A cozy co-op with crunchy strategy

🌟 Stardew Valley: The Board Game is a video game adaptation. That is usually a red flag and I was wary of the game when I first heard of its release. However I watched a playthrough video a few months back and the game skyrocketed on my wishlist. Co-operative worker placement - what's not to love? 😍
You don't need to know the video game to enjoy the board game. I played it before but Reni hasn't - she still very much enjoyed playing. 🥳

In Stardew Valley you inherit your grandfather's farm. To win the game you have to complete grandpa's 4 goals and also restore 6 rooms of the community center by donating diverse resources - and all of this in 1 year, which is 16 rounds. The objectives scale with the player count, so the game will always work perfectly! 🙂

The game is really tight. You have to achieve a lot of things and you don't have many actions for it. In both our first plays we needed the last turns of winter to finish everything. 👌

There is also a great sense of progression as you get friends, profession and tool upgrades and items during the game that make you a lot more powerful and versatile. I also love the amount of variability. You get a lot of cards and tiles for everything, so games can feel different. 🤩

🎲 A negative of the game is the huge amounts of output randomness: tons of dice rolls and card draw. Normally I'm not a fan of that, but here I am somehow not that bothered by it. Perhaps because of the pleasant and colorful theme. ☺️ Still, sometimes you just flat out do nothing on your turn because your roll was bad - so be prepared for that. 😶
But even with this randomness the game requires lots of thinking and strategy. On your turn you either do two actions in a location or do one action, move, then do another. But you can only move a single space so certain action combinations are not possible. 🧐 You have to always plan and talk with your teammates.

Stardew Valley is really amazing and looks great on the table too - playing the game and making decisions is insanely fun. It perfectly brings the feel of the video game to life too. 😍