A few years back, I decided to try out Stardew Valley, the critically acclaimed farming simulation video game that players around the world praise for its cozy atmosphere and low-stim gameplay.
But for me, this game became anything but cozy. Stardew Valley became a microcosm of my own toxic relationship with time management and some workaholic tendencies.
Here’s how it all went down.
For the uninitiated, Stardew Valley begins when your character inherits an abandoned farm from your grandfather, and you leave behind a soul-sucking corporate job to move to a small town to build a new life. There, you get your first look at your run-down farm, get the lay of the land, and start revitalizing your homestead.
The gameplay blends farming, crafting, and exploration in a world of stylized pixel art where seasons change and discoveries can be unlocked by your progress. There are friends you can make in town, each with relationship quests involving giving them their favorite gifts, and learning their backstories.
As the in-game months and years roll by, you bring your grandfather’s farm back to its former glory and beyond, growing the homestead into whatever you can envision.
Old McCullough had a farm
In Stardew Valley, you can do as little or as much work on your farm as you want, and there is no way to lose the game.
The day cycle begins with your character waking up at 6:00 a.m. You can complete tasks like planting seeds, watering crops, foraging, harvesting, fishing, feeding and tending to livestock, buying, building, crafting, and combining ingredients to create more valuable goods. You can then sell these goods by dropping them in a bin, where they get turned into money at the end of each day. That said, there is no penalty for opting out of the free enterprise system; making money isn’t required.
Nothing can hurt you in this game unless you willingly choose to enter the game’s danger areas, which you can completely avoid if you prefer. Even if you lose all your health in one of these areas, you simply wake up in your bed as if it were all a bad dream, with just a few dropped items as a penalty.
You start with a few goals that you can work toward (gather enough wood to build a barn, earn enough money to buy strawberry seeds). You can water plants and harvest the produce. You might go on a foraging mission from time to time, or you might go to town to visit and talk with some of the non-player characters (NPCs).
At first, it’s simple. But as you move through the game, your day-to-day revolves around bigger ambitions, with multi-layered tasks and stacked goals.
Once you have rows and rows of plants, you’ll want a sprinkler system so you don’t have to run around with a watering can every morning, doing things manually and using up all your energy. To build a sprinkler, you first need iron, for which you need a furnace, for which you need charcoal and iron ore, for which you need a pickaxe to mine said ore. Mining requires extra energy, which requires extra food, which requires—you get the picture. (If you’re familiar with this type of farming/crafting/survival game type, none of this is new to you.) And as you go about these tasks, there is relaxing music and friendly villagers in a quaint, rural atmosphere.
You can’t die. You can’t lose. The entire game is what you make of it.
Naturally, here in this idyllic world, I managed to make myself miserable and stressed out beyond reason.
The daily (digital) grind
Here’s what a typical day in Stardew Valley began to look like for me.
I wake up with a plan of attack (e.g., I need lots of iron ore for that shiny new thing I’m trying to build, so I’m heading to the mines).
I have specifically planned this activity for today, because the forecast said it’s going to rain, so I don’t have to water the crops, thank the digital creator. I also placed plenty of food in my inventory the night before, so I won’t have to waste any time trying to grab some before I leave, because time is precious. I wish I could wake up earlier and cram more hours into the day, but your wake-up time is preset.
The rooster crows, and I navigate my guy straight out of bed, straight out the door, at a dead sprint, no petting the dog, no greeting the cows. I take the quickest route to the caves. There is work to be done.
On the way to the caves, I see an interesting item, but I pass right by it. I won’t have the space for it—I’ve already cleared all non-essential items out of my inventory the night before, so I would have as much room as possible for ore and loot.
The minutes are ticking by. I sprint by a friend from town without saying hello. I like the guy, but time is money.
Delving deep underground, I kill enough bad guys to clear a route to the good stuff. Precious, precious ore. The rise and fall of my pickaxe pings a steady rhythm that echoes through the caverns. It sounds like progress.
I work all morning and into the afternoon, refueling my energy as needed with the food I brought with me from home, and I fill my inventory with enough time to spare that I think I can make it to the blacksmith’s shop and have him crack open a few of the geodes I found before he closes for the day.
I am injured from monster attacks and almost out of energy, but I can pick up some berries along the path to town to keep myself going. Just have to stop and do some quick inventory management: drop my pickaxe, pick up the berries, eat them, pick the pickaxe back up. No problem. I’m an old pro at this.
Marnie ruins everything
I race along the path, bear south, and cut through town. Sorry, Penny, no time to talk about your struggling mother in the trailer down by the river. Places to do, things to be—er, you know what I mean.
Halfway to my destination, I realize I have misjudged my time. The blacksmith will be closed before I can get there after all. Time to call an audible. I need to get some hay from Marnie for my cows.
Now almost out of energy, I have to resort to the pickaxe trick again and forage enough salmonberries to stay on my feet as I take the long route around town so I can get the hay on the way home.
Disaster. Marnie isn’t here.
Why isn’t she here? Seriously. The blacksmith closes early, I know that. I can plan my day around that. But Marnie is supposed to be here until 5:00. For some reason, on seemingly random days, this chick closes up shop to go and do yoga behind Pierre’s store. Must be nice to just do whatever you want, whenever you want, with no regard for anyone but yourself.
Behold the enemy of free enterprise and progress.
Why doesn’t Marnie post a schedule? This is thoughtless behavior that works to the detriment of industrious citizens who want to actually get things done in their lives.
This setback has completely ruined my afternoon.
Discouraged but undaunted, I make it back to the farm. My energy is almost depleted, but now that I’m home, I can fix that. There is coffee waiting for me.
I am born anew.
I unload all my loot into my storage chests, stoke the coals in the furnace to start smelting some iron ore, and get to work. The extra boost from the coffee puts enough energy in the tank for me to stay up late gathering eggs and making mayonnaise. There’s only so much growing time left in the season, so if I can get some crops in the ground by torchlight before 2:00 a.m. (the time when the game automatically makes your character pass out from exhaustion and wake up in bed), this will be a day I can hang my hat on. Fortunately, through trial and error, I have figured out how to strategically squeeze out every last bit of time and energy, down to the very limits. To go to bed with any extra would be a waste, wouldn’t it?
Energy close to empty, I race to the bin to drop off some goods to be sold, then sprint into the house and—BAM! Made it to my bed at 1:50 a.m.! Now THAT’s how you make the most out of a day.
Money symbols clink across the screen: tangible evidence of my digital labor.
It was all worth it.
Another day, another salmonberry
I wake up the next day with my energy already half depleted (you don’t fully replenish your energy if you stay up late).
Doesn’t matter. I’m just staying on the farm today anyway. Need to focus on the crops and the mayonnaise machines. I can’t believe some people play this game and try to make their farm look nice. Pfft. Nice. Who cares for those aesthetic base-building mechanics? If your environment is functional, what’s it matter what it looks like?
My farm never looked anything like this.
Daily chores begin, and the morning flies by. It’s annoying how few hours there are in the day. Wish I didn’t have to interrupt my work to stop and eat.
Huh? My chickens’ happiness level just dropped—shoot, forgot I never got the hay. Thanks a lot, Marnie. Should I even bother walking all the way to her place? I’ll waste at least an hour getting there, and she could be doing yoga again for all I know. Forget her. I’ll wait until tomorrow morning. The chickens can deal with it.
With sudden horror, I remember: Today is Linus’s birthday, and I don’t have a gift.
I can’t believe I forgot. My relationship level with Linus isn’t going to go up if I don’t get him a gift.
I still have enough time, I tell myself. I still have enough energy… I think.
I race to Linus’s tent, grabbing a hazelnut along the way as his birthday present—it doesn’t matter, Linus is a rube and likes anything you give him. But how annoying are birthdays? All these people you’re supposed to remember and care about. Friendships really get in the way of progress. In an ideal world, you could isolate, keep your nose to the grindstone, work, work, work, and show up only when absolutely necessary.
I limp home again. It’s only 4:30 p.m., but I’m running on fumes. No choice but to go to bed early. On the plus side, I’ll have full energy tomorrow. If you can master the seesaw of exhaustion and recovery, you can really get stuff done.
I got to bed. Money trickles in, but not much. I feel like I could have managed my day better.
When the digital sun goes down, the human on the other side of the screen—the real, biological human who is controlling this little pixelated avatar—breathes a sigh of relief.
A sigh of relief? Relief from what?
I realize I am breathing shallowly. My shoulders are tense. I’ve been playing bent over the keyboard, on the edge of my seat.
What is going on? What have I turned my cozy little life into?
Main storylines, side quests, and achievements
Over time, I started to realize (we’re talking about the human version of me now) that when I played Stardew Valley, I was perpetually stressed out. Productivity anxiety had me milking every day for all it was worth. This, I realized, was my default setting. Neglecting to get the most out of my time and energy equated to failure.
In a game where you literally can’t lose, I felt like I was losing every day.
My farm in Stardew Valley had become a microcosm of all my least favorite things about myself.
Logging in to the game was like holding up a mirror to my dysfunctional relationship with work and time. The imaginary obligation to be ruthlessly efficient with the hours in the day. The annoyance at having to maintain relationships. Waking up each morning and feeling like a thousand-pound metaphorical hourglass had been flipped, and grains of sand were already cascading into yesterday, before I even rolled out of bed.
Inventory juggling, managing energy as a limited resource with a smaller-than-ideal daily allowance, food optimization, rainy day planning, coffee boosts, riding the line between productivity and exhaustion.
Now, throw four kids into the mix!
Life is a quest with epic, branching storylines, peppered with fun side quests and secrets to unlock, and I love every minute of it. My tenure as a farmer helped me learn a few things about myself, and I’ve done my best to reframe the stories I tell myself regarding self-worth being tied to output. But I don’t play Stardew Valley anymore. For me, that cozy, low-stim game was way too stressful.
Stardew Valley is a fantastic game. My oldest two daughters (ages eleven and eight, at the time of this writing) play it on their Nintendo Switch, and it brings me joy to see how they play the game. Their days are carefree. They do whatever is fun, unbothered by the march of time, excited by each new discovery. Games (and life) really are what you make of them.
Inner dialogue: Okay, blog post written. Now to edit it, proofread it, and post it. Only six or seven more things on my to-do list for today. If I get it all done in time, maybe I can relax for an hour before bed… I have had my eye on a new video game.