I’m sure you can! My kids love Spelunky, Minecraft, and recently, Lovers In a Dangerous Spacetime. That’s a blast in 4-player. I have an old laptop hooked to the TV and we play through Steam with wireless 360 controllers (for which I have the dongle). My kids are 5.5 and 3.5 yrs old.
They’re still very young. I still hopes, and a laptop and a controller could help… not to mention the right game. The eldest loves dinosaurs but probably nothing that’s violent.
Not to derail here, but single-button games are great. My older daughter started out sitting on my lap playing Bit Trip Runner 2 with me. On Easy, on the first level, she got to where she could make it to the end. We have a lot of fun gaming together now. It’s funny how watching TV has sort of a gloomy disposition about it, but when we’re gaming together, everybody is happy, having fun, and laughing. They get so excited when we manage to take out the boss monsters in Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime. “Yay! We’re such a good team!”
Stardew Valley though is pretty great for kids I think. They might have some reading and hit on a few hard topics, Pam!, but it’s great fun. Maybe this holiday I will get a console and get something on my laptop for him to play. I don’t think he and I have played anything yet now that I think on it.
And 1.1 is live. Changelog and launch trailer can be found here:
Hmm, they didn’t fix the perk that makes crops grow 10% faster. I read that it reduced the grow time by 40% to 50% so I picked it. In reality all it does is shave 1 day off of the grow time, so a 12 day crop is ready in 11 days which kind of stinks.
In a surprising unheard-of-before move, the GOG version has been updated on the same day as the Steam one!
So anyone know if this works with current saves?
Supposed to be compatible. Worked fine with my original game
Thank you
Just started playing this. I’ve tried to crack a couple of Harvest Moon games in the past, but never could stick with them for long due to dopey writing or unintuitive interfaces. This really hits the spot.
So what are the things you guys wish you knew before you started? Any good tricks for advancement or pitfalls to avoid?
Turn on the tool hit location immediately. I have no idea why that isn’t a default, or maybe it was.
Look around your farm once in awhile. I had a bit ole mushroom tree out there once.
Spend the 300 wood to open up the additional sea area. It’s a good source of extra income, especially during the non-growing season or when you are out of energy and can’t do much else
Build chests early, fill it with the trash you wind up getting… you’ll use it later.
As a harvest moon regular, I already knew this, but fertilizer is worth it.
Small fish that give you almost no money can be worth turning fertilizer later… you’ll want a lot of it.
Time is everything… so products like sprinklers are worth it.
Grow crops in 3x3 squares… there’s a reason to that i hope you see later.
hopefully not too many spoilers there.
Buy as many strawberry seeds as you can in Spring and plant them immediately.
Make sure you’ve planted each fruit tree at least the season before their growing season in year 2. So that tree that fruits in Spring, plant it year 1 in the winter at latest. Spring, year 2 for summer year 2, etc.
At the end of the season, you lose everything, so don’t plant something that takes a long time to grow right before the end of the year.
Berries are great in general.
So you want to build a farm, but you’d rather do that in the comfort of your couch? Well, now you can!
http://stardewvalley.net/stardew-valley-now-available-on-xbox-one-and-playstation-4/
Wishlisted! This always struck me as a couch type of game. I’m glad I didn’t get it as part of the Humble Monthly bundle now. Whenever I get a game for the wrong platform, it just sort of languishes in a perpetual backlog and I don’t jump platforms either, since I already own the game.
This happens to me the other way a lot too. Like I bought Metro’s sequel on the Xbox, and I never feel like diving into it. Metro’s more of a computer chair “lean in” experience.
That happened to me with Wolfenstein New Order. I should not have played that game on the console.
Stardew Valley? Definitely. Wishlisted for PS4.
This is not meant to be a sarcastic slight at all so don’t take it in that way, but can someone try to describe for me the appeal of this game and why you find it enjoyable? I knew it was very popular and I watched a let’s play the other day, and it was hard for me to see. What do you like about it? How would you support the statement that the game play experience is memorable/fun?
EDIT: Actually it was a twitch I watched, so possibly it was not shown in the best of ways.
It’s a time-management game. There’s all sorts of other stuff going on, like an RPG-lite, a dating sim, a builder, a crafting feature, a mystery, etc, but this is the type of game that appeals to that Animal Crossing or Harvest Moon demographic, which has been poorly served on the PC until Stardew Valley.
The primary friction is the time-management aspect. There are only so many in-game hours each day, and you can only accomplish so much as the calendar moves forward, meaning the player must prioritize what they’re doing all the time. Since you set your own goals, it’s deceptively peaceful. The graphics, sound and wide-open player agency would imply a low/no stress experience, but I’ve found that it’s actually highly stressful to get everything you’d like to do done in the time given. That’s attractive to a lot of people, I think.
Watching someone stream it would probably not give the best impression, since most people streaming it are way ahead and they already know what they’re doing. I think a lot of the fun of the game comes with discovering it on your own.
For me, the appeal is the laid-back farm aesthetic (YMMV), with a system of resource management running underneath. You start the game with a set amount of money. Each in-game day, you start with a set amount of time and stamina. The only goal the game gives you is to make your farm prosperous.
So each day, you do what you need to do - water your plants, feed your animals, etc. Depending on your outlook, this is either tedious busywork or meditative routine. Then, with your remaining stamina, you do what you want to do - clear some space for new farmland, talk with the townspeople, shop, explore and forage, mine, and so on. You can use the money you make and the materials you gather - create new items for your farm, make your farm bigger, or craft tools so you spend less time on your necessary tasks.
Maybe this sounds boring and repetitive. I don’t think anyone would fault you for that. But I find the game to be relaxing due to its repetition.
I found it fun for a while, I made it through the first year, although I cheated. I used a mod that double the time in the day. So by the end of the first year, I was super rich. I could not finish the community center because I needed to wait for a special crop that was only sold in the 2nd year sometime.
It was fun while it lasted. I am not sure I liked the bribery-relationship system, but other than that, I think highly of the title.