Seven years have passed since the launch of Stardew Valley, but there is no way to unseat it from the Olympus of the best titles of recent years. The work of Eric Barone has earned popular recognition with all of the law and have it in range on Xbox Game Pass It is an unmissable opportunity.
We can play both on Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One and PC and thus enter one of the most impressive stories of video game development. And it is that Barone worked as an employee in Seattle cinemas in 2011 while trying to get a job in the video game industry. The small first project of his was the title we are talking about, but there is much more.
Starting from the idea of the franchise Harvest MoonBarone tried to improve the latest in the Marvelous Interactive saga and for this he took inspiration from references such as Minecraft, Terraria, Rune Factory or Animal Crossing. Over the course of four years, with 60-hour weekly sessions in her parents’ basement and his partner Amber Hageman paying most of the billsthe developer achieved what seemed impossible.
Absolutely everything you see on the screen has been created by him directly. The pixel art aesthetic, the music, the gameplay… Barone and Hageman gambled on a card that came out the winner when he was barely 27 years old. The success has been so overwhelming that it has sold more than 20 million copies in these seven years.
“I was afraid of routine. I was afraid of sitting in a cubicle and programming something that I found really boring and not passionate about. I wanted something different and I wanted the freedom to do whatever I wanted.”
the farm of your dreams
Going to the sirloin, Stardew Valley is the typical game that turns work tasks into a routine that you’ll love to repeat. We arrive at the town that gives its name to the title, specifically to the old plot that your grandfather has given you as an inheritance. You barely have a few coins and practically rusty tools, but none of this is going to stop you when it comes to building an orchard.
Crops, livestock and mining are three basic pillars on which you will have to support yourself to get ahead. You can sell all the fruit of your effort to the local residents, being able to find more than 30 inhabitants with their respective personalities. This leads to the fact that we can carry out secondary missions of all kinds and establish relationships with them.
In addition, in a very close way, forming a family to take care of. And if that was not enough, Stardew Valley has an online cooperative mode with which to experience the magic of the farm in company. There are 52 game hours to complete the campaign, but there are many more if you want to explore every corner.
