Stardew Valley: Let's Get Farming

This week, I hope you’ll forgive me for taking a break from Avatar: The Last Airbender content to let you know about another project I’m working on.

My goal with Grrrl Fans is to talk about women, girls, and feminine presenting people in fandom. This includes writing about TV franchises - like ALTA - that have large fanbases that fit that demographic.

However, my intent was never to just cover TV franchises. I’ve been meaning to branch out and include other types of pop culture, including video games. 

For some further context, I’ve also wanted to play around with streaming video gameplay. This is not something I really have any experience with. I totally expect that if I attempt something like this, I will be incredibly awkward at first. I don’t even know if I’d like it. But I’m wanting to try it. I don’t have fancy video equipment, just a console and a headset/microphone combo. I don’t plan on upgrading my gear - I can’t afford it right now and I don’t want to spend a ton of money on something I don’t know if I’m going to like. 

With all of that out of the way, I wanted to share that I’m planning on playing around with streaming Stardew Valley on Twitch. Why Stardew Valley? Well, there are a couple of reasons.

First, I’ve played Stardew Valley before and I would call myself a fan. I thought if I’m going to play around with streaming, I wanted to start off with a game I had some familiarity with. Also, something I know I like and would like to stick with. 

Second, I know that Stardew Valley has a decent sized female fanbase. If you’re into the purpose of this blog, you may also be interested in Stardew Valley. 

What is Stardew Valley?

On the surface, the premise of Stardew Valley seems pretty simple: you create a character. Your character inherits a decrepit piece of land from their grandfather and it’s your job to put it back together. 

Along the way, you can (but don’t necessarily have to) build relationships with other townspeople and rebuild the community center. 

Stardew Valley was developed by Eric Barone, also known as Concerned Ape. It was first released on February 26, 2016. One of the reasons fans of the game keep coming back is that Concerned Ape keeps updating the game, fixing bugs, etc. It’s a relatively inexpensive game with a ton to do; it’s easy to spend hours on it. 

If Stardew Valley sounds like other farming sims like Story of Seasons / Harvest Moon, that’s because Concerned Ape cites the franchise as an inspiration. 

But anyway. Once you get to your farm, there’s very little you actually have to do. You will still be given some suggestions, such as:

• Growing plants
• Raising animals
• Fishing
• Mining
• Building relationships with other villagers - some of whom you can marry

Stardew Valley’s Fans

Because of the open-ended nature of Stardew Valley, fans will sometimes create challenges for themselves. Some challenges I’ve seen fans do include only growing one type of crop, marrying and divorcing all marriageable candidates, etc. 

Mods have made it possible to do even more things with the game. 

If you take a look at Reddit and other Stardew Valley forums, you’ll see fans have done things like knit/crochet/craft Stardew Valley items, discuss conspiracy theories/head cannons, and write fan fiction.

Goals for this playthrough

I want this playthrough of Stardew Valley to be pretty casual. 

I want to see how long it takes me to finish the community center if I’m not trying to rush. 

In previous playthroughs, I’ve married Abigail, Emily, Shane, Sebastian, and Sam. In one playthrough, I decided that I’d take the “I hate everyone” route - I bought a Joja membership and invited Krobus to be my roommate. 

There are NPCs I’ve barely interacted with. This is especially true of non-marriageable candidates.

This time around, I’d like to spend some time “getting to know” some of the NPCs I’ve previously ignored. 

Other things to know

I’ve previously played Stardew Valley on Switch and Steam Deck. This time around, I will be playing from my PS5. Since this is my first time playing on the PS5, I may need some time getting used to the controls.

As I said, I don’t have fancy equipment and will not be using a webcam. We’ll see if I upgrade down the road.

Interested in watching?

You can find me over on Twitch. 

See you next week with (hopefully) more ATLA content.