Eric “ConcernedApe” Barone, the developer behind the cozy farming simulator Stardew Valley, is taking a different approach to the game’s upcoming 1.6 update releasing on March 19. Most developers would probably cut together a trailer or make sure their update was included in some high-profile sizzle reel from a huge publisher. Stardew Valley is a big enough game at this point that they could likely secure a spot on a Nintendo Direct just for their updates if they wanted. Instead, they’re tweeting through it.
Beginning a few days ago with the fruitful news of an update to fruit trees, ConcernedApe has been sharing the occasional stray line of patch notes for Stardew’s packed 1.6 update, and the community has been eating up every morsel they can get. The day after the fruit trees drove everyone bananas, ConcernedApe followed up with an even bigger update that confirmed the long-suspected fan theory that harvesting crops in a certain direction was faster than another. Now, they’ve confirmed yet another long-suspected theory: Downward sword swings put players at a disadvantage, and a forthcoming update will fix that.
According to ConcernedApe, the effect has always been intended, as it matched the animation of the downward swing, but evidently “always bugged” them. The desire was for the area of effect of the swing to match the animation, but in the years since, their position has shifted to believe that “game feel is way more important than precise visual accuracy.” Check on your Stardew friends, I don’t think they can handle this much change.
Stardew’s 1.6 update, which is shaping up to be bigger than I think ConcernedApe initially intended, has turned into a chance for the devs to have fun with the community, deliver much-desired fixes, and secure the game’s future for a long while to come. After all, it was first billed as a quality-of-life update for modders, who often keep the scenes around games lively with their own fixes and extensions on the existing title, and now it’s bordering on a tiny expansion, complete with a new festival, dialogue, and “secrets”. Though ConcernedApe hasn’t shared much on the modding front, it at least seems like they’re polishing the game to a fine point before handing it over to modders for an indefinite period of time.
The move makes sense considering that Stardew’s 1.6 update is offers a bit of a break from the development of ConcernedApe’s spiritual successor to Stardew Valley, another cozy RPG called Haunted Chocolatier. Though we don’t know much about the game, you can probably expect to hear more about it as development picks up after the release of Stardew’s 1.6 update next week. In the meantime, what big change do you think ConcernedApe is going to announce next?
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