And I Thank You For That Part, Too

what if there was a deadly plague. what if people were turning feral. what if this cut this village off from the rest of the world.

what if you were a farmer. what if you had to provide for everyone in the village. what if people would starve without you.

what if the royal guard demanded rations from you. what if you could never rest just to keep up with demand. what if fear was all you knew.

Specifically the growing dates. The crops aren't confined to a specific season. They have a date range instead, rolling into the next season (or the previous one, for winter/spring crops).

But if you have those plants planted and producing when the growing season ends for that specific crops, the plants don't immediately die. They will eventually, but I find it's more scattering. One or two here and there until they're all gone, vs most farming games killing them all off right away.

There are a lot of little things in this game, like edible tree seeds or butchering and having things like hides and guts and blood as byproducts received-

There are a lot of little things in this game, that despite it's clear fantasy nature, that really ties it into something real.

This world feels alive and real in a way that no other farming game ever has for me. All the stakes feel so real, and daunting. It's incomparable to any other farming sim I've ever played.

I think the only one that comes close is Fields of Mistria, and THAT'S purely on how fucking AMAZING all the NPC's are, much less their interactions with each other that we get to see/overhear.

Stardew Valley deserves its farming sim reputation. Harvest Moon and Stardew spend decades paving the way for other farming Sims to really burst into the mainstream, which in turn prompted more and more farming games to start coming out.

now go in peace