Eric “worried” Barone has been working Stardew Valley For 12 years, and I could have another 50 in it.
Despite having announced Chocolatier Haunted in 2021, Barone talks about Stardew Valley like it's still his baby. He confessed in December that he simply can't “let go” of Stardew Valley “to work on something that's no longer established and meaningful to people,” which certainly makes a lot of sense. The farming SIM phenomenon is one of the most successful indie games of all time, and with Barone as its sole developer, well, you can probably imagine that it lives quite comfortably thanks solely to Stardew Valley.
Speaking to NPR, he assured fans that he's not done with Stardew despite his admission that “a game can have too much content.”
“Ultimately I want Stardew Valley to be the best game it can be,” Barone said. “So if I feel like it's starting to get a little overwhelmed with the content to the point where it's detrimental to the entertainment factor of the game, I'd stop at that point.
“I want to make more than one game in my life. Including development time, I have been working on Stardew Valley for over 12 years. But I don't want to definitively say that the book is ever closed, because I think I will always have the desire to go back and maybe add a thing or two.
This isn't the first time Barone has suggested that he'll be working on Stardew Valley for the rest of his life, but it seems to me that he'll eventually slow down development and periodically push out new updates here and there. I'd also be willing to bet that Haunted Chocolatier's success will be a big determinant in how robust Stardew Valley continues to develop.
“I like creating things,” he said. “I don't think I'll ever retire. I think it would be fun to release an update when I'm 90, if I live that long. Let's hope.”
I went in high expecting a Stardew Valley meets Studio Ghibli experience, but I was blown away by its whimsical take on the survival genre.