Stardew Valley has quickly become the biggest indie darling of 2016, which has been fantastic news for its sole creator Eric Barone. But the Harvest Moon-esque farming RPG has got plenty of major content coming too.
Barone, who has recently enjoyed some time off playing other games like Age of Empires 2 and Factorio, outlined his major post-content plans in a post early this morning. The developer has issued several hotfixes to the game already following exchanges with fans on social media.
But it’s now time for some content. For the meantime he’ll largely be focusing on patch 1.1, which will add more crops, farm buildings, marriage content for all spouses, secrets, improvements to combat and mining, artisan goods, advanced mechanics, and late-game content. What’s really interesting, however, will be the stuff added down the road — although Barone admits there’s no timetable for these features yet:
Co-op Multiplayer
Localizing for non-english regions
Mac/Linux Ports
Console Ports
Merchandise
Barone added his publisher, Chucklefish, has made an offer to help develop the technical aspects of Stardew Valley’s multiplayer, as well as the entirety of the game’s Mac and Linux ports. “This should result in faster overall development and reduced workload for me, while preserving my artistic control over Stardew Valley. I think it will be beneficial for everyone,” Barone added.
The only way to get Stardew Valley running on Mac right now is through some messing around with a Wine wrapper. That’s not impossible — Patrick has some instructions here — but it’s a little involved and might be a touch too frustrating for gamers just used to clicking and playing.
It’ll be interesting to see what a multiplayer Stardew Valley world looks like. Can you interfere with other people’s farms? Could you water a friend’s plants for them? Could you battle with someone for the affections of that meathead, Alex? Or will it increase the focus on combat as people go raiding caves together? However it works out, it’ll probably only make Stardew Valley an even bigger cult hit than it already is.
Comments
7 responses to “Stardew Valley Is Getting Co-op Multiplayer And A Console Release”
Fairly certain the co-op has already been stated as you will be hiring people to work on your farm. So friends will help you with all the day to day stuff of running the place. Obviously this will make time management a lot easier, being able to split your focus.
Provide a source to that info…What I last saw from CA was that he saw co-op as up to 4 players running a big farm together but no specifics had been sorted out.
It was on here, lol, an article a couple of months ago.
Kotaku: How will multiplayer function, exactly?
Eric Barone: My idea for multiplayer has always been basically just a four-player co-op. Basically you’d be playing on the same farm, a lot like single-player Stardew Valley except there’s other people doing everything with you. One person can be in the mines, one person can be farming, another person can be fishing. I’ll have to scale some of the difficulty up depending on how many people are playing in the game world. There’s a lot of gameplay issues that I’ll have to consider.
http://www.kotaku.com.au/2016/03/the-past-present-and-future-of-stardew-valley/
That sounds more like what @xenoun said, than what you’ve said.
Yeah…no-where in that does it say you hire people to work on your farm.
I’m near the end of Year 1.. haven’t played for a week or two (been playing Subnautica), but I’ll be back soon.. not for the co-op though.. just because it’s one of the best games I’ve played this year and want more of it.
Subnautica, another great title that I can’t wait to be co-op.