Reviews for this game tend to be written by functioning adults who spend considerable amounts of time cosplaying as stable functioning adults. They see Stardew Valley as a break from their job accumulating wealth for an unimaginably rich person who they do not know. In a culture which eagerly moves us from one pigeonhole apartment to pigeonhole cubicle, it's no wonder demand for better living and working conditions is created. You can sate it for 91.76 French Francs (13.99 Euro).

This is a review by a person who does not feel this way (yet). This is a review for those people who are willing to play a video game for 10-50 hours, let it dominate their life for a couple of weeks then burn out and not touch the game for the following 6 months - 2 years.

I don't play Stardew to relax, I play it to win. My time is precious, that means the 6AM to 1AM workday is sacred. Making sure my character makes it to bed on time is important, not just because it means i get debuffed to fuck shit fuck next morning, but because when I look up at my wall-clock and see that it's 3:14 AM, I want to be satisfied that at least one of us is getting a good night's sleep.

The game perfectly caters for this innate drive to organise the day, and by the time you're used to it, you can completely master the art of not wasting a single second of in-game time so you can fully and constantly experience how great this game is. Attempts to move that skill into my regular life have thus far failed.

This game really is a great game though. I don't want to go into the mechanics of it (look up the Girlfriend Review or the Joseph Anderson review for that). All that you need to know is to pet your dog/cat, fill their water bowl, praise the God above when you get an ancient seed.