Is Stardew Valley foidslop?

In Stardew Valley you leave an office job to take over your grandfather's farm. You grow parsnips, mine, fish, and get to know the townspeople, and a lot of players put most of their effort into the romance side. Sebastian, Shane and Abigail all have big fan followings, and people will tell you exactly which gift each one likes.

We've left this one as contested. A big part of the player base treats it as an optimization game, and they've worked out which crop earns the most per day in each season. Some of them have never given a single villager a gift.

Eric Barone made Stardew Valley on his own under the name ConcernedApe, doing the code, art and music himself over about four years before it came out in 2016. It was inspired by the Harvest Moon farming games, and it went on to sell tens of millions of copies. He's kept updating it for free, most recently with a large 1.6 update in 2024.

It's the game most people mean when they talk about the cozy game genre: low stakes, a calendar of seasons, a town full of people to befriend. That's what gets it lumped in with foidslop. The fans who pull it the other way are the ones running spreadsheets on artisan goods, building giant kegs of ancient fruit wine and speedrunning the first year.