What I like about Stardew Valley The Board Game
Faithful Adaptation: One of the game’s strongest points is its faithful adaptation of the beloved video game. Stardew Valley The Board Game captures the essence of farm management, community engagement, and exploration of the video game and so much of it’s charm. It’s evident that a lot of effort went into making the game feel true to the “Stardew Valley” experience, including seasonal changes, various farming activities, and interaction with town folks. It’s not perfect but it does a really great job.
Cooperative (And Solo) Gameplay: The cooperative aspect of the game is a big plus. It encourages teamwork and strategy for players to work together to achieve common goals, such as completing Grandpa’s Goals and restoring the Community Center. It’s not surprising because I am not really sure how you would make this into a competitive game. Maybe a 1vMany game where one plays as Jojomart?
Quality and Design: The physical components of the game are of high quality, with detailed illustrations and sturdy materials. The artwork is charming and aligns well with the game’s aesthetic, enhancing the overall experience way more than it should. There is a tin-version of this game that I’d like to try just to compare how much I enjoy the game because of it’s art vs it’s actual gameplay.
Decently Challenging: You wouldn’t think a game with Stardew Valley on the label would be hard, but there is some decent challenge here. I prefer my board games to be challenging and this was surprising on my first play.
What I Don’t like about Stardew Valley The Board Game
Complexity and Learning Curve: While long-term the game is not a super heavy game… it feels heavy the first time you play because it’s hard to figure out how to start. For new players, especially those not familiar with the video game, the board game can feel overwhelming due to all the things that are available to you and without fully understanding the friend and Community Center gameplay loop. Plus there isn’t a ton of time to get everything done which makes the game much harder in a multiplayer setting than a solo one. It doesn’t feel as Casual as you’d think it would be until you play the game a bit.
Game Length: Some may find the game’s length a drawback. A full game can take several hours to complete. I was surprised how long my first play took, even solo.
Luck Factor: While there is some strategy to the game, Luck plays a significant role in the game. Randomness regarding the drawing of event cards and seasonal changes, can sometimes feel punishing or unbalanced or getting bad dice rolls over and over, especially when trying to open Geodes. While there are lots of cards, powers, and Items to counteract this, you have to randomly find the right cards to overcome your weaknesses as well.
Wakasm's Report Card of Arbitrary Values for Stardew Valley The Board Game
There is a lot of randomness in Stardew Valley The Board Game. I'm generally a fan of randomness but there are times where it can be a little bit too much, especially if you happen to pick roles that are not targeted towards your main goals (for instance, if you randomly choose professions). The game is pretty thematic to the video game, but also soul-crushingly challenging at times compared to it's original source material. There is nothing incredibly innovative here but it plays well and will be fun to revisit from time to time. The two action system can feel pretty restrained (especially if you are playing multiplayer). This is less constrained when playing solo.
This will likely be the highest category for this game in terms of rating. The game's artwork and thematic tie-in to the video game is just spot on. More than anything, this game nails the art style, the feel, and overall charm of it's source material. It's one of those games that just feels a joy to play based on aesthetics alone. Very nicely done.
Stardew Valley has a nice breath of ways to tackle the game and generate some of the resources you need (money, hearts, etc) to accomplish your 10 goals between the Community Center and Grandpa's requests. However, ultimately, the goals do not feel varied enough (and some actually feed bad like the early foraging bundle quest) which can make you feel incredibly pigeon-holed from game to game. While I think this will be a fun game to revisit from time to time, I do not feel I would get endless enjoyment I played it over and over. I predict I'll probably play this around 5-10 times in it's lifetime, unless it's something my family wants to dig out. It's also very hard to make any kind of progression or Challenge Matrix out of it unless you really want to play with random profession combinations... but the goals are so narrow I haven't figured out yet how fun this will be to do.
This game is a bit weird. Sometimes there is strategy. Sometimes there is too much luck. Sometimes there is both. Anyone adverse to luck will probably not enjoy this game. There are some instances of minor things you have to remember and the overall strategy in your first plays will feel unintuitive, but after a play or two, these feels disappear and everything feels very streamlined. The game overall is pretty challenging due to how tight the rounds are. You will often feel like you just don't have enough time to get everything done and any bad luck will make you feel very far set-back in the game. This also means it can feel a little overwhelming at first until you start making progress towards friendships and seeing what challenges await you at the community center.
Overall the rulebook is very easy to understand but is pretty packed and there is a bit of overload of information (even if you are familiar with the original video game). While the game tries to remind you on the board about a lot of special cases, it's very easy to accidentally forget small steps that are highlighted for each activity. The rulebook also is pretty large and while it does have good examples, since every action plays differently, it's like learning 9 mini rulebooks vs one big one. This part of the game is heavier than you'd think the first time you play.
The game has been released twice at a pretty reasonable cost, but there were definitely a lot of markups and FOMO happening (especially on the after market). I'd say it's fairly reasonable to expensive... not a budget friendly game especially considering it might have limited shelf life.
I have played Stardew Valley The Board Game 2 times!
