Stardew Valley

Stardew Valley is without a doubt the best game in the Harvest Moon genre in many years. It has a subtle message about what it means to live a good life and to flourish through a combination of hard work and human connection. The Harvest Moon games all basically boil down to managing a mix of time, tasks, and metrics, and recent entries in the series have relied heavily on exploiting a new gameplay gimmick with each iteration: in one it's crafting structures for the town, in another it's trading with foreign economies. The problem with this approach is that once these gimmicks are exhausted — all the houses built or all the goods traded — the games feel hollow. Stardew Valley succeeds by delivering a robust experience that does not merely rely on watching a meter go up. It has something to say and says it well, while never abandoning the core gameplay that attracted players in the first place.

Don't start this game if you value relationships, your job, your social life, and having free time. Stardew Valley will take all of that away from you, but it's okay because it's a great game.

Stardew Valley is a fine, smart farm simulation game. It is slow and it involves a lot of daily tasks, but in Stardew Valley there is something ingenious about those tasks.