My thoughts exactly hahaha

I'm totally with Sean for Stardew specifically. It's a game that plays up the mechanical aspects of a Harvest Moon-like and lends itself so well to hyper-optimization that while it's great, it's not the game I reach for when I want to relax. It's the game I reach for when I want to do a powergaming run. My purely-to-relax games in this genre are Roots of Pacha and Coral Island, games that will drive you so insane if you try to optimize them that you can forget about even trying, and it's strangely liberating.

Me as well! I have to keep the wiki open while I play the game and even made a list on my notepad for things I need to do in game still or else I end up forgetting.

Your all freaking insane but I gotta respect the grind.

100% I’m relatively new to stardew and have been obsessed with it the past month and I have mountains of notes for the game, NOTES lmao, to keep track of what I’m doing, information, or what I need to do next haha. Wiki is essential.

Saame. I like playing stardew in a relaxing way, but I also want to feel like I make enough progress every day. So stardew makes me feel better when I had a super stressful day on the farm, trying to get level 8 fishing in one day, than it makes me feel when I just ran around town, handing out flowers to anyone I happen to run into xD

You wait seanie…

I find them hilarious

THE ILLUSION OF CHOICE...

You are right about the unique content running out. Relying on mods literally means what's there isn't enough. Challenges are great but they are just variations of the same. I think not being unique doesn't mean the content isn't fun, but the question wasn't about fun but unique.

It's honestly fair. There are limited ideas that are popular for videos. And it is VERY fair to say there are too many carbon copies of stardew valley. Like if they love that kind of game just make a mod at that point

i enjoyed your takes, especially from a content creation aspect!

I mostly agree with your takes also love your streams

haven't even watched the video yet, and i want to say: of course not! argon is here! ; )

Argon mod pride!

I just realized you're the only one who's Stardew reprentation is a different gender than yourself

Pam is not real. There's nothing wrong with saying she doesn't deserve a house.

@@elbis1964I understand why you would say that, but the concept of “everyone deserves a house.” Has no reason to not apply to fiction as well.

WithLinus tho tbf, deserving to have isn’t the same as should have. I guess it’s more about the option being important.

^ I interpreted their Linus talk as more “if he wanted a house he deserves it”

i don’t get this cause she literally has a house. like it’s not great but she’s not Linus in his tent

“A bit”

When the video started I was already hoping you would be in there!!

ITS OK QUEEN

We still love you, Wickedy. 💜

I agree with you about Pam!!! 😂

The first time I played I had no freaking idea what to do and I ended up playing for half an hour and closing it down due to feeling so overwhelmed and lost. There is like no hand holding! However, I came to really appreciate that when I decided to revisit it and it's now my favourite game. I own it on 3 different platforms 😅

Lol, im glad started playing with my friend, he taught me the basics. And its really relaxing when your in the groove. I make sure i don't have a time limit. I have goals, but i don't mind if i get there w/ the longest route. Im on year 10 and i still haven't gotten to the island😅

how do u have a breakdown about a faarming game tf

My first time playing I actually just spent the first in-game year learning the game. Then I restarted as I knew I could do so much better.

@@youremomlol2263 how do you not have a concept of your experiences not being universal?

this guy...

I’m also quite a big Ace Attorney and Stardew and that was also my favourite part

Stardew Valley has literally ruined me for other games. It's not that that game cannot be topped - THE COMMUNITY cannot be topped.

​@@slwrabbitsI agree 100%

For me it was the other way around. First time I could take stuff as it came along. Sure, it was late year 3 by the time that my income generation was sort of settled, but it was fine. After that I began experimenting with ways to achieve stuff - year one greenhouse, a bunch of ways to handle first spring, etc. Those get pretty seriously tense.

Completely agree. Thing is though farming sims are much easier to make than a life sim, so that's a big reason why The Sims has no competition - except for the upcoming Life By You which still seems like it's going in quite a different direction.

@@hilary3219 I don't think that's what OP meant about competition! I think they meant the GAME isn't competitive not the genre! Plus, you could argue that SDV is a life sim game and thus "competes" with The Sims.

I think this is very wrong. In no way, shape or form would anyone ever compare the sims and SDV's genre. Original replier was correct. The Sims as a genre HAS no competitor, no need to improve

Life By You and Paralives look to shake up the Sims paradigm, which I think it's good to make inspired games, because some of my favorite games were inspired by previous titles that need that mix of different ideas, and competition in a genre makes games more compelling. Harvest moon to Stardew Valley DRG to Helldivers 2 Pokemon to Palworld GTA/Yakuza to Sleeping Dogs Terraria to Starbound All games kinda inspired by previous titles that mixed it up to make a solid spiritual successor.

@@TruFalco Oh yeah for sure, I'm super excited about these 2! Competition in a gaming genre can only be a good thing

I honestly waffle back and forth on whether I like Seanie or not but I can't deny that his answers throughout this were pretty well justified. His point about people who spend a lot of time playing the game finding it relaxing but the average person picking it up and going neurotic is something that I've never heard anyone actually stand up and say is a flaw of these types of games before and it really made me feel heard about my struggles with trying to enjoy them.

@@DanteTornout of curiosity, what do you not like about Seanie? I’ve been a casual viewer of his recently and would love to hear your perspective!

@@fernandothehorseyeah i wonder too, i can't think of a single thing i could find unlikable about him myself

@@fernandothehorse i share a similar opinion to dantetom, here's my thoughts i like seanie !! i think he's fun and charismatic and has deserved his following, but i tend to find him just a little grating at times. his content can feel a little uninspired, and every time i see him pop up in my youtube shorts recommended or on tiktok i just.. groan. because it all feels very similar and reminiscent to the cash-grab bandwagon stuff you see from people who have no passion and are just in it for the money and fame. he does make some good stuff, and as is very obviously displayed by this video, he's a genuinely thoughtful and reasonable guy. i do like some of his content, and i especially enjoy his collab stuff, like the recent terraria streams with charlie and therm. it's just that a large portion of his stardew content has been done before, ad nauseum, and it gets tiring.

@@clown-catthe only things that annoy me about him are when he’s super loud for no reason (i will sometimes skip his videos if he’s just yelling for minutes on end lol) and (this is a personal pet peeve) he’s just always confused..? which is usually when he’s loud. he’s always like “WHAT IS GOING ON IM SO CONFUSED” and something about that irritates me😭

Absolutely based with every one of these takes

For me, the big thing with Pam is that she doesn't make any efforts. Has she asked Harvey about effective addiction treatments? Or tried to earn extra money by fishing?

@@jamestown8398 Income isn't the issue, its behavior. Most of the residents of the town seem to own homes with only 1 source of income, and Pam does run the bus so she has a job. Our farmer is just disturbingly active in their money making practices until they start making millions a week with resources that no one else in the town has

on number 3: I still think Seanie was right. The question wasn't, will people continue playing it. The question was is the space for UNIQUE stardew content is running out. Which I totally think is true. There is and will continue to be different iterations of the same things - think speed running and personal challenges - but there is very little UNIQUE content being produced.

Pam is my best friend in Stardew and I don't know HOW- (along with jas somehow-)

1000%! 🙌

I think we need some remasters that sit closer to the originals of some of the older Bokumonno titles honestly, to give folks some perspective. While I adored the FoMT remake (FINALLY able to get same-sex marriage in that title made me WEEP with joy, frankly) it felt so very different to the original with the QoL choices they made. I think if folks could see the OLD Bokumono they'd get a better idea of where the inspiration for Stardew came from, like you mentioned! Maybe Nintendo can bring that old gem (and the MFoMT side of that pair) to the virtual console...

@@MizYinfolks CAN see the old games. You can still play them, nobody is stopping you. I don’t see a point of making a remake thats exactly like the original, because what’s the point then. The remakes need QOL changes or new features, otherwise there’s no reason for them to exist.

I don't mind that there are a lot of farming games, but what annoys me is as soon as a new cozy game comes out, people are like, "Is this more like Stardew Valley or Animal Crossing?" an frankly a lot of these games are completely their own thing and nothing like those games. But marketing factors in ... these games are often marketed as being similar to Stardew, but I think they should just be proud of what they are and stop trying to target the Stardew audience.

A lot of popular indie games are heavily inspired by older games the devs loved playing as a kid that people these days aren't aware of. It's not just stardew. My favourite quote from Toby fox, creator of undertale is from that video about the localisation of mother 3 where he says "I hope mother 3 comes to the west so that people can realise how unoriginal I truly am." I think it's just because these games became OMEGA Hits that they eclipsed the games that inspired them. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing but it would be nice if people could go back and take a look at some of the harvest moon/story of seasons games that inspired stardew as some of them have some really unique twists such as harvest moon: a wonderful life and how the characters actually aged over the years and harvest moon: grand bazaar which changed the whole gameplay loop to focus on an end of the week market where you have to sell all your items, which I'm pretty sure there is a market day mod for stardew inspired by that exact mechanic. Really cool and unique stuff even if the games typically aren't as deep as stardew.

My thoughts exactly 100% agreed!

Exactly what I was thinking! While yes, there are a bunch of what could be "stardew but x" that "x" could be the niche that someone wants that stardew doesn't have.

@@GreyFireClover which is why we have Stardew Valley to begin with. it filled a Niche that Harvest Moon didn't have. I will say - i went from a "why would i want to play a farming game?" to "OMG I LOVE THIS GENRE" because of Stardew Valley. i have several different types and it all just depends on the mood i want to be in that given day.

i agree so hard and we also seem to have the same taste in games roots of pacha and dawn of man are my bread n butter rn

I hate the word "ripoff" to be honest. Unless it is blatant like asset ripping, or a straight up clone of a game with different assets or something. As long as it has at least some creative differences, it's not a ripoff. Inspired? Absolutely. I mean, SDV itself was inspired by Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons. But SDV added the mine and combat elements, and at the time HM didn't have those things, along with some other stuff. Pretty sure the crafting in SDV is a bit more robust too. There's games like Sun Haven, but that game takes combat even further, and adds in a more RPG-like plot, as well as several farms (even though I think at that point it's just getting to be too much to handle all of them!). There's plenty of other games, but most of them do indeed add their own creativity to the mix, and I would not call them "ripoffs" nor would I ever say that there are "too many" of them, so long as each game has its own creative flavor and isn't just merely a copy/paste of SDV/HM/etc.

and some people will say sdv is a ripoff of harvest moon lul

You've picked a poor example here, I'm sure you enjoy cattails but that hardly is relevent to the asked question. As you pointed out they're different games in the same genera. What rip offs or alikes means in this context is piles of pay to progress uninspired shovelware skirting a trademark lawsuit clones. Which are rampent especially in the mobile market. Not the existence of farm sims overall, or that your darling hidden gem. Not to say that people can't form an attachment to those games or unique things about them but they're everywhere and not great for the "ecosystem" and there ARE far too many of them, because they're cheap and easy to mass produce. The farming sim genera has always been ripe for this because you really can't tell the difference between a slow to start quality game, a flaming pile of knock off garbage, or a exact mechanic for mechanic clone for many hours.

@@finchhawthorne1302 Eh, you can kinda tell by reviews, though. And if I boot up a farm sim game and I don't see something that's an actual different creative piece of content, like a mechanic or something within an hour or two, then it's safe to assume it's not worth my time. But then a lot of gamers these days don't do their due research and just jump on something without looking up reviews, gameplay footage, etc.

Stardew Valley never even crossed my mind when I tried out Cattails. It reminded me of Warrior Cats: Untold Tales, which is a game I loved in my childhood. Cattails feels like a modernized version of that game and it makes me happy, ngl.

Just fyi, it's *canon*. A cannon is something else entirely.

I literally finished the CC the beginning of my THIRD YEAR the first time I played. Now I know better and I try and get it done as fast as possible but it definitely was a fun experience learning from my mistakes.

I was so happy when multiplayer came out. My son and I play together every so often and we have a great co-op strategy. Early game, I concentrate on the farm and mines, while he concentrates on fishing and museum donations. We also use the CJB Cheats mod so the host can freeze time during cut scenes that are not shared.

@@TimeLady8 if you play on split screen you can pause the game.. but not on different consoles :(( Now we try to always play on split screen on the big TV

@@nicoletechiclete Difficult to do when you're not in the same location.

I've been playing Stardew with my beat friend for a bit now. Compared to when I first tried it solo, co op is so much more fun and so much less stressful because there are more people on hand to make things feel less overwhelming. It also just let's me spend time with my friend since we've only ever talked through discord

Like it's upsetting to think about now, but before Stardew Valley came out I didn't have much hope that there would be a Harvest Moon game with proper same sex marriage- and considered a Harvest Moon where the player was just referred to as "Them, the Farmer" to be a pipe dream. XSeed continues to do good work properly localizing the "Best Friend" system to call it what it is, and getting to play SoS:Friends of Mineral Town and romance some of my first fictional faves as they refer to me with they/them pronouns is so incredibly nice. And that's just what's happened to HM! I followed smaller-scale projects as much as I could as a teenager with no money, but there wasn't necessarily a huge cache of complete experiences that emulated the feeling of taking over a farm and making a life for this character you play that they live at whatever pace you want them to. As upset as it makes me, there are a LOT of places I feel that Marvelous has dropped the ball with Harvest Moon in recent years. If that had happened without a juggernaut of a game like Stardew Valley, I think I would be much more devastated about it. As it stands, I feel like if they miss the mark on the remake of AWL (which fits squarely in my top 3 entries of the series), I'll be more or less content to never buy another Harvest Moon game again. I now have a wealth of options of where to spend my adult money: I owe a lot to Stardew Valley, but this especially.

@@opekamma Thank you!! This is an incredibly well-stated opinion that I sit squarely overlapping into. The aspect of both drowning in farm sims and loving it is very relatable! With things like Pacha and...the name escapes me, that one Seanie really liked with flight, as well as even Marvelous FINALLY getting same-sex marriage into their titles? And a nb option in the AWL remake on a NINTENDO console?! I feel like there's very much going to be a net positive outcome of this boom, whether it's uncomfortable in this moment or not! And that's a net win for all of us!

I think minecraft is another great example of games having longevity

Absolutely! Heck, even The Sims 2 community is alive and thriving to this day! I respect Seanie's opinion, but it feels like he doesn't know very much about single-player games; or at least doesn't consider their longevity and what might keep people interested in them outside of his content creator persona.

communism W

I agree but I think Stardew has a significant handicap in replayability potential when compared to sandbox games like the Sims or Minecraft. Unless you spice the game up with mods on each run, it's always the same world, the same NPCs, the same story. Skyrim I think is a better comparison (which also has a great modding community), but again I think RPG games like Skyrim have better replayability thanks to the tons of choices you get to make during the game, which shape your character and the story. Stardew has almost none of that.

​@@spookysomeonebro, he did not say one of those things, you just want to argue

It's kind of funny. I have explicitly started SEVERAL playthroughs with the specific goal of taking it easy and doing a kind of rags-to-riches story. The community center is always a major goal, but I always mean to put it on the backburner ahead of more story-centered roleplay. But then at some point usually pretty early on, I end up feeling the compulsion to try min/maxing within the scope of my ability (I'm not a good gamer, let alone a power one). It's really kind of weird how easily that drive takes over.

For me, I live for that busyness. I usually go *hard* on year one. But I start to have problems filling the days on year 2 onwards since I use every second of year one, to the point that I never have a save that exceeds 3 years, since for me there's nothing to do anymore. So now I play more on the minmax side, trying to stuff as much progress on year1 as possible

LOL, I considered whether or not to give my own opinions, but I decided not to in the end

@@salmence100 somehow i just didn't see that you were the one who uploaded the video at first is the thing lmao. i didn't realize until i heard your voice

The space was all thanks to the Modest Creative Warehouse mod, it was pretty much exactly what I was looking for!

Honestly, I would very much listen to an uncut version of some of these talking points! I love genuine discussions (not debates!) and hearing other perspectives over a common thing

I feel better not being the only one that feels this way! This goes for SO MANY games! I love playing Civilization but I get really irritated by so many people thinking they HAVE to play it at the hardest difficulty like all the streamers! I even saw a "Save your disaster" video and within a few minutes I saw the issue, the person should NOT be playing the hardest difficulty! I play on "standard" difficulty because I don't like being stressed, and I have this need to build a bit of everything, you have to focus a good deal to play the hardest difficulty or you WILL get overwhelmed! Rimworld is another REALLY great game that people have expectations for and many will HATE because they try to play like the streamers instead of the way THEY like!!!

I'd like to see the children expanded a little bit further. • Give them 1 additional development stage from toddler into children. • When they are children, make them into actual NPCs with dialogue and heart events and schedules (playing with Jas and Vincent, going to the library with Penny). • In dialogue, give them a dynamic portrait with a hairstyle resembling your spouse's, and hair colour/skin tone matching the player character. • Their dialogue doesn't even need to be super dynamic, it could mostly be static maybe with a couple of bonus lines of dialogue here and there depending on who your spouse is (Like if you marry Emily they'd have a line saying "Mom showed me her crystal collection today!" or if its Maru instead they'd say "I helped mom build a robot today!".. stuff like that)

It probably wouldn't make as much sense here than say Rune Factory but being able to ask villagers to join you, having them walk around and even help you complete tasks and such. Maybe certain npcs can help with specific tasks like Abigail/Sebastion will join in the mines, or Willy would help you catch an extra few fish or something idk

It's not exactly a full zoom out but if you have a 4K monitor or laptop when set to the native resolution you can see most of the farm easily but some heart events the " void " won't look great

You can make a screenshot in the options (it's nearly at the bottom) that makes a screenshot of the whole map you're on, it's not exactly what you asked for but maybe that helps?

​@@NeoMusicGamer That's what I wanted the farmer's children to be like, but doing that with NPCs would be awesome!! The game feels a bit lonely as a single player and when you max out the hearts on everyone, there's no more purpose in interacting with them...

And every now and again you can just see a pink statue appear out of nowhere

Yeah that was on me for making them think about a double negative lol

The sheer stress to make it home to your bed every night

@@couch_philosoph3325 What's there to stress about?! I mean it DOES suck early game before you have a good amount of food to refill your energy. The money you lose is so minor that it's almost not even a penalty really!

Argon's an absolute blast, highly recommended if you like any of the other creators there!

Thanks! I had a lot of fun making them!

Yes!!

I kinda disagree. Piggybacking, in any real professional context, but especially in a game industry, still involve A TON of work. Ape did piggyback Harvest Moon. Other studios, independent or not, often had to choose what would make them survive as a company / make a living with the least of risk, and that's piggybacking - or more appropriately, adapting to the obvious demand. If anything, we could say the whole history of humanity is based off of how others crawled so the next could walk, until someone could run. So when Wickedy said that enough is enough, sadly no, since the demand is still obviously there. Wickedy is just overexposed to it since she's too deep part of the community. However seemingly dumb, SDV in space would still cater to people who are interested in astronomy. You could say SDV didn't add anything new from HM either. But that's fine, because however much of a copy, Ape did his work and it can't be downplayed. Of course, that's all barring straight up stolen assets (as some shown in the video) which is illegal. But everything else, people got to eat, and you can't ever fault humanity for doing what works.

Oh and your edits are very wholesome, love them so much!!

It's one of the things I actually don't like about him. Of course I'm gonna respect his choice BUT IT'S SNOWS 1/4 OF THE YEAR AND HE LIVES IN AN OPEN TENT. At least get an igloo or something sir T.T