Eric Barone, AKA ConcernedApe, has shared an update on what to expect from version 1.6 of simulation RPG Stardew Valley.
Eric makes things quick and mysterious in a short tweet:
coming in Stardew Valley 1.6…
“-new festival
-new items
-more dialogues
-secrets
-???”
Now, for games like The Sims, Animal Crossing, Story of Seasons, and Stardew Valley, the key to keep the game relevant for years is new content. Keeping a constant stream of content is a challenge for developers, even for the likes of Nintendo.
While Japanese life sims like Animal Crossing and Story of Seasons are usually conceived of as single releases with some DLC, Western developers are more amenable to making more content. That has always been the case for Maxis’ The Sims and its many spinoffs and expansions. For The Sims 5, Maxis made a bumpy but eventual transition to live service, and it looks like The Sims 6 will go that way as well.
Of course, right now Disney Dreamlight Valley is making the case for these kinds of games adopting the live service model. Not only are consumer expectations set at a reasonable level, but the developers have a path to making content that keeps them profitable and consumers satisfied, at least satisfied enough to keep them playing.
It’s in this environment that Stardew Valley is updating to version 1.6. The last time Barone notified us of how development was going was all the way back in September. He made it clear back then that the update was definitely not yet ready. In fact, there was no release date set for it.
However, we do know that Barone is planning a serious update to Stardew Valley, that could make up for the long wait. He intends to add modding support of some way to the game, which could open it up to a wider scale of user created content than it already has.
We don’t know how far Barone is taking those plans for modding support, but perhaps he could be working on creation and sharing tools for the end users themselves. After all, he also cites MineCraft as an influence.
While Chucklefish helped Barone with localization and console ports, their rights to all of these have already lapsed back to Barone. As of right now, it’s all up to Barone where he takes the franchise next.
Backwards compatibility means he doesn’t have to worry about making native ports to PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S, but eventually Nintendo’s next console will come out, as well as new Xbox and PlayStation consoles. While we don’t know what Barone has planned for the far future, he seems to have something for the loyal fans sooner than that.
