Play relevant month: Stardew Valley

For my final game of the year on this final day of the year, I present to you a game that sold a million copies and looks like a mix between a SNES game and something off an Amiga at best. A extremely simple and easy to play game that weirdly requires I blow the introductory paragraph on explaining what the game actually is. Simple to play, simple to learn, difficult to describe.

Stardew Valley is a bit more difficult to define because it does not generally fit into a large, well known genre. It gets compared to Harvest Moon, but what if you're like me and you've never played Harvest Moon? Ostensibly the game is classified as a low-key, low-seriousness farming simulator but addressing it as such is pretty disingenuous. Rather, Stardew Valley is a farming game that then wraps itself around a massive assortment of mini-games that interconnect. It's not a clicker game, though there is a lot of clicking, and it's not much of a simulator either. It's also not all that open-ended, and it feels like it has a lot of mechanics it actually does not.

Much like Axiom Verge last year, which was likely my favorite game of the year, Stardew Valley is a solo programmer project built from the ground up over several years of development. More so than Axiom Verge, it's also a critical and financial success, though not quite to the scale of something like Terraria I don't think? But pretty close, and pretty deserving on the most part.

It's a really weird game to review...

Holiday card: California Gold Rush

I really, really want to just slam on this game for being a complete non-game, but... But... as you can see above I played it for a full hour and I wouldn't say it was a bad hour, so how much criticism can I direct at it? I'm clearly not in the target audience, as Broforce to this game is as great a divide between games as you can possibly get. When you encounter a wolf in this game, Pedro runs away and his white slaver emerges from the fort to do a little gun dance to chase the wolf off.

We'll talk about Pedro in a moment.

Rush for Gold California, or Rush for California Gold or whatever the title is, is about white prospectors entering California to enslave Mexicans, trade gold for food at an exorbitant rate with rather stereotypical looking Native Americans who might resemble the tribe that historically lived in this area while freeing... Other white people. The introduction of the game is literally a white dude who is tied up to a tree with his Mexican "who is at your disposal for anything" yeah okay and he immediately begins giving you orders.

Oh, he phrases them as suggestions. I'm onto you, white guy in a suit. There's one time you should trust a white guy in a suit. Anyway once you get into the game, your "suggestion filled" overseer begins barking out orders which centre on essentially collecting scraps to then collect other scraps until your overseer is satisfied. Once he is satisfied, you are released to the map screen, where you're allocated stars which can build new dwellings for rich white people to move into. Usually rich white ladies. There's no mention of a whorehouse, but I'm sure that's just your "partner" who is constantly barking out orders and assigns tasks while doing no work just keeping that off the table so you don't get your fair cut.

You're out there fending off bears and wolves and he's in the back with some corset wearing broads? You ask him what he's doing and he's all, build a water pump, uh, mine me some coal, something something fish. Yeah this is all on the level. Probably tied up originally for failing to pay for all his whorin' and gamblin' debts.

he doesn't have the hat, no

And yeah Pedro. You can only hire one worker "skin" in this game, pun not intended, who is a humble Pedro. I don't know else to say here. Am I racist for thinking a guy looking like this guy is Mexican? Named Pedro? Pedro and his four identical brothers, Pedro, Pedro, Pedro and Pedro all bust their butts and you don't even feed them unless they're hacking underbrush down with a machete or mining a coal outcropping. Poor Pedro working the gold mine? Yeah you don't feed him.

Anyway this game is essentially a simple resource management game. Visually it's actually really nice looking, it reminds me of collecting resources on the map screen of HoMM4 or something. Just pretty sprites. There's some audio, including a woodpecker, normal music and pleasant sounds. And the Pedro brothers dance whenever you finish a task and release them from their perpetual unpaid labor. I suppose it's a children's game, and it's pretty soothing to play a couple minutes here or there in, but I'm not sure what you're teaching your children. Pedro does all the real work while some white guy in a suit sits back in town and barks out orders?

Sometimes you let wolves chase him around because he's unarmed. Only the white people are allowed guns. I really wish I had some Mexican food right now.