Stardew Valley developer Eric Barone has announced a new board game adaptation of the popular farm life game, and it’s available to order now for $55.
The result of a collaboration between Stardew Valley’s sole developer Barone (who often goes by the moniker ConcernedApe) and Cole Medeiros, ConcernedApe’s head of operations and business development, the project took a total of two years to design.
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“In 2018 Eric Barone and Cole Medeiros, introduced online through their mutual friend Matt Griffin, played a co-op game of Stardew Valley and discussed the idea of making a Stardew Valley board game,” the announcement reads. “They didn’t know exactly what it would look like, but they knew Stardew had all the components of a great board game.”
After two years of refining and playtesting, all spent in between development time for the video game, the pair officially had a board game.
Much like the original video game, players work cooperatively to grow crops, raise animals, build out their farm, and gather resources from across the valley. Players can also befriend the familiar townspeople and earn hearts to reveal secret goals. To win, you’ll need to restore the Valley to its original greatness and keep Joja Mart from mucking it all up. The game can be played with 1 – 4 players, with an estimated 45 minutes of playtime per player.
To do all that, players need to achieve four “Granda Goals” and restore all of the community center rooms before a deck of season cards is exhausted.
The game, which retails for $55, comes with a board of Stardew Valley to play on, tiles (for items like crops, ore, buildings, animals, etc), numerous cards for things like events, epic items, and mine levels, gold tokens, and more.
ConcernedApe notes to fans that the board game is meant to evoke the lengthy nature of playing Stardew Valley, so while it’s designed to be easy to play, it will have a lot of complexity to it, so check out the official rulebook to see if it’s your jam.
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ConcernedApe also says that once the first print run is sold out, future prints will depend on how much demand there still is.
“If there’s more demand for it, then we’ll definitely do more print runs, and maybe slowly expand… we’re kind of just testing the waters for now and see what the response is,” ConcernedApe wrote.
The Stardew Valley board game is almost certain to prove popular with fans of the original game. We here at IGN proclaimed it one of the best Nintendo Switch games, and the original video game has now sold more than 10 million copies across six platforms. ConcernedApe also has two new projects in the works, both of which will tie into Stardew Valley in different ways.
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Joseph Knoop is a writer/producer/geode smasher for IGN.