2. Critical Role

I have basically been playing Stardew Valley non-stop for the past few days. It is a game I have played in the past but because my girlfriend started playing it, I got really into it again. It’s a weird game because it’s not my usual speed and I wouldn’t describe it as entirely fun. Most of the time its doing very menial things. But in this way it is relaxing. It is, in its own way, a type of great refusal. Unlike the Marcusian call to the wild, however, you are still in your home, still trapped by capitalism, however it is the dream of the calm life on the farm that is appealling about the game. It is very much like the games describes Robin D. Laws because like a game of dungeons and dragons you are placed into a world and have sets of choices you can make that will fundamentally alter your experience. For this reason, the game is entirely up to the player and their “in-game preferences.” If a player loves action games, they can spend all day in the mines fighting slimes. However, it is also accessible. The inchoate player can spend all day farming or feeding their animals just by clicking. I will say that I do often get bored with the game. I am a player who favors a very high level of difficulty and this game has virtually no difficulty. There is almost no fail state–even going bankrupt is not really a possibility. Once your farm is off the ground sometimes it is too much work to follow a plotline through or keep going back to the mines–I have a machine that will make diamonds over and over for free why would I need to go risk losing items in the mines. So the power balance of Stardew Valley is off after the beginning of the game. I wish there were new threats as you advanced. For example, Joja mart could put a farm right next to yours which lowers the price of your crops and the Joja mart farm is manned entirely by robots. The game may be too easy at times, but it still draws me back and is still a fun game.