We’re coming up on the 10th anniversary of farming simulator Stardew Valley, and from the sounds of it, game creator Eric “ConcernedApe” Barone might still have another decade’s worth of updates up his sleeve. In a recent interview, the developer dished on what fans can expect from the upcoming 1.7 update, and what lies beyond — including a potential Stardew Valley 2.
As eager fans know, news about Stardew Valley‘s 1.7 update has been scarce. In the months since the announcement, Barone has only vaguely noted that the update would offer a new farm type and more character-oriented material, some of which would be “social.”
In a wide-ranging interview with IGN, Barone says that the update addresses a “popular fan request” regarding children that will hopefully make kids more interesting. Barone also dropped the bombshell that 1.7 will bring two more marriage candidates whom he’ll reveal on Feb. 26, the game’s anniversary. Apparently, Barone has also been toying with the idea of releasing a farm map editor alongside social features that allow fans to view the creations of other players — but he’s not sure if it will be included in 1.7 specifically.
“There’s a lot of other things in the update as well that no one’s really asked for,” Barone teased.
Curiously, Barone is conflicted about the future of Stardew Valley. He says being totally done with the game isn’t out of the question, as he’s working on a different game called Haunted Chocolatier. He notes that Haunted Chocolatier is kind of a spiritual Stardew Valley 2, yet he’s concerned that fans might be expecting his next game to be the same thing in a different font.
“Just to be realistic at this point, there’s been many times where I was like, ‘All right, I think it’s going to be done after this update,'” Barone says, “and then that never happens.”
If he does expand Stardew Valley further, it probably won’t involve wide-sweeping mechanical changes. Instead, he wants to expand what’s already there.
“So it’s like there could always be a third year of festival variants, a fourth year of festival variants,” Barone says. “There could be more dialogue. I could go deeper on all the characters.”
If he does change some core features, it might be tweaking existing festivals so that they aren’t isolated instances where the player stays in one area. He also poses the possibility of changing the “awful” spiral level in the mines, but he’s unsure if that might change the vibe of the game too much. He mentions the idea of a “Stardew Classic” that could sate traditionalist fans as well.
Barone casually drops that he has started work on a sequel, but set it aside for work on Haunted Chocolatier. But Stardew Valley 2 could be on the table sometime.
“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,” Barone says.
The determining factor in what comes next is the popularity of Stardew Valley itself. The cozy life-sim has sold 50 million copies, so Barone feels a responsibility to that audience even as he wrestles with the inability to move on. The game is still selling many copies every day, apparently.
“Maybe if everyone stopped playing Stardew Valley, if it fell off, then maybe I wouldn’t be as inspired to keep working on it … I just know that it’s basically the best avenue for any ideas or any of my work to reach other people. And that’s why I have always created things in my life is because, I guess I would say it’s probably my way of connecting to the rest of humanity.”
