Hi everyone! I’m the Chucklefish dev who has been coordinating with Eric on localisation, porting and multiplayer for Stardew Valley over the last year. I’ve previously worked on Starbound (the procedural quest generator was my baby), and I’m also developing Lenna’s Inception, another Chucklefish project, on the side.

I’m here with an update for those of you who have been waiting so patiently for news on multiplayer! Now that we’ve pinned down the main technical issues, we know enough to feel confident describing the gameplay you can expect from it.

Shortly after you begin the game, Robin will offer to build up to 3 cabins on your farm. Each cabin will house a farmhand, controlled by one of your friends.

Farmhands can do almost anything the main player can do. They can farm, mine, fight, fish, forage, marry NPCs and take part in festivals. Each player has their own inventory. When a farmhand is not connected, their inventory can be managed through a chest in their cabin.

Certain decisions can be made only by the main player: when to sleep, when to start and end festivals, and whether to side with Joja, for instance.

You won’t need to set up a server to run multiplayer. Friends can be invited onto the farm through Steam. The invite mechanism for non-Steam versions is TBD, but likely to be similar in most cases.

A lot of players have requested player-to-player marriage. It’s an idea we like a lot, and want to make available as a feature. Player-to-player marriage won’t use the mermaid pendant, but rather an alternative method that requires a similar amount of effort to wooing an NPC. We’re still working out what that will be.

Local multiplayer, split-screen and PVP are not planned at this point.

Effort so far has been focused on overcoming the biggest technical hurdle: synchronising multiple games over the Internet. Almost every source file has been touched, and 15,000 lines of code have been rewritten. Retrofitting multiplayer into a game that didn’t have it originally is notoriously hard.

Anyway, that chunk of work is almost complete now and we’re starting to look towards what’s next:

• Implementing the farmhand cabins
• UI and menus
• Events and festivals
• Multiplayer NPC relationships
• Polish, testing and optimisation

We currently expect to be able to start a beta test at the end of the year for Steam users to help us test the game. Mod authors will be encouraged to update their mods during this beta period. Then, in early 2018 we will release it as the 1.3 patch on Windows, Mac and Linux.

Consoles will get the patch too, starting with Nintendo Switch. This will be a bigger patch than usual, so be aware that it will take a while to roll out to each platform.

Leave your thoughts in the comments section below!

Hey folks! Stardew Valley 1.2 is now available for Xbox One and Playstation 4 players!

Stardew Valley is now available to play in seven different languages; English, German, Spanish, Russian, Japanese, Simplified Chinese and Brazilian-Portuguese! While localization is the main feature of this update, 1.2 also includes some controller improvements and important bug fixes. Check the patch notes below!

Equates to PC version 1.2.29

Patch Notes

• Translations for German, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian, Japanese and Simplified Chinese.
• When using a controller, the cursor will snap between menu buttons by default. If you disable that, the cursor will instead accelerate while moving.
• When using a controller, pressing the back button will skip events that are skippable.

Bug Fixes

• Wallpapers and floors no longer have a tile placement indicator showing a random object
• Increased stability of preference-saving code.
• Fixed a crash that can happen when a pig tries to spawn a truffle but there’s no space for it.
• Fixed a couple of rare crashes that could have occurred at any time during the game.
• Fixed a typo of the word ‘pronounce’ in the marriage event.
• Fixed the player not getting the recipe for Cookies if they skip Evelyn’s event.
• Farming level now affects crop yield prior to level 10.
• Fixed crashes while loading save files.
• Fixed crashes while saving due to slay-monster quest.
• Minor performance improvements on the farm. (Console Specific)
• Miscellaneous audio fixes. (Console Specific)
• Removed achievements tab from collection window (Console Specific).

At long last, Stardew Valley is available to play in seven different languages; English, German, Spanish, Russian, Japanese, Simplified Chinese and Brazilian-Portuguese! While localization is the biggest new feature, 1.2 also includes some controller improvements and important bug fixes. Check the patch notes below!

Big thanks to all involved in getting 1.2 ready for release — Playism, Tencent, Sickhead, the community members who provided translation feedback and reports, and to everyone else for waiting so patiently while we worked to improve the quality of translation and stability of the patch!

Note: This update is only available on PC at the moment, but an update for consoles is on the way! Steam users should see this update immediately, but it may take a bit for GOG to update.

Patch Notes

• Translations for German, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian, Japanese and Simplified Chinese.
• When using a controller, the cursor will snap between menu buttons by default. If you disable that, the cursor will instead accelerate while moving.
• When using a controller, pressing the back button will skip events that are skippable.
• Exit to Title has returned.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed lighting shader not covering the whole screen on Mac and Linux.
• Switching from “Windowed Borderless” to “Fullscreen” should now go straight to fullscreen instead of Windowed mode.
• Wallpapers and floors no longer have a tile placement indicator showing a random object
• Increased stability of preference-saving code. This should fix infrequent crashes that require the player to delete startup_preferences.
• Fixed a crash that can happen when a pig tries to spawn a truffle but there’s no space for it.
• Fixed a couple of rare crashes that could have occurred at any time during the game.
• Fixed a typo of the word ‘pronounce’ in the marriage event.
• Fixed the player not getting the recipe for Cookies if they skip Evelyn’s event.
• Farming level now affects crop yield prior to level 10

Hi Everyone,

Today marks the 1-year anniversary of the release of Stardew Valley.

In some ways, it’s hard to believe that an entire year has already gone by  since launch. Yet, at the same time, it’s been the longest year of my life. It’s felt long because I’ve done so much in the last 12 months:

-Game came out
-Released many patches to fix bugs and tweak gameplay
-Dozens of interviews
-Answered thousands of messages/emails
-Provided personal troubleshooting and technical support
-Made many Business/Merchandise deals
-Developed and released the 1.1 update
-Exhibited at PAX and met many fans
-Met Mr. Yasuhiro Wada, the creator of Harvest Moon
-Flew to the UK to visit Chucklefish and collect an industry award
-Built a decent computer and got a nice big desk (No more HP Pavilion propped on a Wii U box)
-Worked with Chucklefish to make the Console ports and localizations happen

Considering that I had spent the previous 4-5 years in my own little bubble, working alone, doing essentially the same thing every day… and now suddenly to be thrust into the limelight… it was quite the change! I’m happy about it, of course. I mean… it is a weird feeling, at first, to have something that once seemed so distant, so impossible… some pipe-dream that you fantasized about in the dead of night… actually come true. It takes some getting used to, and that’s part of what this last year has been for me.

But I’m very, very grateful to have this opportunity. I’m excited about the future. 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. And I’ve made plenty of mistakes, too. But I try to view any blunders in a positive light… fertile ground from which to improve and grow stronger.

I’m 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.

…

I figure this might be a good opportunity to share some development history with you guys.

I have some really old screenshots on my computer…

These ones are from 2012:

Bringing a dandelion to Leah’s Cottage

The farm.

The mines. 

Sebastian’s Room

The Saloon… Pam in her usual spot

Level-up menu. 

Inventory menu. There were several background themes you could choose from.

Also, the game was called “Sprout Valley” at this point:

As you can see, the “bones” of Stardew Valley were pretty much there way back in 2012.  So why did it take 4 more years to complete?

Well, you could say I was “polishing” the game during those 4 years.

I ended up re-doing nearly all the art several times. I redid the vast majority of the soundtrack. I expanded the NPC’s way beyond anything you’d see in the 2012 version. I made the map way bigger and more detailed. I added JojaMart and the Community Center. I added tons of items. I totally changed the crafting system and the mines.

In fact, at one point, the mines were going to be procedurally generated and fully destructible, with lakes you could cross by raft:

It sounded cool, but it was too difficult to make it work well. I spent a lot of time on it, and had a system working. But for some reason it just wasn’t fun. It didn’t feel right… so I scrapped it entirely.

The NPC portraits have probably changed more than anything else in the game. The very first portraits were all hand-drawn:

I drew every single NPC with 4 different expressions, scanned them in, colored them… and then scrapped all of it. Then I went through probably 6 or 7 iterations of pixel art portraits before landing on the final ones.

Stardew Valley was kind of like a big practice project, and I just stuck with it until all my skills improved to a point I was happy with.

Here’s what the town map looked like in 2013:

That was it… no Joja Mart or Community Center, and the blacksmith shop and museum weren’t off in the corner like they are now. The buildings were also a lot uglier.

Some day I might do a live stream of an old build of Stardew Valley… that might be fun.

Anyway, even back in 2012… when the game looked awful… there were people following it and encouraging me to continue. I appreciate that. To all of you who are reading this, who have played Stardew Valley and built an amazing community around it… thank you so much. The mods, the wiki, the encouraging messages, the fan art… I love it, and I’m so grateful and thankful for your support! I will continue to work hard and do my best to create memorable gaming experiences for you all, through Stardew Valley and whatever comes next!

Thanks for reading!

-ConcernedApe

Hey everyone! Chucklefish here.

In case you missed it, we’ve been working with Playism to translate Stardew Valley into German, Spanish, Brazilian-Portuguese, Russian, Japanese and Simplified Chinese. Many of you have been waiting super patiently for the localization update to be released, and we thank you for that! Everyone involved in this project wanted to take the time to ensure the patch was stable and the localization was excellent.

We’re nearly ready to release the update, but first we’d really love some feedback – is the translation good? Are you running into any new bugs we failed to catch? To that end, we’re running an open beta of the localization update on Steam.

Here’s what’s included in the beta branch:

• Full translations into German, Spanish, Brazilian-Portuguese, Russian, Japanese and Simplified Chinese
• Fixes for animal happiness related bugs
• The “exit to title” button has returned!
• Cursor acceleration when playing on a gamepad (like the console version of the game)

Here’s how to access the beta branch:

From your Steam library, right-click ‘Stardew Valley’ and select ‘Properties’. Choose the ‘beta’ tab. You should see a drop down menu. From there, select ‘beta – Help test new updates before they go live’.

It is important to back up your saves.

Old saves should continue to work in the beta branch, but make a backup (info about locating your save file) before switching to the beta. After saving in the beta branch, you won’t be able to load your save file in the current stable version.

Known Issues:

• “Looking for saved games” on the load menu is not translated
• Music on the title screen plays even if disabled after using “Exit to Title”

How to provide feedback:

You can reply to this forum thread with feedback, or email [email protected]. Thank you for participating!

Notes on Multiplayer

Hi everyone,

I hope the new year is going well for you so far.  I’d like to give you an update on several things that are happening right now:

Xbox One / PS4 patches:

Chucklefish and Sickhead Games are making good progress on addressing some issues with the console versions. Their top priority is to resolve the issue where saved games become unload-able. Fortunately, they’ve discovered the reason this is happening, and after this next patch, it shouldn’t occur anymore. If you currently have a save file that won’t load, it will likely work once again after the patch comes out. The patch will also fix several other issues: I’ll share the full patch notes with you when the it’s been finalized.

Patch Notes (31 January 2017)

The Xbox One and PS4 updates are live! Here’s a change log:

Xbox One & PS4

• Fixed potential loss of item in cursor slot when clicking the bundles tab in the pause menu.
• Fixed crash when hatching / buying baby blue chickens.
• Fixed crashes that sometimes occur when clearing quests out of the quest log.
• Petting a fully-happy animal no longer wraps happiness around to 0.
• Animals with a deluxe product no longer produce less at higher happiness.
• Fixed a golden pumpkin duplication exploit.
• Fixed ‘Exit to Title’ causing some values and bits of world state to be ‘carried over’ between games. This affected, among other things, the availability of chests in the mines.
• Fixed crashes while saving.
• Possible fix for fertilizer boxes being placed instead of fertilizer.
• Missing heart characters have been fixed.

Xbox One

• The bug that causes crashes while looking for save files has been fixed.
• Most saves that couldn’t be loaded before should now load. In some cases there may be lingering minor graphical issues in save files that previously couldn’t be loaded.

The following issues are also fixed by the above, but may continue to affect save files they’re already present in:

• Crash when speaking to Gunther.
• Incorrect item / object graphics.
• Objects that should be interactive not being interactive.
• Crashes when walking into specific parts of the farm.
• Crashes while harvesting specific crop tiles.
• Crashes while hovering over specific items in your inventory.
• Crashes while shipping specific items.

PS4

• Share overlay image in PS4 streams has been removed.

FAQ

• Will issues affecting corrupted Xbox saves persist even after the Feb 1 patch?

New saves and saves that have previously not been corrupted will work fine and will never become corrupt. Existing saves that became corrupt and could not be loaded will be repaired and become loadable in almost all cases now. Saves that became corrupted may continue to behave oddly in some cases (Refer to the list in Xbox One patch notes about issues that might persist).

• What about the issue where PS4 Pro users have problems shutting down their console, going into rest mode and running other apps?

The PS4 Pro issues associated with Stardew Valley are a system software bug, and not caused by the game. Sony have informed us that a fix is coming in the next major system software update, but we (Chucklefish & Sickhead) haven’t been told when that will be.

Localisations (Beta test in early february):

Playism is translating Stardew Valley into Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, German, Russian, Japanese, and Simplified Chinese. Back in October, I said that these localised versions would be available by the end of the month… I was way off. After inspecting the state of the localised versions, it become clear that they needed a lot more work. Well, that work is now mostly finished. Chucklefish is doing some private testing of the localised versions, and it seems very solid so far. In early February we will do an open beta test on Steam. It will go live for everyone some time after that, depending on how the beta goes.

Nintendo Switch

Stardew Valley will not be a launch title on Nintendo Switch, but I am still planning on bringing it to the platform later this year.

Playstation Vita

We are currently investigating the possibility of a PS Vita port.

Multiplayer

Multiplayer co-op is still in development… progress has been made but it’s going to be a while yet.

Most Stardew Valley development is being done by others, now (Chucklefish, Sickhead Games and Playism)… but I do still work on the game. For example, I am currently working on making the controller easier to use (getting rid of the cursor in menus when using gamepad). That should be added to the console and PC versions in a future patch.

I hope this post answers some of the questions you may have had lately.

Also, thanks so much to everyone who put Stardew Valley on their end-of-the-year awards/lists.  I am very honored. Thank you!

-ConcernedApe

UPDATED UPDATE: The Xbox One and PS4 patches are both live!

—

Hi everyone,

An important patch for the console versions is in the works.  I will let you know when it goes live, but in the meantime I’d like to share these patch notes with you:

Xbox One:

– Performance improvements for periodic hitching and freezes.
– Fixed Junimo harvesters not path finding.
– Fixed About button (?) to be unclickable during main menu transitions.
– Fixed crash when sleeping if you built a Junimo Hut and the Witch visits you.
– Fixed a crash when sleeping that would prevent a player from advancing past year 1, day 28.
– Moved in some HUD elements that were too close to the edge of the screen.
– The LT and RT buttons can now be used to switch buildings in carpenter menu.
– The shipping menu can now be closed by pressing the VIEW button.
– The B button can now be used to close Grandpa’s letter.
– B button now goes back one page when you’re in a specific bundle of the Junimo menu.
– B button now returns a held item to your inventory in Bundle menu in the Community Center.
– Made harvesting easier by also checking beneath the player when pressing the A button.
– Cursor position will no longer affect item placement if it is currently invisible.
– We now show the ground placement indicator for seeds, like other objects.
– Fixed incorrect tool hit location in some situations.
– X button can now be held down to auto-repeat while in menus.
– Cursor will no longer interact with HUD menus if it is currently invisible.
– Fixed toolbar becoming stuck partially transparent.
– The VIEW button can now be used to advance the “Level Up” dialog.
– Fixed some cases of the game becoming stuck after using “Exit to Title”.

Playstation 4 

– Fixed crash sleeping on 3rd or 4th day when playing with OS in non-English languages (German, Portuguese).
– Fixed About button (?) to be unclickable during main menu transitions.
– Fixed crash when sleeping if you built a Junimo Hut and the Witch visits you.
– Fixed a crash when sleeping that would prevent a player from advancing past year 1, day 28.
– Moved in some HUD elements that were too close to the edge of the screen.
– The L2 and R2 buttons can now be used to switch buildings in carpenter menu.
– The shipping menu can now be closed by pressing the TOUCH PAD button.
– The CIRCLE button can now be used to close Grandpa’s letter.
– CIRCLE button now goes back one page when you’re in a specific bundle of the Junimo menu.
– CIRCLE button now returns a held item to your inventory in Bundle menu in the Community Center.
– Made harvesting easier by also checking beneath the player when pressing the CROSS button.
– Cursor position will no longer affect item placement if it is currently invisible.
– We now show the ground placement indicator for seeds, like other objects.
– Fixed incorrect tool hit location in some situations.
– SQUARE button can now be held down to auto-repeat while in menus.
– Cursor will no longer interact with HUD menus if it is currently invisible.
– Fixed toolbar becoming stuck partially transparent.
– The TOUCH PAD button can now be used to advance the “Level Up” dialog.
– Fixed some cases of the game becoming stuck after using “Exit to Title”.

Thanks for playing Stardew Valley and I hope you have a nice weekend

-ConcernedApe

Hi everyone,

Stardew Valley is now available on Xbox One, and Playstation 4 in North America and Europe! The price for the console version is $14.99 USD, just like PC.

Stardew Valley was ported to Xbox and PS4 by my publisher, Chucklefish, in conjunction with Sickhead Games. The launch has been relatively smooth so far, but there are a few issues we are aware of. We will be rolling out some patches in the next few weeks to address some of these issues, including:

• Game crashes when going to sleep around the 3rd day, if the system language is not english. (PS4)
• Game crashes in certain cases if the Exit To Title button was used (Xbox One)
• Occasional hitching/freezing in the Xbox One version
• GUI elements cut off on the edges of the screen on certain TV setups
• Control improvements

In the meantime, Molly from Chucklefish has started a thread in the forums with some known bugs/issues and a few workarounds.

Thanks so much to everyone who has purchased the console version so far… I hope you are enjoying it… and thank you all for your continued support!

-ConcernedApe

I’m pleased to announce the official release dates for the Xbox One and Playstation 4 versions of Stardew Valley!

Stardew Valley will launch in North America for the PS4 on December 13th, 2016.

Stardew Valley will launch in Europe for the PS4 and globally for the Xbox One on December 14th, 2016.

Pre-orders for the Xbox One (globally) and PS4 (Europe only) will begin on November 30th, 2016.

Stardew Valley will not be coming to the Wii U, however. Looking at Wii U and the current gaming landscape, we made the difficult choice to shift our development efforts to creating a version for Nintendo Switch.  I am really looking forward to the Switch, and I believe that the Switch’s unique capabilities could create some exciting opportunities for Stardew Valley. I do want to emphasize that I am absolutely committed to seeing Stardew Valley on Nintendo platforms, and I really do appreciate your support and understanding in this.

-Ape

Hi everyone,

As you may know, I’ve been working with Playism and Chucklefish to create official translations for Japanese, Chinese, Russian, Brazillian Portuguese, Spanish and German (and possibly Thai). I mentioned on twitter recently that these versions would be available some time this month in a free update. However, during our internal testing of the localized versions, we’ve encountered some issues, and it looks like we won’t be able to release it this month.

Making sure that everyone has a great experience with Stardew Valley is our top priority, and we all agreed that we’d rather delay the release of the localization update than risk jeopardizing that experience.

This is going to affect the localization of the console versions of Stardew Valley more than the PC version. On PC, I can release the localization update as soon as we feel like it’s ready. Releasing a game on consoles is more complex and requires submissions well in advance of the actual release. This means the console versions will only be in English at launch, and we’ll have to patch in the other languages a little later.

Multiplayer is still under development… I know it’s taking a while, but it should be worth the wait. Thanks for your patience!

-ConcernedApe