Stardew Valley developer Eric Barone has announced a new board game adaptation of the popular farm life game, and is available to order now for $ 55.
The result of a collaboration between the only Stardew Valley developer, Barone (who is often known as ConcernedApe) and Cole Medeiros, ConcernedApe’s head of operations and business development, the project took a total of two years to design.
“In 2018 Eric Barone and Cole Medeiros, introduced online through their mutual friend Matt Griffin, played a cooperative Stardew Valley game and discussed the idea of making a Stardew Valley board game,” says the ad. “They didn’t know exactly what it would be like, but they knew that Stardew had all the components of a great board game.”
After two years of refinement and testing, all spent between the time of developing the video game, the duo officially had a board game.
Much like the original video game, players work cooperatively to farm, raise animals, build their farm and collect resources from across the valley. Players can also make friends with the townspeople and win hearts to reveal secret objectives. To win, you will need to restore the Valley to its original grandeur and prevent Joja Mart from spoiling everything. The game can be played with 1 to 4 players, with an estimated playing time of 45 minutes per player.
To do all of this, players need to achieve four “Granda’s Objectives” and restore all rooms in the community center before a season card deck runs out.
The game, which sells for $ 55, comes with a Stardew Valley board to play, blocks (for items like crops, ores, buildings, animals, etc.), various cards for things like events, epic items and levels of mines, gold tokens and more.
ConcernedApe informs fans that the board game was created to evoke the time-consuming nature of playing Stardew Valley, so while it’s designed to be easy to play, it will have a lot of complexity, so check the official rule book to see if it’s your jam. .
ConcernedApe also says that once the first print run is exhausted, future prints will depend on how much demand there is.
“If there is more demand for it, then we will definitely run more runs and maybe expand slowly … we are just testing the waters for now and see what the answer is,” wrote ConcernedApe.
The board game Stardew Valley is almost certain to be popular with fans of the original game. We here at IGN proclaim it one of the best Nintendo Switch games, and the original video game has sold over 10 million copies on six platforms. ConcernedApe also has two new projects underway, both of which will be linked to the Stardew Valley in different ways.
Joseph Knoop is a writer / producer / geode destroyer at IGN.