Is Stardew Valley Safe for Kids? Article

Device Friendly
Game Type
School Age
Lessons
Skills
Rating
A-Z

Is Stardew Valley Safe for Kids?

May 14, 2023 | 0 Votes

by Mel - rate Stardew Valley is a life simulation role-playing video game for all ages developed by Eric "ConcernedApe" Barone where players take the role of a character who inherits their deceased grandfather's dilapidated farm in a place known as Stardew Valley.
Games Educate Kids - Is Stardew Valley Safe for Kids?

Games Educate Kids - Is Stardew Valley Safe for Kids?

Initially released for Windows in 2016 before being adapted for other platforms, Stardew Valley has been cited as one of the greatest video games of all time.

Allowing up to four players to play online together, Stardew Valley is open-ended, allowing players to grow crops, raise livestock, fish, cook, mine, forage, and socialize with the townspeople, including the ability to marry and have children. Critics cite the game’s music, characters, and relaxing qualities as the game’s top qualities while players make their way from a naïve newbie to a master farmer by leveling up in 5 different areas: farming, mining, combat, fishing, and foraging. As you progress, you'll learn new cooking and crafting recipes, unlock new areas to explore, invent useful machines, customize your skills by choosing from a variety of professions, and become a valuable part of a dynamic, yet complex local farming community.

How does Stardew Valley work?

Designed in the vein of the classic life simulation farming game, Harvest Moon, the premise of Stardew Valley is that a player inherits an old rundown farm from their grandfather in a small town called Pelican Town. They move to the farm and select from several different farm types, each with a unique theme and different benefits and drawbacks. The farmland is initially overrun with boulders, trees, stumps, and weeds, and players must work to clear them to restart the farm. Over the course of many game years, the player plants crops, raises livestock, further expands the farm's buildings and facilities, befriends villagers, accomplishes tasks/quests, explores dungeons, and forges romantic relationships.

The game’s year is split into four seasons consisting of 28 days, meaning that time to do certain activities like planting and harvesting are limited to what season the player is currently in. Upgrading or renovating your farm requires the player to earn money through the selling of their crops, the raising of animals, foraging, and completing tasks from the other villagers in town.

Players interact with non-player characters (NPCs) that inhabit the town, including engaging in relationships with them; this can culminate in marriage, which results in the NPC helping the player's character to tend the farm. After marriage, players may have the chance to have or adopt a child with their spouse. Players can also engage in fishing, cooking, crafting, and exploring caves with materials and ores to mine or creatures to combat. Players can take on various quests to earn additional money or complete specific collections of materials (called "bundles") to restore the town's Community Center or pay certain amounts of money to complete JojaMart bundles. Completing bundles rewards players with various items, including seeds and tools. Completing multiple bundles grants players access to new areas and game mechanics. Later in the game, players can restore a greenhouse and an island that can grow any crop regardless of the season.

All of these activities must be metered against the character's current health and exhaustion level, and the game's internal clock. The player can consume food that grants certain buffs that are useful in certain activities and situations. Food is also a source of replenishing health and energy, which allows the player to complete more tasks in a given day.

What can kids learn in Stardew Valley?

Stardew Valley isn't only about farming, but, more importantly, what you do with the resources and circumstances you are given, how you choose to build your community and relationships, and exhibiting the power of kindness to your neighbors—which mirrors real life. No simulation or game is an exact copy of what it’s trying to emulate, but Stardew Valley, above all, expertly explores the connection that someone can have with their environment, their work and the people around them. Below are other lessons and skills kids can take away from playing the game.

Anchored Learning. Stardew Valley puts players in a position to encounter experiences that are tied to the real world. While it is very simplified and may not be a direct correlation to reality, players are prompted to take care of themselves while ensuring they create a reasonable living. They face a number of different scenarios and challenges, much like we do in our own daily lives.

Financial Management Skills. Players attempt to generate some form of a profit in an attempt to spend their money on advancements, seeds, and other miscellaneous items and activities that aide their progression throughout the game such as: Collecting Farm Tools like axes, scythes, pickaxes, hoes, buckets, and fishing rods to make the most of your new home; Raising Livestock which is more difficult that farming but may be more profitable in
generating artisan goods; Mining the caves for ore, gems, and other opportunities for profit and advancement; Fishing the waters (lakes, rivers, oceans, etc.) to find a steady supply of food and profit; Engaging with the NPCs in relationship building quests and activities to forge friendships and potential relationships; and Crafting new items based on your inventory to continue advancing throughout the game or aiding your experience.

Organization. Inventory management is a critical component of succeeding in Stardew Valley. The player starts with an inventory of 12 spaces and can upgrade to a maximum of 36 spaces. Because the player needs to eventually leave the farm to forage, accomplish tasks, shop for supplies, or go dungeon crawling, they need to be aware of what materials they will need before setting out. If they do not, they may run into a situation where they find a valuable item or make a purchase and have no space in which to place it. This will cause them to discard a potentially valuable item in exchange for another. The player can also build treasure chests at their home to organize and store their items, which comes in handy when needing to find an item for crafting or to accomplish a task for a villager.

Planning and Time Management. Because there is a finite amount of time in each day and in each season, the player needs to make sure that they are spending their time wisely in the game and planning out what they want to do far in advance. From clearing the land of debris to ensuring that the selected seeds are in fact the right seeds they want to plant, players have to make quick decisions to ensure they are making the most of their time while ensuring the best possible outcomes for their crops.

Furthermore, because certain crops will only grow in the spring or summer, and in winter nothing will grow at all, the player needs to have a plan to earn money in another way. Animals in the game require food as well, meaning the player needs to have a plan for maintaining their farm animals as well. Harvesting is also not just a matter of picking your crops, players have to select the appropriate method of harvesting their crops before deciding what does or does not need to be sold.

Even returning to your home on time requires the player to use their planning skills. If the player stays out until two in the morning, their character passes out and loses money and potentially valuable items. Players who struggle with planning skills should start out small and not try to accomplish too many tasks at once. Pick one or two projects to concentrate on and then work your way up to more complex tasks.

Building Relationships. Stardew Valley prides itself on introducing players to the opportunity to cultivate relationships with NPC’s by fulfilling quests and requests, gifting them with particular gifts they love, and just interacting with them and being kind. As the game goes on, the player will realize how these cultivated relationships eventually pay off in terms of other benefits. By practicing these skills in-game, kids can learn more about being more engaging in conversation, being generous with kind words, the subtle art of gift-giving, as well as learning the all-important skill of saying “no” when the need arises. This ties into the element of time management in which kids have to learn how to prioritize their actions and objectives in order to accomplish their “daily tasks’’ and there are moments in life where they will have to do the same in the real world.

Problem Solving Skills. This game also introduces the opportunity for kids to flex their mental acuity by solving problems such as simple mathematical equations. For example, players will have to understand resource management (a skill in itself) in order to craft the right items in-game. They will also find themselves having to ensure that they take note of their current funds to ensure they do not stretch themselves so thin that they struggle during difficult periods of time, like the winter season in which no crops grow at all. With this in mind, players will also find themselves having to apply basic arithmetic skills in order to time and plan out what crops will be effective to plant at any given season, taking things into consideration like days to maturity, sell price, and even mapping out the time it takes to perform certain acts like watering all of their crops. Practicing how to maneuver through these practical scenarios is quite relevant to our own lives as we are usually required to perform mental math tasks as we go about our routine days.

Freedom to Explore Interests. Another aspect that Stardew Valley does exceptionally well is provide players with the opportunity to explore their own interests and to learn as they go. Each element in the game provides a different learning experience and with it comes the opportunity to succeed at every one of them. Whether it be the basic principles of fishing, farming, mining ore, or even relationship building and finding love; players take their own initiative when attempting to enjoy the “simple life” presented in-game. This open endedness allows for everyone to experience a game that is unique to the player, as they choose what they want to do and essentially, what they want to learn.

Community and online

Stardew Valley currently does not support cross-platform multiplayer, and it's unclear if or when this might change or if there are plans to include the feature in the future. Moreover, the Co-Op mode is only available on PC, Mac, Nintendo Switch, PS4, and Xbox One. The only exception to this is if you have one player on PC and the other on a Mac or a Linux-based OS.

A multiplayer mode is also offered, up to 4 people. The good news is there's no server set up required for multiplayer. Instead, you will be able to invite your friends online directly through whatever platform you're using. Choose “Co-op” in the main menu to choose whether you want to host a farm (either a new farm or one of your existing farms) or join a friend's farm.

This farm can only be accessed by the owner of the farm, so if the farmhands (the name for the guest players) want access to the farm, then the owner must be playing as well. Farmhands also live on your property in cabins. Players can get NPC Robin the Carpenter to build them.

Modding, however, is extremely easy as the game is open source. The Stardew Valley community offers many opportunities to further personalize both the farm and the town.
Players can coordinate together in farming, mining, fishing, foraging, and festival participation for example. They will have their own inventory but it will be accessible by the main player via a chest in their cabin when they're not playing.

Quest progress is, for the most part, individual, but players can help each other. Moreover, you can choose to have everyone's money in a shared pool or split it individually. Each player will have their own skills level, energy bar, and relationships with NPCs.

Is Stardew Valley safe/appropriate for kids?

While Stardew Valley is rated for “Everyone 10+” and is universally considered by parents and experts alike as a fairly safe game for children to play, it should be noted that most of the characters in the game are designed to be adults and, as such, the game will feature some adult-oriented—albeit, quite benign—situations.

For example, mild cuss words such as “hell” are used on occasion and the player has the option to make alcoholic drinks, including beer, wine and mead as part of their crop by-products. One character is known as the town drunk while another smokes cigarettes. When the player consumes the alcohol, they receive increases in their health and energy statistics. However, a negative consequence is also shown, with an icon indicating that the character is 'tipsy', which temporarily reduces their speed.

Meanwhile, Stardew Valley also features games of chance. The player can visit a casino location and trade in-game money for tokens, which can then be used to bet on various casino games such as blackjack and slots. All the games include detailed instructions on how to play, so parents may want to be on hand to monitor this aspect of game play for younger kids.

The amount of violence, on the other hand, is fairly mild and mostly involves human characters battling monsters and defending themselves with various swords and other melee weapons. The characters are pixelated, lack any real details, and feature no blood. If your character is hit and your health runs out you simply fall asleep and wake up at home the next day, having been saved by someone else.

As for sexual content, the extent of it involves your character getting married to a NPC. When you’re married, you will occasionally be asked as you go to bed whether you want to have/adopt a child. You can answer "yes" or "not now" and if you say yes, the screen simply fades to black.

Finally, while many media outlets have praised Stardew Valley for its LGBT options and representation, notably including the option for the player to marry one of 12 villagers regardless of gender; parents who may feel uncomfortable having this option being openly presented to their children as part of gameplay should take note and discuss the issue with their children accordingly.