Eric Barone has shared a sneak peek at what is coming for 1.6 update of Stardew Valley.
We’ll just go ahead and list these details down, as shared by Eric on Twitter:
- A new major festival
- Two new mini festivals
- New late-game content, which expands on each of the skill areas
- New items and crafting recipes
- Joja alternatives to some of the end-game quests
- 100 + new lines of dialogue
- Winter outfits for the villagers
- New type of reward for completing billboard requests
- (PC) Support for 8 player multiplayer
- Many small additions and adjustments
- New farm type
- New secrets & more
There is no planned release date for update 1.6 for any platform at this time.
Adding updates to Stardew Valley is a considerably bigger task than it was in previous years. This is mainly because the game has seen ports out of PC, to mobile, and also multiple video game consoles and platforms.
In 2016, Barone worked with publisher Chucklefish to proceed with these ports. Barone still did much of the nitty-gritty programming, but this arrangement allowed Barone to focus on content updates. Chucklefish managed the multiple technical and localization requirements for these ports.
Stardew Valley would eventually see release on Steam, Epic Games Store, GOG, iOS, Android, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. Barone cancelled plans to release a port to the Wii U, but the PlayStation Vita managed to get its version of the game.
As of March 2022, all the publishing rights to all these versions went back to Barone, ending Chucklefish’s involvement. While it isn’t impossible that Barone would outsource more work now, or form his own studio to keep working on Stardew Valley, as far as we know he is doing all of this work on his own.
Stardew Valley was originally released all the way back in 2016. It’s quite groundbreaking for an independent game, even one as successful as this one, to see continued support for close to a decade.
Eventually, Barone will have to make some more decisions about what to do with this game. While backwards compatibility gave Barone an excuse not to make ports of the game to the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo is expected to announce and release their successor console to the Nintendo Switch by 2024.
That hypothetical “Switch 2” may also have backwards compatibility, but Eric will eventually have to decide if he will keep reselling the same game across each console generation, or if he will make a Stardew Valley 2. Stardew Valley itself has proven timeless, so that fans will overlook its low scale graphics and gameplay, but if Barone wants to do more things that aren’t in Stardew Valley now, he may be better off making a sequel.
At least, for now, we can expect continued support with a new Stardew Valley update on the way.
