Stardew Valley: The Board Game was a surprise February announcement. Somehow this colorful collaboration between Cole Medeiros and Stardew Valley‘s sole developer Eric Barone was kept hush-hush for two years. When it was finally announced, it sold out quickly.
Given the long development time and the obvious demand, expectations were high for this cardboard adaptation to deliver on its potential. Unfortunately, there’s a few sticks and crumpled refuse mixed in with the game’s gifts of starfruit and ore.
Mini-game madness
When you first open the large box, none of these concerns will be on your mind. In terms of looks, this board game is impeccable. It captures the bright, whimsical tone of its namesake exceptionally well. The box is packed with cute custom dice, a mound of cards, and enough beautiful tokens to bury the entire valley. Even better, the package includes a plastic tray to store all of the market tiles, which speeds up play and helps limit component sprawl.
The board game also shows an obvious love for its source material. This is evident not only in the artwork and graphic design but in the construction of the various mini-games. Pretty much every task you’d expect to carry out is present here, each with its own sub-system to explore.
For instance, you can take a gentle stroll with your fishing pole. To catch anything, you roll three of the colorful dice and then select a fish from the public row with matching symbols. The hitch is that you can only choose fish with a tile border that matches your current location: ocean, lake, or river. It’s a simple system, but it’s engaging to manage that row of fish tiles (which are themselves drawn from a large bag). Trash will even occasionally clog things up, but you can remove it when you fail to catch anything of value.
