My 12 Gifts of Christmas - 2022

My twelve gifts of Christmas,

Received year 2022:

A model Minecraft piggy

Sonic the Hedgehog PJs

10 pack of Nano Bytes

Shitloads of Little Britain

Keyboard and a mouse set

Rolos and satsumas

Mario & Rabbids

Oddworld: Munch's Oddysee

Sonic Frontiers 

Scarlet & Violet

Amazon gift vouchers

And tested positive for Covid 19!

Review: Stardew Valley

What would you get if you threw Harvest Moon, Rune Factory, Minecraft, Terraria and Animal Crossing into a blender, filtered it through an 16-bit retro sieve and served it on a Steaming indie community buffet table? Well, asides from the confused looks from the guests reeling from the pile of crushed cartridges and discs emitting smoke - it's likely someone would mention they'd rather be at home playing Stardew Valley.

Stardew Valley is a 2016 RPG/farming simulator game developed by Concerned Ape and published by Chucklefish on Steam, and later ported to the Xbox One, PS4, PS Vita, Android and Nintendo Switch.

The game begins with a player creation screen in which you can customise your character avatar by changing their hair style, hair colour, eye colour, clothing and accessories such as beards or glasses. You can also name yourself, your farm, your favourite thing and choose your preference between cats or dogs. You can also choose between 5 different farm layouts, each of which is tailored to a specific play style or the focus on one of your characters’ main skills.

Unlike Harvest Moon however, you aren't limited to just farming to progress and generate income. Your five skills, which can be advanced by simply using them day to day are farming, foraging, fishing, mining and combat. Farming focuses on growing crops and raising livestock, foraging focuses on collecting wild fruit and herbs and chopping trees and logs for lumber, fishing is exactly what it's name suggests, using your fishing rod and also crab pots to catch fish and seafood, mining focuses on digging up ore and gemstones and combat involves using swords, daggers, clubs and slingshots to fight wild monsters in specific areas. Each of these skills can be used to earn you money, by selling whatever you grow, harvest, pick, chop, catch, dig up or by selling monster spoils and treasure - and whether you choose to focus on one, a mixture of several or even all five is entirely up to you.

The storyline of Stardew Valley opens with your player character working a dead end, soul-sucking repetitive job at the evil Joja Corporation before he or she remembers their grandfather left them a sealed envelope as part of his will, which he instructed you to open when you were in need of a change. As it turns out, your grandfather left you the deed to his old farm and his cottage - so naturally you move in and attempt to clear it up and make a go of living off the land.

The most impressive aspect of Stardew Valley in my opinion is the fact that Concerned Ape, the development studio is literally one person. That's right, every aspect of the game’s development was done by the same person, Eric Barone. The script, programming, art, sound and animation - everything was done painstakingly by hand over the course of a four-year development period by Eric himself, working out of his home in Seattle. To this day, Eric still takes time out of his day to answer questions from players and fans, and once-over hand-restored several players’ corrupted save files.

Unlike the majority of video games that are wholly driven by progression, scoring or the amount of money you can make in the shortest space of time, Stardew Valley shuns this in favour of encouraging players to play at their own pace, to take their time exploring, experimenting and making friends with the residents of the local town. There aren't any major expectations hanging over your head, so whether you want to build a fully automatic blueberry factory and roll around in your profits or spend a whole day walking through the forest picking flowers - you're welcome to play exactly how you please.

For completionists like me, there are some goals to work towards but the majority of them are self imposed tasks. There is the obvious challenge of maxing out your skills, which will come naturally through gameplay if you experiment with all of the different tools - and there is also the Community Centre. There are two large buildings within the town of Stardew Valley, the run-down and abandoned community centre and the large and intimidating Joja Supermarket. It is up to you who you work with. The Joja route is noticeably easier as all it requires it for you to raise a set amount of money, whereas the Community Centre encourages you to try different things by asking you to create “bundles,” i.e. a bundle of ocean fish, a bundle of summer crops, a bundle of smelted metals. Ultimately they lead to unlocking the same rewards - such as rebuilding a broken bridge, fixing a mine cart or opening up a bus route in order to allow you to access new areas. Each route also unlocks its own respective achievement or trophy and related in-game items.

My biggest irritation with Stardew Valley is its hands-off approach. Unlike many modern games that have a tendency to hold your hand throughout the game, Stardew Valley throws you in with little to no instruction whatsoever beyond the controls. There is no tutorial, no on-screen hints or any beginner quests that could offer first time players an idea of where to begin. And as the game itself is so broad with a vast amount of different things you can do, it lead to me feeling very overwhelmed - thus once I finished my first month, I restarted the game not once, not twice, but four times - as it took that long for me to feel comfortable and confident enough that I'd learned enough of the game to actually enjoy it. 

Even adding a tutorial or beginners mode or adding the option to enable hints or tutorial quests would solve this issue, in my opinion. Personally I also despise games that guide you through the game with you on a set of toddler reins, but sometimes there is such a thing as stepping away a tad too far. Some players may love learning through trial and error, but I'm a needy sort who needs constant validation that what I'm doing is what I'm supposed to be doing!

Gamer's Wardrobe: Eat, Sleep, Play Minecraft Satchel

Something different for this week's edition of Gamer's Wardrobe, not another T-Shirt - a satchel bag!

My mam bought me this for my 22nd birthday, as such, I cannot tell you where she got it from, or how much it was - but if you know, feel free to let me know. :)

It's a great bag, it's got some little pockets in the front under the velcro flap and it's big enough to take all of my crap with me to work - my lunchbox, 3DS to play on my lunch breaks and my iPod, complete with massive headphones. And it also advertises to the world that I play Minecraft. Albeit more than I actually do. :P

Minecraft Creations: Mario Sprite Art

Today on Minecraft Creations, I present to you: the sprite art statue that likely every single Minecraft player has made at some point, likely their first attempt at sprite art: 

Yes, an 8-bit Mario from the original Super Mario Bros. on the NES. I did attempt to mix up the formula with a palette swap, using Mario's colours from the modern era, rather than the collection of brown/orange/red that the NES used.

Fun fact: the very first recorded instance of sprite art in Minecraft was an 8-bit Mario; made from dirt, wood and cobblestone - uploaded within like the first hour that the Minecraft servers ever went live. Seriously, Google it. If you've never made one yourself, you know what you need to do. :)

Minecraft Creations: Frostbite Sprite Statues

It's been a while, but it's time for some more Minecraft Creations. Shelly and I made this collection of sprite statues a few months back - Shelly having a great spatial awareness used screenshots from one of her favourite Atari 2600 games: Frostbite and squared paper to plan out these three statues.

Frostbite is a sort of platformer game in which you play as a little Eskimo dude called Bailey. Your task is to jump across ice floes in order to reach the other side of an icy river, where your igloo is. With each successful jump, more bricks are added to your igloo until it is complete and you can finish the level. As well as having to avoid falling into the water, you also need to avoid flying birds (we assume seagulls) and a hungry polar bear who prowls around outside your igloo.

We suspect that nobody else has ever made these before! We built these statues authentically in the icy area of our world, using wool and snow blocks.

This is a screenshot from the game:
(Just as a warning, if you're going to search for this yourself, don't forget to include "ATARI" in your search. Bloody hell...)

And this is a screenshot of our Minecraft sprite statues.

We also made a video:

Minecraft Creations: Cosmic Spacehead Sprite Statue

Are we ready for more Minecraft Creations? OK then, I present to you (what I believe has never been done before) my 16-bit COSMIC SPACEHEAD sprite statue from the amazing Sega Mega Drive game of the same name:

 

Our lovely Cosmic Spacehead is made purely from wool blocks - red, yellow, white, pink, black and magenta. I extracted his sprite from a screenshot and zoomed it in on PAINT and copied it into the big bland desert area. (Oooh, how very technical I am. :P)

 

With regards to the game itself, I know not many people have heard of it, but Cosmic Spacehead is a truly epic point-and-click/adventure/platformer type thing on the Sega Mega Drive made by the wonderful Codemasters. It's also very cheap - I picked it up from Amazon with the box, booklet and a promotional poster for only like £4. (I did have it as a child but for some reason when my Mega Drive broke my mother took it upon herself to get rid of all my bloody games as well!) I may review it in the future. Wooo. :)

 

I also posted a mini video of my Cosmic to YouTube, so if anyone inexplicably likes the sound of my voice, it's here:



Minecraft Creations: Kirby Sprite Statue

I wasn't sure if I'd like Minecraft - as it turns out, I do, however, I find it very repetitive after a while, especially when my fiancée demands to play it every two seconds. Anyway - while faffing around on creative mode building houses and crap, I jumped on the bandwagon of building 8-bit sprite statues from coloured wool.

Seeing as how my fiancée has developed this intense love for all things Kirby since playing Super Smash Bros. Brawl (even going as far to buy several dozen Japanese plush dolls despite having never even played a Kirby game!) I made my very first sprite statue for her: the classic 8-bit Kirby from Kirby's Adventure on the NES.

 Feel free to use my image as a guide for creating your own Kirby statue - remember to surround it with torches/glowstone to keep the Creepers away! :D

 (And yes, we know Kirby's been done before - but stay tuned, we've made a whole bunch that we believe NOBODY has ever done before!)