My experience with Stardew Valley was much more positive, though idiosyncratic with the point I was at in my life.
First, to qualify “positive,” I’ve done two very full playthroughs of the game, one on PC in 2016, and one on the Switch between 2017 and 2021. In both, I played up to what the endgame was, devoted myself to decorating a farm, pursued the romantic and platonic options I wanted to, and generally sunk a lot of hours (probably 200 over the two platforms).
I got the game when I thought I was going to fail out of my PhD program and the postdoc I’d obtained. I was close to completion, but it had taken almost two years longer than I’d planned already. One of my committee members gave me an ultimatum: finish by August or find someone else, because he would retire and did not want to continue on my committee. The postdoc director also gave an ultimatum: finish by July or I would not have a postdoc. To their credit, that director also gave me necessary mentorship: they helped me plan my time so I could complete my revisions in time, and set up a system of accountability (which I agreed to) to make sure I kept working.
It took 12+ hour days without break for about 45 days to get that revision (really a top-down rewrite) done. After that, I still worked 12+ hour days for the next 45 days on everything from figuring out the school’s approval process to doing two more revisions. During this time, I also moved from a place that was being sold to another place. I taught. I tutored. I wrote. I was miserable. The one bit of fun I allowed myself, at the end of the day when my word-ability was pulverized, was this new game, Stardew Valley.
Stardew Valley offered some connection to the farming games of yore: Back to Nature, which I’d loved, as well as the later Harvest Moon efforts. But it was more than that. Specifically, it offered me three things: the structure of a daily routine that wasn’t just miserable (in both real life and in-game), goals that I could complete without being subject to the judgment of others, and a sense of connection to characters and relationships at a moment I felt especially vulnerable and isolated. Even the slower movement of the game, the not-quite-enough time of it, the slipperiness of the fishing, it felt cathartic. This was the one part of my day when I didn’t need to rush, when I could let the days pass, and see what scenes unfold as I go to talk to my village.
I did get through my PhD program, and I did get to keep my postdoc. Stardew Valley kept me together through it. So when I faced having to apply for jobs at the end of the postdoc, Stardew Valley kept me together again. At that point it had been updated, so I experienced some of the new content and took advantage of my knowledge from the first playthrough. This, too, was a cathartic experience: meeting the game’s own goals, and then going a step further and seeing how much ancient fruit wine I could make. I eventually got a job, and Stardew Valley was set aside too.
So Stardew Valley is a game I am more reticent to recommend, mainly because my experience with it is so peculiar to my own circumstances that I’m not sure what I loved would come across. It’s all there - the love of collection, of quirky and heartfelt characters, of seeing how far I can get in the mines, of setting up planting at the start of a season knowing I’m committing to a daily ritual, of caring for my animals, of designing my farm fences and buildings and house, and of keeping track of gifts for everyone. The intro is silly, but after that, wow, there’s a game to love if you need to love it.
