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Stardew Valley creator on success and next steps – “Is it the best I can do? No”

Best Indie Games Stardew Valley

Cutesy farming hit Stardew Valley has had a hell of a year, as laid out by Eric “ConcernedApe” Barone in a recent post-mortem blog post about the last 12 months. In it he shows off how the game used to look, and promises he’s got bigger and better in him yet.

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The lengthy full post breaks down everything that’s happened in the past year, from surprising launch attention, patches, interviews and getting localisation sorted.

“I’m excited about the future,” says Barone. “I have many ideas, and I want to keep making games for a long time to come. I’ve learned so much from Stardew Valley: the importance of beta testing; how to make decent pixel art; how to use Steam; how to maintain a game after launch.”

Barone goes on to admit he made “plenty of mistakes” too, but that he sees them as positives, lessons learned for his next games. Finally, he says that he’s “proud” of Stardew Valley: “I think it’s a good game. Is it perfect? No. Is it the best I can do? No… really I see this as just the beginning… I’m just dipping my toe into the water. And I’m looking forward to making the next step.”

Exactly what, or when, that will be remains to be seen. The rest of the post, which is worth a read, is dedicated to early screenshots of the game and a short history of its development. It’s recognisable but a fair stack uglier back in 2012, but it got there in the end.

Thanks, Eurogamer.