#40 - Stardew Valley Farm Themes

I love a gentle video game playthrough. No pressure beyond what I’m putting on myself, wandering through landscapes and worlds that are still exciting to explore. Love the false sense of accomplishment from gaining arbitrary trophies, love collecting whatever there is to collect—especially when games put effort into clothes. If my character can’t wear sunglasses I don’t want it!

Famously, I’m a total sucker for anything involving a horse, which seems to most often go hand in hand with farming simulators. And while it feels like we’ve certainly upped the number of video games that aren’t centered around violence in the last few years, mostly from indie developers, and I would really love some mainstream video games that approach the genre in new ways too.

Maybe (despite the excellent upgrades since) No Man’s Sky scared everyone off. Then again, the whole development process is totally off the rails these days and “crunch” should not be an acceptable part of any industry.

(Also, they’re so fun to play while high. A perfect little combo of pausing and ripping the bong and then continuing on with the game. So peaceful. So many soundtracks and art styles to appreciate!)

Anyway, I spent a lot of my day yesterday playing a new save on Yonder, and it got me going on my favorite video games that are just gentle and easy and fun and wonderful little distractions (if you don’t call it a coping technique, it isn’t one)! So many of my evenings recently have been spent truly unwinding, and I think games are this wonderful thing where I can get totally absorbed and float around in the sense of completion and progress that they provide, and I can make lists of all the things that I’m still missing to accomplish things, because there is nothing that gets me going more than 100% completion stats.

I’m a virgo, what did you expect?

Let’s get into it:

#1 Yonder

Iiiii love Yonder so much. It’s so gentle, the pacing is perfect—you never feel rushed and the things that depend on seasons are more bonuses than priorities. The only thing I wish it had was more story and quests so I could have new adventures in the world. Wandering the world, the adorable animals, the foraging and exploration and it really is a game that wants you to explore all the nooks and crannies and rewards you when you do.

The soundtrack is lovely and soft, I’ll be honest I usually have a podcast going while I play it though. There are a few mechanics that could use improving—the animals following behind is super tedious but it’s not a major element of the game. I wish certain things went deeper, but it’s an indie game so I get that there are limitations. If I could make friends I would really love that though. You can’t even see the people you hire as farmhands which is lame! I should be able to bond!!

I’ve also decided to rate the fishing mechanics of games that have it as a major part of gameplay.

Fish score: 2/5. Much more annoying but not challenging, the fact that you have to catch specific fish but the gameplay for getting a fish on the hook is more random than anything makes it laaame. (And you 2 dip fish to make oil and you need to make SO MUCH oil. The amount of oil and rock needed in this game in proportion to other materials feels like a missed R&D thing tbh.)

#2 Stardew Valley

Oh wow, I think this game has the most racked-up the most play hours on my Switch. And I love it so much I can’t even begin to get into all the things I love about it. I love that the game designer is so caring with it, and updated it for so long, and included a bunch of specific PNW vibes in the game that feel really cozy. I love that you buy little hats from a mouse in a hut and then you can put those hats on your horse and be hat buddies.

I love the community element and the fact that the point of the game is really just getting to know your neighbors and improving the community through your actions and showing how your behavior impacts the town and brings everyone closer together while chasing the evil corporation out of town!

I love finding out who people initiate relationships with as my own personal personality test because it will tell me everything I need to know about what they value in a partner and also their patience for growth and change through love.

Getting good at this game was a weird learning curve, on my first playthrough I kept fucking up harvesting apples and didn’t have the community center for three whole years and it was just as fun when I completed it in under one. All I can say is that the wiki is so comprehensive for a reason!! Learn to love it. Also the gameplay quality upgrades are enormous and buying an in-game telephone rendered a lot of my manual making moot.

Fish rating: 3.5/5 it’s pretty solid as a little game, I definitely have gotten way better so I don’t find it as annoying as I did in the beginning when I mistakenly thought I had to wind my joy-con like a reel for some reason?? But the legendary fish are stupidly hard and that 100% completion can’t happen without them. Love that you can now remix the community bundles, the fish tank is always my favorite one to complete.

#3 Sims 4

Ready for a weird fun fact? I’ve become a semi-prolific builder in The Sims. Like I have followers on The Sims gallery who download the houses that I “build” and it’s uh, weird! It’s not a thing I’ve intentionally done, I started putting them all on the cloud after a crash stole my entire save from me, and here we are.

The Sims is one of those games that truly and immediately tells me everything I need to know about what people consider “gaming”. Because there is no game that I game harder during than Sims 4. (Like that game will suck hoooours of my life without me noticing at’tall because there’s so much to do and I’m having a lovely time doing it. I love doing challenges, I love building, I love creating weird specific scenarios and then getting really bored like five minutes in and abandoning that character to play a new character who has no house and no money and starting all over again from scratch.) And yet, The Sims is often treated with sneers and derision from within the gaming community, and that begs the question of why. (The answer is that we hate women, but you knew that already right?)

Fish rating: 2/5, there’s no mechanic to the gameplay besides maybe choosing what bait, but it’s interesting how many fish are in the game overall and I do love to complete the Angler life challenge for more perk points.

#4 Pokemon Snap

This game is so cuuuute and I love Pokemon games in general but I got weirdly into this game recently because I love a 100% completion rating (have I mentioned that enough yet?) so that meant looking up guides and deducing what Pokemon I had missed, and learning all of the hidden things that you can make happen in the game (which, I will say, hate when a game gives you absolutely no way of knowing these things besides looking at the game code/reading through websites, that’s just bad design), and that was really fun and satisfying and it’s pretty and I love getting to spend time in a world where Pokemon really are just hanging out.

Because now that I’m 29 and not 11, I want a Pokemon game in which the protagonist is actually one of the people that you used to meet along your route. I am no longer getting any joy out of the narrative of being a first-time Poke trainer who is leaving their home at what remains an alarmingly young age, I want to run the Ryhorn Ranch or get to decide which gym owner I am and maybe they’re venturing out in search of mostly one type of pokemon and figuring out how to use a team of one type. So many stories waiting to be told in that universe! Stop telling the same one with slightly different mechanics!! Arcaeus had the worst inventory system of ALL TIME to the point that I didn’t finish the game. Also, it’s not a twist ending if you do it every single game!!

#5 Katamari Damacy

Weird, perfect, wonderful. I’ve been on a Katamari kick so I’m going through a new save file like every two weeks. It’s fun to unlock drive and eternal and classic modes, it’s so fun to get all the cousins and presents, it’s a very weird and delightful game that has been immensely satisfying to increase my skill in because it feels hard-won and I’m a sucker for effort feeling like it paid off!

The soundtrack is amazing. And it’s incredibly strange, no other game is like it, what a delight!

Honorable mentions…

Overcooked (not that gentle, but so fun, especially if the people you’re playing with have worked in kitchens before there’s a certain method to the madness that I really appreciate), Zelda: Breath of the Wild (you may be saying, but that has violence! Not the way I play it!! I am here to collect horses and cook every single dish and accumulate all the clothes I can and then go dye them all the fun colors and climb the mountains and throw my swords accidentally), Mario Kart (the time trials are completely non-violent and it will shock no one to know that I have spent an alarming amount of time playing the Wii version time trials in an effort to unlock Baby Luigi), Dragon Quest 11 (again, is there violence? Kinda! The same level as pokemon tbh, and you can set it to autopilot for the grinding sessions which is incredible. Love the design of this game, it’s the subject of one of my favorite/weirdest comfort YouTube videos, the story made me cryyyy, and it really is just a game about hanging out with your buds. The horse sucks but Sylvando is my favorite character of all tiiiime).

So, if you need a nice unwindy distraction, I would recommend any or all of the above. There are also some really beautiful indies I didn’t get into, and I think that video games are an incredibly dense medium for storytelling and it makes me so excited that we’re using them to explore themes of grief, environmentalism, and community! Viva la Nintendo! (I don’t know where that came from but it’s so stupid it made me laugh so I’m keeping it!!)

p.s. my farm themes for Stardew have included: 30 Rock (Lemon, Kenneth, name all the farm animals after Jenna’s projects), Crossfit (it’s stunning how much I know about competitive Crossfit, my character was named Briggs), Arrested Development, the classic tennis romcom Wimbledon (character named Lizzie, blonde braids, only wore white and red) Vanderpump Rules, and the most recent one was Succession, which has thematically been my all-time fave to date.