Is Stardew Valley STRESSFUL? 

I am 38 and new to this game. The clock is stressful. I feel like I can’t do enough and advance. It is too much! I like taking my time. I found the game Unpacking very stress free and it wasn’t long enough.

For me it is the most stressful game I have played and its due to my playstyle, I like to do as much as I can when I can and this game has a lot of stuff you can do at 1 time. I know the seasons reset and all the limits have a reset but because I try to do all I can when I can its crazy how stressed I get. I find fromsoft games less stressful because even though I can spend hours on a boss and continusly die I have no time limit, just an order to do things and orders are fine, time limits kill me.

I find it stressful because I want to do a 'perfect run' every time I try to play and it just burns me out after a day. I'll try playing again this weekend but with a more relaxed approach and see if it clicks like how PS1 Harvest Moon clicked for me.

Stardew is this weird dichotomy between what the game is telling you to do do, (relax, find fulfillment in nature and community,) and what the *gameplay* urges you to do, which is maximize efficiency and productivity in order to make as much money as possible. Didn't you just leave the corporate grind behind? Most of the late-game content in the game revolves around gathering large amounts of money. On top of that, nearly all of the late-game content added in patches includes combat. Volcano Island outright encourages you to automate your farm so you can abandon it and spend your time somewhere else instead. 🤨 Where do auto-grabbers and -petters fit into being one with the land? I love Stardew Valley, but it's arguably more of a time-management game than a farming simulator. In fact almost every patch seems to make it less of a farming simulator. It can be a relaxing experience, but I feel like you have to fight against the game to enjoy it that way.

I am in the in-between category. The beginning is super stressful but then later game it gets better. I use a fishing mod that makes fishing a lot easier which reduces my stress and makes it super fun! Awesome video and glad I am not the only one!

I don't usually find it stressful, but i also usually break my gameplay into achievable challenges which makes it more fun for me

The sound of the door and picking plants relaxes me. The mines make me gear up like its dark souls. I play stardew in the slow way you talked about, totally ignoring things like the mines that I don't understand enough to burn through until I need ore. Its the sense of growth and progress in living in a given environment from the ground up that real life would have if it wasn't a matter of independence lol.

The most stressful thing for me is perfectionism and the constant comparison to people that make amazing progress on RU-vid. But there is no need to have a certain amount of kegs or animals at a certain point in the game. I have started again the standard farm and I made it my goal to have no actual goals haha

Really good video, and yes, many challenges are self imposed, personally I also managed to reach perfection in 2 in-game-years on my 4th Farm, but taking 5 in-game years or more to reach perfection and focusing on the things you enjoy is time better spend than getting burned out. And yeah, not everyone has to be the best designer, in the end I was happier when I did my own things without the Instagram effect weighting down my experience. Also it helps to admit that stardew valley is an endless game and for me it would be helpful if there were no things that indicate how long I've played, since this is the biggest stress factor for me and others for sure. And I remember the in-game years spend fishing every day fondly

I am, how I like to say, a gaming non-gamer, so a gamer who started gaming as an adult. I tried Stardew Valley because I heard from literally everywhere that its relaxing and charming. It was my first game of this kind, and let me tell you it was just stressful. I have little to no knowledge about the typical game mechanics in these games and I was super confused and overwhelmed right from the beginning. A lot of things claim the players attention very early on, like "clean your farm!", "say hello to everyone!", "give water to this animal!", "there is a letter!" and so on. The game does not a good job at telling you that all this is optional - truth be told I didn't know up to your video here. So after running around town for maybe 3 ingame days trying to greet everyone while getting lost constantly the only feeling I had was that I am too bad at this game (and that it is no fun at all). So, probably I am not the norm, but this is why I think Stardew Valley is a stressful game :D

One thing that makes a cozy game a stressful game is too difficult Achievements. Many players want to collect 100% Achievements to their games and if some of the Achievements are too time consuming (for the average player) or frustratingly difficult then many people just rage quit and never play the game again. Or they start using mods which is not the intended way to play the game. I have never used mods but some of these 'cozy games' have become so frustrating and stressful that I have seriously started to consider installing mods for them. A slower clock for Stardew Valley, etc.

Things who can make the game more relaxing, a gamemode who... *Increase the money at the beginning. *Passive movement speed upgrade. *Fast travel. *Allow the player to rest in the bed without sleep. (Like in multiplayer) *Send quest items without being in front of the NPC. *Infinite energy. Personally combat was more bland and boring than stressful. And I see a mod to skip the fishing, I don't find it annoying, but still, there is a lot of options who the game can add to make it less stressful.

You don't lose any items if you pass out at 2:00 AM, just some money (up to 1,000g). And you don't fully recover your energy the next day, unless you skill up overnight. The item penalty is only for being defeated in combat.

That corner time-clock is the worst! So is the feeling of having to get home each night. When I first played, I thought *for sure* there would be an option to carry a sleeping bag or tent and camp out, so was disappointed that isn't the case. I didn't realize till I had a gold watering can and 60 hours in the game that the upgraded tools can hit more spots. As far as I know, NOTHING in-game tells the player about this. I had to be told about this feature, and my friend discovered it by accident because of a controller lag...instant rage when I learned.... So yeah, I hated it for a long time, and didn't play for over a year after that. Recently a friend showed interest, so I showed her a little bit, then she bought it and we've been playing together. This time has been much more enjoyable. Even now, I'll get into a perfectionist mindset and start making myself stressed, so I'm working on a way to limit time played, or only play with friends, etc. There's really so much to love, so I want to keep finding ways to enjoy it!

I personally don’t find it stressful, but that’s probably because I usually play with friends and we split up tasks and are very casual players lol

I find that you can play however you want, you can make it stressfull if you want to, personnaly i've played 3 playtroughs with the 2d being the most stressfull for exemple if you go too big with the size of your field and specially if you want to complete the community center the first year, and I actually enjoyed the stress and tight schedule, rainy days were like my leasure days where I took days off by fishing or going to the mines. Nonetheless at some point you can just take things slow and enjoy the seasons even if you dont have an extremely profitable farm.

My middle schooler brother quit Animal Crossing over the stress

I find it stressful, but because, that is how i like to play it, very min/max. When i hit y2 it starts becoming boring, because there are few things i have to do every day, and most of them are just gifting.

I think it is the player injecting stress into the game. Nothing in the game requires you to do anything. But if you just have to plant every crop every year, harvest every forage every season, catch every fish, chop every tree, smash every stone and kill every monster you can off course go for it. But that is not the games fault. lol

SO STRESSFUL lol.

I find the game is only as stressful as you allow it. If you start comparing yourself to some of the videos and players on RU-vid videos it can get stressful. I find that by not comparing yourselves to the " I fixed the Community Center by my first Winter" players, you loose alot of stress. I just played at my own pace, and by year three had most everything more or less finished or unlocked. By year four I had four candles from grandpa, and now on my 7 th year, I'm just goofing off until my console gets the 1.6 patch, and making a steady profit.