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
How I felt about the game of the game at the time of this review. You can ignore everything else after this if you want!
0-2 | It was bad 2-4 | It was okay 4-6 | I liked it 6-8 | I really liked it 8-10 | It's really special
Rates how innovative the game mechanics are compared to other games by using a keyword system. Highlighted keywords are words I feel best represent the game. The value is abstracted from this and not exact math.
Too Random Overly Simplistic or Complicated Imbalanced Repetitive Predictable Constrained Familiar Balanced Creative Flexible Innovative Intuitive Thematic Revolutionary Rewarding Elegant
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.
Evaluates the quality and appeal of the game's artwork and how well the theme evokes emotion into gameplay.
Basic Outdated Functional Mismatched Consistent Engaging Simplistic Cohesive Atmospheric Vibrant Captivating Masterful
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 asthetics alone. Very nicely done.
Assesses how the game stands up to multiple plays. Does it remain engaging over time?
Disposable Narrow Predictable Stagnant Adaptable Limited Community-supported Scenario-based Variable Powers Adaptable Challenge Matrix Capable Endless
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.
Are there issues with it's rulebook? How hard is the game to get into and how does it's complexity affect the game overall. Complexity can land on both sides of the coin depending on the game.
Overwhelming Unillustrated Overwrought Disorganized Vague Confusing Consistent Concise Engaging User-friendly Accessible Gradual Streamlined Meaningful Decisions Challenging Illustrated Comprehensive Intricate Nuanced
Overall the rulebook is very easy to understand. 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.
+0.1 for every play session until 10 sessions. +0.2 for every 10 plays after that
The higher the value, the better it is as a solo game! Just a little bonus since playing solo matters to me a lot, but I don't want this bias to overtake the entire review score. I may re-evalute this scale in the future.
Examples: If the solo mode feels tacked on and not designed with solo in mind... it will lose a point here.
If it's solid as a solo game, it will gain a point.
If it's in the middle, it might not gain any points or maybe just a little.
Most games will start with this being a 0. Over time, as my tastes grow, as I play more games, as I cull my collection... it may affect my outlook on the game over time. Have I fallen out of love with game? Has a new game replaced this one? If anything like that happens, it will be updated here. I'll try to post a reason, even a timestamp, and apply a value as to why these points are being reduced.
If a game starts with negative points, it may be impacted for other reasons. For instance, if the company has a really bad Kickstarter Experience, etc. I'll try to rarely let these things effect my thoughts on the game but sometimes the emotional toll can carry into my happiness with a game.