Mixing and matching jobs at leisure to create a personal gameplay experience.

One map would give me the opportunity to fish more. Another would afford more opportunities to explore a mine. I will touch on these jobs in more detail in a later section.

Early on, Stardew made it abundantly clear that it wanted me to play my way. It positions itself as the ultimate sandbox farming game. To the point where I could ignore the farming entirely and saunter off into the world enjoying the other activities.

My little farm was never treated as ball and chain. Farming is a choice, not a necessity. And it isn’t just for growing plants and rearing animals, of which there is lots to do and see.

My farm, my home is a jumping off point to be part of this wonderful world. To join the village community. To create a job in niche that I can call My own.

Farming is just one tiny part of the total Stardew Valley package.

Clearing The Way

Having chosen the map I will play on, I was dropped unceremoniously into my grandfathers old farm house. The farm had been left to degenerate into dilapidated run down state so the first thing I was tasked with was cleaning up natures mess.

Having been left to nature for so long, the ground had become a heaving chaos of weeds, rocks and tree stumps.

Much sweat, toil, and calloused fingers later, and the dirt of the land was bear and flat. A brown lake on a breeze-less day.

I looked down at my controller, fingers aching from the heard work, half expecting to see dirt under my finger nails, abrasions and small cuts covering my new-to-labour hands.

I looked over my newly cleared allotment, and it started to rain. Pixelated clumps of blue fell from the sky and dusty dirt became speckled with damp spots. And for a moment I could swear, the smell of dry mud and fresh rain filled my room, a signal that a hard days work was done.

Seeding The Way

After I had cleared the farm, the first thing that needed doing was buying and planting seeds. I didn’t have a lot of money at the beginning to do much else so cultivating my first crop felt a little like a tutorial, but with less hand holding than most games.

I popped into town and there in the centre was a shop that sells every type of seed for every type of plant imaginable. Seeds that offer high value produce. Seeds for crops that you could harvest multiple times. Basically, there were seeds for everything.

I could specialise or generalise my farm however I liked. There are even crops that grow better depending on the time of year they are sown. The season was something I would learn to beware at all times. It greatly effected what could and couldn’t be grown.

The year in Stardew is simplified into 4, 28 day long months. Each of which represents one of the 4 seasons.
This simplified years makes it far easier to judge when it best time to sow different seeds or reap different crops.

Back at the farm, the seeds are easy to plant. Selecting them from the inventory, I placed them where ever I liked in my allotment. After a short think, I picked a pleasing square shape near the house. Less walking that way.

Having planted a fertilises my seeds the only ingredients needed now were time and a little water. Another hard days work completed. I looked over my creation and the smell of manure flowed out of the TV. As if the display were a car window wound down while driving past busy farm. Ahhh, I love the smell of cow shit in the morning!

Harvest To Sell

Given time, and a bit of love, all my crops would sprout ready to be plucked from the stem. Harvesting my own crops turned out to be a far more fulfilling experience that I had anticipated. I had nurtured these plants to maturity with my own bare hands (Ok, thumbs on sticks but still) and coaxed a bounty of fruit and veg from them in return.

After a hard days reaping, I placed the newly harvested crop in my inventory.

I was aching, I was tired I was utterly spent. Perspiration running down my back, cloths sticking to me like duck tape, I retired to the house. I’d be selling the next morning.

Upon waking, I walked into town and sold my crop for a handsome some of money. I then reinvested in seeds and did the whole thing – seeding, growing, harvesting, selling – again and again to make plenty more cash. But why? What can an enterprising entrepreneur buy in Stardew?

It turns out quite a lot actually. Stardew offered a huge amount of options for my spending pleasure. The people of Stardew always seemed to offer a financial moral choice. Do I spend cash on improving the town? Or do I spend money on buying a new pen for the pigs? These decision had long lasting effects, some which were even permanent and game changing.

In the town I could buy new buildings, upgrade existing buildings, improve peoples houses, Build completely new houses.

I also had the option to upgrade all my tools multiple times. I could buy new weapons and armour to explore the deeper recess of the mines. That sounds fun.

Or I could just spend all my money on creating the perfect farm. It was entirely up to me. (new swimming pool in the back yard it is then.) But whatever I decided to do there was always something else to buy. Some other object or upgrade to always aim for.

Job Centre

As touched on earlier Stardew offered me a plethora of job opportunities for me to play around with. Instead of being pushed down one gameplay path, I was offered a wide range of career that I could mix around to suit my own play style.
The career include but aren’t limited to:

• Farming
• Exploring mines
• Treasure hunting
• Fishing
• Raising livestock
• Crafting
• And Cooking

And that’s to name but a few. Each job type can be tinkered with, played with at my leisure, at any point.

If I didn’t like a particular job, I could,, without penalty, drop it and do something else. There are no RPG skills that held me back. I choose what direction I wanted to head in and forged onward.

I could even leave the farm completely behind and just use it as a base for sleeping.

Each profession offered deep and varied gameplay and could easily standalone as a separate game.
Each offers such depth and breadth of gameplay that you would never have to touch the farming if you didn’t want to. I hardly did any farming on my play through deciding to explore the mines instead and see what’s there.

Take my mining experience for example. I delved into the dark depths of the mine in search of many an ore and trinket. But the cave is a labyrinth. Ever ready to hide its truths from me.
Procedurally generated, each level is vast in size and, as you descend, get ever more dangerous. But the pay off is amazing loot. I found lots of gems and even more ore to sell. Thankfully the town’s foke seem to have an endless supply of cash to pay me for everything.

Even after tens of hours playing I’m no nearer the bottom of that pit. I haven’t a clue what monsters, what rarities lay awaiting discovery.

Towns Folk

Rise out of the mine and I found the town to be a little universe of possibility every time I visited. Each pixelated characters that runs around has their own lives. Their own needs and wants. Their own dreams and hopes.

Some are families with children pushed out the door to school and parents busily getting to work. Others are newly weds trying to find there feet in an unforgiving world.

Just as in any community there are the average people, forgettable people, and incredible memorable people. But each is so important in creating a weave of township credibility. I walked the streets of Stardew and slowly teased out details what people will do or where they will be. Or when there birthdays are.

One chap I met was a slightly depressed war veteran who’s son was desperately shy. But with no wife in site. What happened to her? She was never talked about and to this day I wonder what happened.

There is a homeless man I often talked to. I could choose whether to help or shun him with consequences for both.

There is even a secret affair going on between two town’s folk. Though I was never told this directly. Only fleeting glimpses of them together behind closed door. Leaving bar at the same time. A brief appearance behind a building before walking off.

There are so many interesting characters that each have their own issues, there own problems that we can all empathise with in our own day to day lives. They all have a little story, good or bad, to tell.
The town is not a collection of pixels, it’s a collection of people. Realised as well as any game I have played before.

It’s a community that feels alive. Each person struggling with things we all have. Paying bills. Feeding children. Loosing loved ones. It’s this that drove me through the game. This connection though digital felt real enough to pour my heart and soul into bringing the little town of Stardew back from the dead.

The restoration of this beautiful town is what drives me forward to accumulate wealth. Not to buy stuff for my own selfish needs. It creates a bubble of selflessness that only the most cynical of gamer would willingly burst.

This is what Stardew is all about. It’s not really a farming sim. It’s a community building sim. One I couldn’t help but embrace.

Conclusion

Eric has created a game offers deep mechanics and is just fun to play. But the man has created something special here. He’s created a masterpiece that compels you to really care about the inhabitants of Stardew Valley.

My soul purpose in playing Stardew changed from building a farm and getting away from the rat race, to preserving an entire villages way of life. From self-gain to philanthropic selflessness in one game. Now that’s what I call self-growth.

It also touches on a number of important real world messages. These include stopping corporations destroying the small mans way of life. The environment and many other subtle messages that Eric has tried to communicate through the art of gameplay and storey telling.

And, because of this, the game works on so many levels. It pulled my senses and emotions this way and that. It’s a game that had me walking away questioning my own choices, my own contribution to society.

For that, it transcends the simple idea that this is a must play. Instead Stardew valley is a must experience.

I came away enthused by all it offered and a better person for participating in its world.

And for that reason, it’s a game that every one of us should own.

Buy Now! (amazon.com)

Introduce Me To…

There’s a killer in town. A Minecraft killer.

Travellers Tails, the makers of Lego Batman and every other decent Lego game of the past 10 years, presents the ultimate block builder for Lego fans, for any fans of creative games.

Lego worlds takes Minecraft’s creativity, pumps a cocktail of steroids into its digital arm, and improves on the blocky colossus in every way.

In Lego world you don’t just chip away at the land. One, slow, block, at a time. NO, no. Instead, Lego Worlds throws the most powerful 3D Lego tools at you. It doesn’t just just want you to play, it want you to become a creation god.

The master builder.

You will have the power of Lego creation thrust upon you.

Whether you wish to build brick-by-brick, or make massive, landscape stretching changes. Lego world can help you make it happen. Within seconds, you will be making mountains that climb into the sky and valleys that stretch deep into its voxel based terrain.

Lego Worlds is the new creative king in town. It time to kick the cubes of Minecraft into touch.

It time to welcome back the original brick builder king.

Worlds of Lego

Jumping into the creationist dream, the first thing Lego Worlds presented me with was the create your avatar screen.

Here I have to create my little Lego man, or woman that I take into each world.

At first, your limited to a simple astronaut outfit.

Thankfully, as you play, new characters and options spring up like plastic flowers in Lego summer. And thats not the end as each character is customisable with a huge amount of accessories. Giving you the option to apply your own personal touch.

The avatar tool, though simple, gives almost as much customisation of your character as you have with the worlds.

Once your little Lego person is sorted, I was pushed into my first world.

Every Lego filled world is randomly generated using a voxel come 3D engine that a uses a number of pre-set themes to mix up the graphics. Each theme offers a unique set of items and brick types for you to collect and use in your later creations.

On my travels I found many different Lego varieties including: a candy theme, city, dinosaur, Western , car, farming world, and marsh land.

When a new generate world is generated there is always somewhere or something to discover. Whether it be unique items or a new vehicle, there is always something hidden in shadow waiting for the light of discovery to shine upon it.

Additionally, each theme offer a huge amount of variety.

I created 2 Western worlds and one had a small ranch that was populated with horses and sheep. The other world had a small town with inhabitants that buzzed with chores. Bars, a Barbour, and shops were laid out in lines making streets and all could be entered. Clad in unique furniture and ornaments.

It was amazing to see this little town spring up out of nothing, alive and with purpose.

Even if you have seen a theme multiple times you have actually seen all the theme has to offer.

Looking past the theme and you find the structure of the world is reminiscent of Minecraft. Just on a much smaller scale.

Each giant cube of Lego is playground for the creative with undulating hills and deep caves ready to spill secrets or dissolve away.

Everything in Lego Worlds is completely destructible.

The land can be burrowed through. Buildings can be levelled. Rocket launchers will punch holes through walls and TNT will leave pocket the land with craters.

Even simple items such as drills, can pierce the plastic skin sending shafts deep into the giant cube.

You can assemble and dismantle everything , when ever you like, in whatever way you like

It’s a stupendous achievement with each level constructed from billions of procedurally generated bricks. It’s mesmerising to see them all look so Lego like, so ‘plasticky’. It’s perfect.

Having been dumped into the world the first thing I was pleased to find was an easy control scheme. For the most part anyway.

First, the game is played in 3rd person instead of first person like mine craft. It gives you a broader view of the world. Places you in it so you can get an idea of positions and size.

You can run and jump around easily enough. But the controls really shines when traversing vertical cliffs or tricky to navigate caves and shafts.

Your little Lego man will cling on to any surface as as if his little plastic life depended on it. You can clamber up and down and he will do this automatically.

Additionally you can also hang from ceilings. So if you have dug down and fallen into a cave system you can climb the walls then climb across the ceiling to escape.

In person, it look a little broken, sometimes the controls reverse or limbs fidget and shake as they try to animate correctly. But this is small price to pay for the ease of use and confidence it brings to your game.

You can go off exploring, start falling to your death and just move toward a wall and you will cling on.

Yes sometimes your control can suddenly revers. Thinking backward is foreword. But once you get used to what triggers this , the universal climbing ability is fantastic and lets you explore the world fear free.

However within these great canvases for creation, there is not a great deal of story. What little narrative exists revolves around you becoming a master builder. But your already a master builder, aren’t you?

To that end, you’re tasked with jumping from world to world finding golden bricks.

These gold cubes are hidden throughout the the many worlds you visit and are readily available needing only the simplest of tasks completed to acquire.

That all sounds rather simple and interesting, until you realise that many of the key features of the game are hidden behind a pay wall. And the currency are these hidden bricks.

Want to open up the paint tool? Then you are going to need a certain number of the golden things. How about the camera to take snaps of your creations? Sorry fella, you need 30 golden bricks until you get privilege.

And getting them can be frustrating. With the game tasking you with meaningless copy and past missions.

Fortunately, it should only take an hour or 2 to get enough golden blocks to open the important stuff. But it’s 2 hours we shouldn’t have to spend.

Travellers, you are hiding the best parts of your game behind the crappiest parts. Sort it out.

But this is made up for by the collectathon that is scanning which is one of the major gameplay elements of Lego worlds.

Early on, you are given what is called a scanning gun. This Sci-Fi looking chain-gun lets you point at any non-brick object and scan it.

Once scanned, the item’s transmitted into a Lego encyclopedia that’s accessed in your inventory.

Anything from animals and trees to vehicles and chairs can be scanned and stored in the copious innards of the encyclopedia.

Here scanned items can be searched through and looked at, displaying the 3d model on screen. It’s like Lego Pokemon: Gotta scan ‘em all!

Once an item is stored it can be bought with Lego studs.The same studs that are in every Travellers Tales games. These can be acquired by completing missions or destroying objects.

One you have enough studs you can by any item you want, How about a cop car for 5,000 studs?

And once you have paid the access fee, it is yours to place in the world whenever you want in whatever number you want. So you could, if wanted to, launch 50 cars into the air, like some vehicular artillery gun, to rain down on a hoard of on-rushing zombies.
It may be a bit overkill, but lets face it, the fact that you can lob cars around is cool.

But the items can also be placed on the ground or walls for decoration.
If you see a tree you like, scan it, buy it, then place hundreds of them to create a forest.

The only thing holding you back is your imagination. And probably the CPU power of your console. If you start placing thousands of the things.

And once you have a scanned enough options you can move on to what I would consider the main even to Lego worlds.

The creation tools.

There are a plethora of tools to create buildings and sculpt the landscape.

At your command are tools that fill in chasms or create undulating hills, tools that create structures brick by back busting brick. Tools that let you paint desert into lush grass. When you don’t like it turn it back again. There is a tool to do everything you expect and more when creating a structure out of bricks.

Whether you want to recreate some of the greatest monuments in the world, or build a humble house, the Lego World tool-set will empower you to create as simply or complex a structure as you like.

During my travels through brick strewn world, I felt the need to create a little house to call home. So I put the god like tool through a little workout. Minecraft, By comparison is a stunted beast. Minecraft has you hacking away at little cubes yet here, here you are God. Destroying mountains, and ripping open valleys.

The world your clay for creation. It invites you to create some majestic structures, beautiful landscapes, and on the odd occasion, unmentionable body parts.

Structures that are so much more detailed so advanced that Minecraft, can be created within minutes.

However, my eminent lack of creativity meant I had to settle for a small hovel in the corner of a dusty western map. I started building brick-by-brick. Four walls? good. A door way? yes! And a couple of little holes let some light stream in. With the basics done. I summoned forth from the Lego ether a roof to go atop my little shed.

It would be nice to have some cover from the rain after all. Now the basics were done I had a nice hollow cube to play with.

With that done, I started going all Ikea on my creation and decked it out with some furniture. First I threw a bonfire into the centre. Ok, not exactly Ikea standard issue but still. A bed and chair followed. Then finally a nice brown door to nobody could steal my stuff.

It was rudimentary to to say the least, your garden shed would be bigger and more complicated than this. But it was my home damn-it! I built it with my own two thumbs!

Once my creative juices had ceased to a trickle. I took a look at other tools that presented themselves. I found, to my delight, that Lego World lets you save your creations as prefabs.

You can create a little home, highlight the lot, then save it for later use, and/or share it with the community.

This feature has such huge promise. You could build a Millennium Falcon house, save it as a prefab, then share it with the world. How cool is that!

However, one issue that I did find with the creation tools was the menu system. Be prepared to pick up a scythe and hack your way through this one.

It’s a confusing mess of pop up bubbles and icons that I’m sure were Travellers Tales thought would be incredible simple. But it’s the exact opposite: It’s ind boggling, annoying, and uncommunicative.

Sometimes it can get confusing where you access everything. Changing brick type or brick colour should not be so hard and your not really shown how to do anything in any effective way.

Yes, the game does present you with a short tutorial for each tool. But these show and tells lack at the moment, they do a good job of the showing but miss out a little telling. SO a bit of experimentation and self learning is in order whenever you get a new tool.

Though help could be at hand. A future patch has promised a revamp of the tool menu. At least the dev’s know there’s a problem and are actively fixing it.

On your travels you will come across a large amount of items that can be collected, played around with, or given to NPCs to complete missions

Items include a rack full of weapons that Call of Duty would be proud of. They vary from crappy pea shooters to shoulder mounted rocket launchers that blast craters in the lands.

There is also a sizable booty of melee weapons to be had that varies from carrots, yes this was my first weapon, to swords that put an end to zombie-Lego-men in one swing.

However there is one problem with ranged weapons: they are impossible to aim.

There is, for whatever reason, no way to manually aim your shots. You automatically lock on to anything that moves in front of you. This would lead to some comical moments, if it wasn’t for the fact that you usually end up dead if you don’t get your shots off.

You could have a snake trying to chomp your toe, or a rabbit that just wants to munch on that carrot. But the game cant tell the difference. As far as its concerned they are both mortal enemies and need to die.

In fact the cute bunny is seen as a greater threat. I will try to shoot the slithering beast in the face. But usually, poof, white fir and rabbit ears are flying off in every direction. Poor rabbit.

Travellers Tales, please think of all these poor rabbits I’m needlessly slaughtering. Sort out the shooting.

But weapons aren’t the only, items that drop in the world. Having delved into gritty caves, and fungus filled labyrinths, and bounded over hills, many a treasure chest greeted me with sparkling loot that helped me interact with the world.

I found drills that pushed through rock vertically and horizontally. Explosives that vaporised bricks for fun. You can even find less useful items like apples. Though I’m sure they have some use.

You’ll even find a huge selection of vehicles. All of which have there own special abilities that range from sirens on Cop cars to rock boring machines that let you burrow through the land. There is even a fire breathing dragon. Because, why not ay?

Each one of Lego World’s worlds is packed tight with bits and bobs to find.

A Tub Full Of Fun

For the creative out there, Lego Worlds is must have.

For the creative maestro, Lego Worlds puts the ultimate power over the Lego in your hands. The only way this could get better is if somebody delivered a dump truck full of bricks and told you to go wild.

Create what you want, do what you want, loads of contraptions you can build
Vehicles you can use.

Weapons and items collect.

There is so much game here. You could get lost in one of the generated world. Yet Lego World offers almost infinite possibility. No two people will play the same world.

Yes, its frustrating to hunt down the golden block to open up the game.

But,get past these frustrations and there’s a box full of magic, a tool box to create any Lego creation you desired.

If you’re fan, even in the slightest of creation games, then Lego World needs buying.

This is the Lego game you, I, everybody has dreamed of.

So go pick up a copy, and and let the master builder in you come out to play.

Buy Now! (amazon.com)