Stardew Valley 1-year Anniversary

Posted By: GamerDating - February 28, 2017

Last weekend marked the 1 year anniversary of the release of Stardew Valley and Eric Barone, solo developer of Stardew Valley shared his thoughts and achievements and how his life changed from working alone, quietly, to a sudden mr meeseks of the world. 

Considering that I had spent the previous 4-5 years in my own little bubble, working alone, doing essentially the same thing every day… and now suddenly to be thrust into the limelight… it was quite the change! I’m happy about it, of course. I mean… it is a weird feeling, at first, to have something that once seemed so distant, so impossible… some pipe-dream that you fantasized about in the dead of night… actually come true. It takes some getting used to, and that’s part of what this last year has been for me.

Eric continues sharing his achievements about the emails, PAX, awards given to Chuklefish (his studio), and constantly making new deals and fixing patches. He even goes on to list a new pc and desk, comparing his old setup of an old machine propped up on a Wii U box.

What Stardew Valley was coded on.

Eric goes on to share screenshots of his development from 2012, a beautiful stark comparison to how it looks today. I mean he even had the game named Sprout Valley.

He even shares with us how he first hand drew the NPC portraits going through iterations after iterations of pixel art until he had a final design.

Eric finishes with a thanks, a thanks to the community and what continued to spur him on.

Anyway, even back in 2012… when the game looked awful… there were people following it and encouraging me to continue. I appreciate that. To all of you who are reading this, who have played Stardew Valley and built an amazing community around it… thank you so much. The mods, the wiki, the encouraging messages, the fan art… I love it, and I’m so grateful and thankful for your support! I will continue to work hard and do my best to create memorable gaming experiences for you all, through Stardew Valley and whatever comes next!

In some ways it reminds us of GamerDating, our process, progress, the success of people getting together and the support from the community to keep building a better service. We can resonate with his thanks. In fact, we have a brand new UI UX in the works, we may just post up a progress through the times when we are ready to launch ;)

If you are interested in Stardew Valley, read the entire post, complete with screenshots.