Stardew is the opposite of relaxing for me. It’s a never ending to-do list and sense that you don’t have enough time. It’s “Chores: The video game”

The time of day running out, the stamina, and the seasons calendar for crops add so much pressure to me. I simply cannot relax playing Stardew Valley.

As opposed to something like Animal Crossing with very few limitations where I can really enjoy myself.

Yeah, that’s me with SV. Horrible optimisation problem, so much to fit into every day. And then there’s the damn fish calendar…

Its also chores that have an end, that you can have mastery over, that makes for only a small amount of variation compared to all of life.

Then you also know that you don't need to do things as fast as possible, you can always let things chill. Sometimes you can use it to practice not caring about everything - like "this run, I don't fish until year 2 - just farming for me."

When I started stardew I didn't know how to play so I would spend days waking up walking around and then go back to sleep repeating until my parsnips grew, but when I introduced my SO to the game, we ended up trying to learn how to actually play and then ended up with spreadsheets to track all the seasons, grow cycles, relationships and whatever else lol

‘Chore simulator’ could describe maybe 50% of what gets put on Steam these days. Some people just can’t get enough of drudgery, I guess.

Yeah I feel that. It was fun for me, but also kind of stressful. I don't know why I felt the need to min-max it but yeah.

I see it as a game about getting a horse.

It helped my partner significantly during multiple home-bound years of unexpected health issues. She wasn’t a gamer either.

Came here to post this. There’s just something so comforting to the soul about that world. There are no politics, crime, religion, homelessness, war, or disease. Just melons. Melons, pumpkins, turnips, corn, rice, and potatoes. Visiting that place is like pure heroin for people with anxiety.

I hear your point, but there's literally a homeless NPC and an NPC suffering from combat PTSD. Another way of looking at it might be that you're empowered to make a meaningful difference in the lives of those people which feels good.

Not only does that second NPC suffer from PTSD, he's absent from the village for the first year, serving in the military that's actively fighting a war.

There is politics from scene one? You are literally fighting against a giant corporation which is taking over the town.

Plus the intro of the game is the player moving to the farm to escape a soul-crushing corporate job, only to find that same sort of culture taking root in their pastoral sanctuary.

I love pretty much every system of progression it has, but I do respect that the game doesn’t really force you to engage with the parts that you don’t enjoy.

But anyone who sides with Joja is a monster.

Maybe politics, but it isn’t necessarily fighting “against”. You can play the Jojo path, get different perks, and the shopkeep doesn’t become unemployed.

I guess I never noticed that. I actually never paid attention to the story or characters at all. Just spent hundreds of hours growing increasingly large quantities and qualities of produce.

you only played about a third of the game then lol, you missed out on hundreds of hours of content