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Stardew Valley dethrones Valve classic Portal 2 as Steam’s top-rated game (www.dexerto.com)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/games@lemmy.world
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[–] 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (8 children)

Some people have a money anxiety built in that translates into the game. The funny thing is they bring it all themselves, the game makes absolutely no fuzz at all about making money.

The very first scene is the main character running away from the ratrace to a farm. Yet the very first thing some players do is bring in the ratrace with them. Everything in the game makes money and no money at all is ever required by the game from the player, except to advance the farming itself. It doesn't even have banks or debts like animal crossing.

It's bizarre how people, when left to their own devices, simply reproduce the worse habits of real life.

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  • [–] 9 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    no money at all is ever required by the game from the player

    Yes it is though? To upgrade the house, purchase new equipment, buildings, to see more features

    Sure, you can do without money, but then you're going to miss half of the game's features

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    I might be remembering wrong, but I think it is entirely possible to develop relationships with the town characters and see almost all of the cutscenes without ever upgrading any of those.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    maybe, but I would say that's not most of the game's features, I personally don't really care about it

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Then you don't engage with over 60% of the game anyways. Sounds to me like a balanced game that has something to offer to a variety of players, and anxieties, overfixation and stress with some gameplay and not other seems to be something the player brings in and is not caused by the game.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    To open the community center (the primary goal for the first year+) specifically takes quite a lot of money actually, and outside of talking with NPC's once a day, money is necessary to get every other advancement I can think of. I agree that many players probably go too hard into trying to min/max things, but the game isn't as loosey-goosey with costs as you suggest.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    No the game has a much, much worse anxiety time crunch in trying to 100% it before the end of year.. 2 ( I think) when grandpa shrine first measures progress.

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  • [–] 8 points 1 year ago

    You don't find out what that means unless you made it to year two and it immediately tells you that you can keep trying anytime you want.

    It's not a one and done, you can literally retry the test infinitely. There is no crunch period at all, this anxiety comes from players misunderstanding things the game says in plain English.

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