It's just Stardew again

[Selphos]

I thought maybe this would be the one indie farming game that did better than Stardew, but the second I booted up the demo and was greeted with an inventory measured in hotbars I deflated.
Playing it through all I felt was Stardew here, Stardew there. NPCs you can't talk to again after you exhaust their dialogue. A full-map-wide farm you expand by hand. A significant emphasis on foraging. Mines with monsters and a ladder you reveal by breaking rocks, with HP only used within it. A lack of strafing while farming and a general apparent disdain for controller use. A museum that's just packages renamed, but with a hint of Animal Crossing flavor. This list is not exhaustive, but you never stop feeling it. At least they took the fishing minigame out.

Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons existed for 20 years before Stardew came out. While Stardew is obviously built off of HM in various ways, there have been HM games before and since where you can still feel that they're different games, but many, many indie attempts at the genre exclusively want to be Stardew. I just don't get it.

It's quite pretty, but I don't see the point.

[crowfeather0099]

A lot of farm sims recently are just stardew with a different skin. Unfortunately that's hard to avoid since stardew did it so well. I'm curious what your suggestions would be to change/improve farm sims so they're not just copies of HM and Stardew

[Drigni]

I don't think the game wants to be a new stardew, i think stardew changed how this type of games worked and for me it works well. This game has a lot of stuff that is very similar to stardew but it doesn't make it bad. You have different options to talk to the npcs, you can swim and dive (from animal crossing), it has magic which is something different from SV and probably so much more. I guess Stardew is now what harvest moon was for new devs many years ago

[✨Lola ☽]

wouldn't you buy a 2nd blue t-shirt if you already have another blue one in your wardrobe?

[Selphos]

Originally posted by crowfeather0099:

A lot of farm sims recently are just stardew with a different skin. Unfortunately that's hard to avoid since stardew did it so well. I'm curious what your suggestions would be to change/improve farm sims so they're not just copies of HM and Stardew

Frankly, I'd rather have a game that's more of a HM or RF clone than a stardew-like. I don't feel like we really get those.
I really just want hotbar inventories to go, that's my biggest thing. Give me a normal sized bag with a tool-quickchange like RF4 and 5. As far as improvements, give the things you do a bit more depth and less repetition, maybe something like variable prices on sold goods so you don't end up like my buddy Patrick who maximized strawberry production to have infinity money in the first month. Relationships too, the "talk to each person and give them an egg each day" quota is one of the most draining aspects of this genre.

Originally posted by Pia💗:

wouldn't you buy a 2nd blue t-shirt if you already have another blue one in your wardrobe?

No. The only shirts I own that are identical to each other are my work uniform.

[Deli]

Originally posted by Pia💗:

wouldn't you buy a 2nd blue t-shirt if you already have another blue one in your wardrobe?

no? the shirt needs to be DIFFERENT, either a blue shirt with a logo and some flare, etc. The only shirts that should be the same should be for work, otherwise ur just plain boring for wearing the same stuff over and over again.

[Deli]

I do agree, it does appear to be somewhat the same as stardew, but that doesn't make it technically bad? the farm sim market is over saturated as it is and its hard to come out with something mind boggling for the genre. The character designs, the music and the hopefully good storyline will at least entertain for the asking price they will go for. I'm not looking for mind bending stuff, this is alright as is.

[Cavane]

Originally posted by HanaBoBanana:

Originally posted by Pia💗:

wouldn't you buy a 2nd blue t-shirt if you already have another blue one in your wardrobe?

no? the shirt needs to be DIFFERENT, either a blue shirt with a logo and some flare, etc. The only shirts that should be the same should be for work, otherwise ur just plain boring for wearing the same stuff over and over again.

Unless you're claiming this game is literally IDENTICAL to SDV, what you've just described is a game that riffs on the original.

[Deli]

Originally posted by Cavane:

Originally posted by HanaBoBanana:

no? the shirt needs to be DIFFERENT, either a blue shirt with a logo and some flare, etc. The only shirts that should be the same should be for work, otherwise ur just plain boring for wearing the same stuff over and over again.

Unless you're claiming this game is literally IDENTICAL to SDV, what you've just described is a game that riffs on the original.

the original poster literally claimed it to be the SAME as stardew. why are you talking to me? lol

[Morthos]

And stardew's just harvest moon again. This is not a bad thing. It's weird how people act like there should be only one game in a genre and that game owns the right to be that genre. It's a farming life sim like stardew valley, yes. There's only so much you can do and how different you can look in the same genre as another game. The feel and look of this game does seem to try and be different from harvest moon and stardew valley.

If anything, this has a very similar feel to sun haven and potion permit. This is still not a bad thing.

[RicolaNicola]

That's a lot of conclusions to draw about a game that you played a 3 day demo for. Also saying this game is like Stardew Valley is kind of like saying every turn-based RPG is just Dragon Quest or every FPS is just Halo.

Farm Sims are a genre with genre conventions. What a wild concept.

[Selphos]

Originally posted by RicolaNicola:

That's a lot of conclusions to draw about a game that you played a 3 day demo for. Also saying this game is like Stardew Valley is kind of like saying every turn-based RPG is just Dragon Quest or every FPS is just Halo.

Farm Sims are a genre with genre conventions. What a wild concept.

This is a factually disingenuous argument and you knew it when you typed it. The degrees of separation between these things are plainly obvious.

It's okay to like a game while also recognizing it has flaws or things that could or should be different or improved. You don't have to blindly defend everything you like from criticism. Don't know if you know this.

[Baloon]

While I do really like this game so far, I 100% agree that this type of inventory needs to go and as a dating sim enthusiast I am also very tired of giving a character 20 eggs over the course of a year until they love me. It just feels so empty. My proposal (not necessarily for this game, just for future games in this genre) would be some kind of hangout based system. Like when you enter someones home they could ask you if you wanna join for lunch/dinner or help out at their job and then you get like a minicutscene and you lose one or two in game hours in exchange for the friendship points idk anything that makes the characters feel more like actual humans and the process more meaningful... instead of a few lines of code that go "Oh my, thank you! I love :itemname !" (could keep the gift giving, but not as the main way of gaining friendship points) That being said, I think this game already improves on some things compared to stardew, like being able to enter peoples houses right away and having a clear visual indicator where you're throwing your fishing line. While I may have my gripes with some of the staples in this genre that stardew introduced, I actually love stardew valley and Mistria having a lot of similarities isn't a bad thing to me at all. As they say: ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥! Two cakes! haha (Also the game isn't even in early access yet, so many pleasant surprises may yet be upon us!)

[Deli]

Originally posted by Luft:

While I do really like this game so far, I 100% agree that this type of inventory needs to go and as a dating sim enthusiast I am also very tired of giving a character 20 eggs over the course of a year until they love me. It just feels so empty. My proposal (not necessarily for this game, just for future games in this genre) would be some kind of hangout based system. Like when you enter someones home they could ask you if you wanna join for lunch/dinner or help out at their job and then you get like a minicutscene and you lose one or two in game hours in exchange for the friendship points idk anything that makes the characters feel more like actual humans and the process more meaningful... instead of a few lines of code that go "Oh my, thank you! I love :itemname !" (could keep the gift giving, but not as the main way of gaining friendship points) That being said, I think this game already improves on some things compared to stardew, like being able to enter peoples houses right away and having a clear visual indicator where you're throwing your fishing line. While I may have my gripes with some of the staples in this genre that stardew introduced, I actually love stardew valley and Mistria having a lot of similarities isn't a bad thing to me at all. As they say: ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥! Two cakes! haha (Also the game isn't even in early access yet, so many pleasant surprises may yet be upon us!)

I would like some of those concepts! Also i think we can only enter their rooms bc of the demo XD but hopefully i'm wrong. I also like that we can jump in this game. That's fun. Otherwise, most of the game feels a bit samey BUT thats not necessarily a bad thing.

[TamanduaGirl]

Originally posted by Luft:

My proposal (not necessarily for this game, just for future games in this genre) would be some kind of hangout based system.

Sunnyside does just that but you ask them to hangout but you can't ask them to hang out till you are more friendly from talking first. You can't just throw gifts at strangers.

Originally posted by Selphos:

Frankly, I'd rather have a game that's more of a HM or RF clone than a stardew-like. I don't feel like we really get those.
I really just want hotbar inventories to go, that's my biggest thing. Give me a normal sized bag with a tool-quickchange like RF4 and 5. As far as improvements, give the things you do a bit more depth and less repetition, maybe something like variable prices on sold goods so you don't end up like my buddy Patrick who maximized strawberry production to have infinity money in the first month. Relationships too, the "talk to each person and give them an egg each day" quota is one of the most draining aspects of this genre.

No. The only shirts I own that are identical to each other are my work uniform.

Maybe check out Sunnyside. The specifically made it so you can't just gift your way into good graces. You need to hang out and be friendly to give a gift at all. And you can't just ask to hang out right away. You have to get to know them first.

Inventory also has several tabs you can go through like a food box tab and a crop tab and tools done separately. It's not pixel art style but they have put a lot of passion into doing things better and more realistic but not in a grindy way.

On shirts I think they meant you might have 2 slightly different blue shirts. Familiar things can be comforting but it's just as reasonable to want something new and fresh.

[Driko]

Imagine if you played rune factory games, lol.
I guess you would say stardew valley is just rune factory