Stardew Valley is a simulation role-playing video game developed by Eric “ConcernedApe” Barone. Players take the role of a character who inherits their deceased grandfather’s dilapidated farm in a place known as Stardew Valley. The game was released for Windows in February 2016 before being ported to other platforms. 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. It allows up to four players to play online together. Wikipedia

Research exclusive to this game

Crowley, Sydney. “Playing farmer: At the intersections of neo-liberal capitalism and ecocriticism in Stardew Valley.” Journal of Gaming & Virtual Worlds 15, no. 1 (2023): 21-37. Digital Labour Economic Ideologies Game Design

Cruz, Erica Principe. “Counterspace Game Elements for This Pansexual Pilipina American Player’s Joy, Rest, and Healing: An Autoethnographic Case Study of Playing Stardew Valley.” gamevironments 17 (2022): 40-40. Game Design Identities in Games Player Motivation Postcolonialism

Galloway, Kate. “Soundwalking and the Aurality of Stardew Valley: An Ethnography of Listening to and Interacting with Environmental Game Audio.” In Music in the Role-Playing Game, pp. 159-178. Routledge, 2019. Game Audio and Music Game Spaces

Lange, Amanda. “Love on the farm: Romance and marriage in Stardew Valley.” Digital love: Romance and sexuality in videogames (2017): 59-67. Romance and Sexuality

Mackay, Orrin Eric Lincoln, and Catherine Anne Roberts. “Peace in the Valley: A Media and Discourse Analysis of Eric Barone’s Stardew Valley Through Utopian Theory.” Games and Culture (2023): 15554120231187793. Economic Ideologies Sociopolitics Utopian Theory

Rutherford, Kevin. “This is How a Garden Grows: Cultivating Emergent Networks in the Development of Stardew Valley.” Indie Games in the Digital Age 8 (2020): 123. Fan Cultures Game Industry Game Marketing

Sutherland, Lee-Ann. “The ‘desk-chair countryside’: Affect, authenticity and the rural idyll in a farming computer game.” Journal of Rural Studies 78 (2020): 350-363. Close Reading of Games Rurality

Research that includes this game in its sample

Anderson, Sky LaRell, and Mark R. Johnson. “Cultivation play: Video games and the labour of character progression.” Journal of Gaming & Virtual Worlds 13, no. 3 (2021): 233-248. Digital Labour Game Design

Van Ooijen, Erik. “The Killability of fish in the Sims 3: pets and Stardew Valley.” The Computer Games Journal 7, no. 3 (2018): 173-180. Ethics and Moral Engagement Video Games and Violence