Stardew Valley is a game that I’ve been playing for a while now, for almost over a year actually. Those familiar with the Harvest Moon series will feel right at home playing this game. By design, Stardew Valley is an open-ended and non-linear form of game; that is to say the game has no ending. You as a player set what goals you want to accomplish and which aspect of gameplay to prioritize.
The gameplay is simple, yet quite immersive. After creating your own character, you are immediately dropped off into the world of Stardew Valley. What you do at that point is up to your discretion. You can plant crops and sell your produce for profit, you can domesticate animals such as chickens and cows for eggs and milk, you can even go fishing to sell your catch for a hefty amount of money depending on the kind of fish you catch. Furthermore one can engage in mining to acquire minerals in order to upgrade your tools that you utilize for other tasks, a similar system to what Minecraft has.
Now unto the plot. The game opens with a cutscene of the player characters’ bedridden grandfather, holding a letter he had written for you. The grandfather proceeds to talk to the player, saying that:
”There will come a day when you feel crushed by the burden of modern life…and your brightspirit will fade before a growing emptiness. When that happens, you’ll be ready for this gift.”
The game fast forwards to your player character working for the Joja Corporation, the in game equivalent of multi-billion dollar worth companies such as the likes of Apple and Google. Your character is amongst hundreds of other workers trapped in their own segmented cubicles, typing away on their computers for hours on end, depicting a dull, corporate lifestyle. The player character. seemingly feeling sick and tired of his situation, remembers the dying words of his grandfather and reaches out for the letter he had received many years ago. The letter contained the deed to your grandfather’s farm in the heart of Stardew Valley and reads:
“Dear _____, If you’re reading this, you must be in dire need of a change. The same thing happened to me, long ago. I’d lost sight of what mattered most in life.. Real connections with other people and nature. So I dropped everything and moved to the place I truly belong.”
The Joja Corporation is depicted as the antagonist in the game, and this point is supported by various events that happen throughout the game. The employees that work in JojaMart, a supermarket owned by the Joja corporation, always seem exhausted because of their work schedules. The description of the game also supports this view and is as follows:
“Stardew Valley is an open-ended country-life RPG! Can you learn to live off the land and turn these overgrown fields into a thriving home? It won’t be easy. Ever since Joja Corporation came to town, the old ways of life have all but disappeared. The community center, once the town’s most vibrant hub of activity, now lies in shambles. But the valley seems full of opportunity. With a little dedication, you might just be the one to restore Stardew Valley to greatness!”
It can be drawn from the passage that the presence of the Joja Corporation through the establishment of the local JojaMart in Stardew Valley has led to the decline of the community center. The dichotomy of whether to side with the corporate JojaMart or the Community center is one of the key gameplay mechanics within the game, and siding with one will end with the destruction of the other.
JojaMart is the representation of the corporate life that the player had tried so hard to escape. Overall, Stardew Valley is a game that promotes a simple, country lifestyle over the capitalist and consumerist culture that the Joja Coroporation takes advantage of. The Joja Corporation embodies capitalism, oppression as well as alienation from work and from other people. Stardew Valley is the antithesis to that.
Everything you do in the game actively involves you with the actual process of work and reaping the benefits of it. The game encourages the player to interact with the community through festivals and town fairs. Community participation is a core gameplay mechanic as it is only through interacting with other villagers that you can accomplish tasks that by yourself are incapable of (i.e. building barns and expanding your house.) The ideology that Stardew Valley promotes is one that seeks to remind players that white collar jobs and consumerist culture are not the only things worth striving for. Stardew Valley is a game that advocates the values of a more traditional way of living by relying on your surrounding community and resources.
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