Good evening ladies and gentlemen and welcome back! Due to unfortunate health circumstances I’ve been unable to spend much time blogging but rest assured Amanda, Hector, Eddie and myself have not stopped playing board games. For our return to the blogosphere, we’re looking at Stardew Valley: The Board Game! Based on the very popular video game, Stardew Valley: The Board Game is a co-operative farming sim board game, but does it live up to the video game’s reputation? If you want the opinion of someone without over 200 hours spent in it, then read on.
Beginning as usual with the components, I have to say they are a combination of both met expectations and immense disappointment. I’ll begin with the art, which is a huge positive. They elected to go with a hand drawn instead of pixel art style for the board game and it works extremely well. Characters and items from the game are both pretty to look at and immediately identifiable as their counterpart from the video game, and unless you were looking for screenshots from the game, you will not be disappointed.
On the other hand, you will likely be very disappointed with the rest of the production. Nearly all the materials for the game are, to put it bluntly, cheap and low quality. The tiles, of which there are a great many, are thin and the printed face often tears while punching them out. They also just feel like that easily warpable, low quality cardboard. The cards are neither great nor terrible, but in a pile of low quality components they do the game no favors. The tile bags are the same cheap suede-like substance that was in the original dice masters starter sets. The trays are nicely designed and hold the game well (necessarily so, as there are literally dozens of tiles in play at any point), but seem thin and cheap compared to competitors, such as Gametrayz. The pawns are, well, literal plastic pawns.
I saved the board for last because it is an absolute disaster, which is really a shame given the art quality on it. It’s not only on incredibly thin cardboard, but despite being a quad-fold, it neither folds up nor out smoothly, and no amount of manipulation could make it form a single board without either overlap or a gap through the center. Off brand Parker Brother’s knockoff boards are top notch by comparison.
With that being said, onto the game. Players start by choosing a starting tool and profession, all taken directly from the video game, starting resources and by choosing a pet, which is a purely aesthetic choice. Players begin each turn by flipping the season card, which has a variety of effects, mainly good but some bad. Next, if playing with other players, you discuss your actions for the turn with the other players and place your pawn. In the action phase, which is where the meat of the game takes place, players take an action available at their location, optionally travel and forage, and then take another action. The turn is concluded by returning the player pawn to the farmhouse and taking end of turn actions as appropriate. The goal of the game (on the default difficulty) is to complete 4 “Grandpa’s goals” which are randomly revealed at the start of the game, and complete 6 rooms in the community center, the requirements of which are hidden until revealed through gameplay.
The actions are all taken directly from the game, and there is certainly a rich theme here, especially with the artistic style. Nearly anywhere you can visit in the video game can be visited in the board game, although what you do at each location is considerably simplified and much more luck based than the video game version which is the other gripe I have with the game other than the components. I mathed out the game a little bit and in order to win the “honest farmer” (default) difficulty, a minimum 75% of your actions need to be both optimal and successful, sometimes more than that depending on the randomly revealed goals. This wouldn’t be a problem to me if it were one of those puzzly games, but the entirety of your success is based on dice rolls and picking the correct tile/drawing the correct card when you need it. Many of the actions have a greater than 25% chance to either fail or be suboptimal, which means that you are more likely to lose than win even with perfect play. This is a far cry from the relaxing, chill out and do what you like at your own pace video game it is based upon. Whomever decided that the cardboard version of Stardew Valley should be a blisteringly tight game, in which you need to be extremely efficient with your actions and even then you may very well lose due to a few bad rolls of the dice, either never played the video game or clearly lost the plot somewhere along the way. Probably at the same place where they decided to use cut rate 1980s board game manufacturing standards.
All that being said, it may sound like I really dislike Stardew Valley: The Board Game, but that is not entirely true. It’s not all negative and there is definitely a solid game there with tons of thematic actions to do, and the variety of season cards, random events, items and goals will give the game legs for those who want to play a lot of it. I just don’t know who it’s for, hardcore gamers will find it far too luck based and casual gamers will certainly not find the cozy video game experience here, unless all they’re looking for is the aesthetic. I can only recommend this to a very small subset of gamers, namely those who are fans of the video game and just really want to own it in cardboard form.
Note by Amanda: Prefer the video game. Board game is pretty, and has nice artwork, but it doesn’t capture the feel or the essence of the topic matter. If you’re going to play, make sure you get those randomly revealed cards up as soon as possible so you know what you’re trying to go for. Pretty game, but not a keeper for me.
The Teal Deer
Designer: Eric Barone, Cole Medeiros
Price: $50
Players: 1-4
2 player Scaling: Fine, goals scale to player count.
Playtime: 1 hour per player
Estimated Lifespan: 1-3 Games
Estimated Average Play Frequency: Annually
Complexity: 1.5
Components: 1.5
Bang for Buck: 2
Value for Time: 2.5
Fun Factor: 3
Overall: 2.5
Cardboard for 2 
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