Simulation games have always felt lonely to me, almost empty. For all of their enticements, their promises of endless adventure, they invariably fall short. Somewhere, somehow, something breaks the immersion, laying bare the machinery behind the curtains. It's never the virtual life advertised, just a simulacrum of a dream.
So, when the first mentions of farm-life simulator Stardew Valley bloomed on Twitter, I raised an eyebrow. It's been described as Harvest Moon crossed with Animal Crossing and Zelda, a love letter to the pastoral classics. But I'd been there, done that, and while I adored my time with Starbound—my last farming-type flirtation—it left me feeling as though I was a child with a diorama of talking action figures, rather than an extraterrestrial colony leader.
Nonetheless, circumstances led to the acquisition of the game, and I went ahead with it, sceptical at first, only to become completely infatuated by the end of the first growing season. Where other titles barrage you with features, with new twists, and new iterations on the latest big new idea, Stardew Valley asks you, both as your pixelated avatar and as the player, to breathe.
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