After ten years of rampant popularity, Eric ‘ConcernedApe’ Barone would “love to” make a Stardew Valley 2. Currently working on the original game’s 1.7 update alongside their new game Haunted Chocolatier, the beloved indie developer does have a desire to make a whole new Stardew game.
Currently, Barone is working on future Stardew content alongside a brand-new team while he continues solo work on Haunted Chocolatier. However, the developer teased that he could, one day, design a Stardew Valley 2 with the help of his new team.
“I would love to [make Stardew Valley 2] 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 told IGN. “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.”
The main issue with a true sequel, Barone claims, is that the central world of Pelican Town in the original is a place that many fans are very attached to. The layout, the characters, the feel of that world is very much integral to the community, and moving away from that may see some significant pushback.
“I do fear a little bit that if it’s a whole new cast of characters, people might feel put off by that,” he said. When suggesting that he could lift the cast of the original and place them in a new environment, Barone explained that he would likely be “stuck with the same thing” as fans would love the cast but still miss the location.
As Barone has said in the past, it’s simply “so much easier to just add more stuff to Stardew Valley than to make a whole new game from scratch”. While a proper sequel would likely set the gaming world on fire, it would also be a massive project that would take a number of years to bring to fruition.
Nevertheless, while Barone works on the very exciting Haunted Chocolatier, fans are far from done with the original Stardew. Alongside waiting for the new update, thousands of fans are constantly making new mods for the game that add new marriage options, new locations, and even fully functional arcades.
Stardew Valley is a special kind of game, one that fans – and even its creator – can’t stay away from. Right now, the game has just received its own Nintendo Switch 2 version, but the game’s 1.7 update release date is still unknown. It’ll be out when it’s out, and we like that.
