Last year, Eric ‘ConcernedApe’ Barone surprised Stardew Valley fans by admitting he “might eventually make a Stardew Valley 2.” Given that he and his team of devs continue to tinker with the first game as it approaches its tenth birthday (update 1.7 is confirmed to be on the way) and his highly anticipated Haunted Chocolatier project is still a long way off, how could the Stardew creator even dream of making a sequel right now? Well, it seems as if Stardew 2 was more than just a reverie – ConcernedApe says in a new interview he was “starting to work” on it before he committed to Haunted Chocolatier.
In a wide-ranging interview with IGN, ConcernedApe talks honestly about his approach to Stardew Valley, supporting one of the best life games ever, and juggling his time between it and Haunted Chocolatier. By his own admission, he describes his development style as “scrappy” and unconventional, saying that he still feels like a “very amateur developer” even after almost ten years of working on his games.
While the once-solo developer now has a small team around him to assist in the steady updating of Stardew Valley, he still has a lot of involvement – “my hand needs to touch every part of the game,” he tells IGN. This has, infamously, caused Haunted Chocolatier’s development to be stretched longer and longer, and it seems we’re still nowhere close to getting a launch date for the game.
This combination of the constant desire to improve and add features to Stardew Valley, and the drawn out development of his next game, makes any mention of a Stardew sequel genuinely perplexing – let alone the admission he’d already started on it.
“Yeah, I would,” he says when asked whether he’d like to make Stardew Valley 2, instead of updating the current game. “In fact, I would love to because it would just be fun to work on a whole new set of characters, a whole new world, maybe capture some of that original energy that I had back in 2012, when I started working with Stardew Valley. There’s something fun about the number of possibilities in a whole new world, which I think would be fun for me. It’d be fun for my team. We’d be really excited about it. It’s a bit difficult because people are so attached to Pelican Town and to the villagers in Pelican Town. I do fear a little bit that if it’s a whole new cast of characters, people might feel put off by that.
“I guess another approach to Stardew Valley 2 could be to use the existing cast, but it’s like a new adventure in the world, but then I’m still stuck with the same thing,” he says. “I’d have to think about that one. Yeah. There was a time where I was starting to work on a Stardew Valley 2, but, I don’t know. For various reasons, I moved over to Haunted Chocolatier instead. Haunted Chocolatier, you could say, is like the Stardew Valley 2, but it’s a bit of a different [kind of] game, so we’ll see.”
Later in the interview, the topic of a sequel returns. When asked about what he hopes to achieve in the next decade, ConcernedApe says: “Hopefully Haunted Chocolatier will be out and maybe by then there’ll be some new Stardew Valley IP stuff going on too. Stardew Valley is such a gold mine, I think, of potential things you could do[…] I have plenty of ideas. It’s just basically a matter of bandwidth, because in order for it to maintain what I feel like is Stardew Valley’s soul, well, I feel like I need to be heavily involved in it. And I’m not saying that to throw any shade on anyone else. My team is great. I love them. They’re great, but I still feel like I need to be heavily involved, or else it’s not going to feel like Stardew Valley.”
“If there’s going to be a Stardew Valley 2 or a spinoff game or some related thing with Stardew Valley, then that’s going to require my full attention,” he concludes. “So maybe this would be after Haunted Chocolatier comes out […] In ten years, Haunted Chocolatier will be out. Maybe there’ll be some new Stardew Valley project that’s out even in ten years.”
Given that he opted to make Haunted Chocolatier over a new Stardew game, I’m still surprised that ConcernedApe harbors any desire to make a sequel. It’s even more unexpected considering the continued success Stardew Valley is having, and the pressure that will naturally come from that.
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