Rotating hobbyist: A trip to Stardew Valley

The rotating hobbyist is a column by Karly Graham talking about her favorite pastimes and hobbies, as there are many that serve her on a temporary and rotating basis.

On a warm September night last year, I celebrated my 22nd birthday. When I couldn’t find anyone to impulsively buy tickets to see My Chemical Romance with me, I did the second-best thing: Drove to the nearest Target and bought myself a Nintendo Switch.

I’ll be honest — I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to use the console as much as I really should for how much it cost, but oh, how wrong I was.

While looking for moderately inexpensive yet deeply entertaining games, I stumbled across what would become one of my greatest hyper fixations to date: Stardew Valley.

A game that lets you build relationships, farm, mine and fish, Stardew Valley quite literally has something for everybody.

I am a person that has a lot of hobbies: I love to knit, crochet, read, embroider, etc. Stardew Valley lets me switch interests the same way having multiple ongoing crafting projects does.

That said, I’d be lying if I said it was love at first save with the game.

I didn’t know how to play it very well, and I didn’t know all the little sidequests or why I would need a sword in a game about farming. I played for about a week, decided I could live with the $15 I parted with to play this game, and moved on.

Then, in a search for mindless background noise, a playthrough of the game popped up in my recommended YouTube videos. I didn’t pay much attention, but after about 20 minutes of learning things (like why the game gives you a sword!) I didn’t know that you could do, I revisited the game and was hooked.

I am a person that doesn’t like spoilers. I go in blind to every piece of media I consume — whether it be video games, movies, books or TV shows. However, Stardew Valley is my exception to the rule.

There are so many things you can do in Stardew Valley it is impossible to pretend you can do it all yourself. Without a few visits to “Stardew Valley Wiki” or trips to YouTube to watch other people take on specific game challenges, I would never know what season or waters I could find special fish in.

Each character has an interesting backstory, from a father who returns from war at the start of the players’ second year, to the discovered secret relationship between a townsperson and the mayor.

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A perfectly mindless game, Stardew Valley has been accompanied in the comfort of my living room couch with baseball games on the TV or Taylor Swift or a podcast playing in my headphones.

For about a quarter of the price of most other games available on Nintendo Switch, I’ve had hours upon hours of fun. Now on my third year of the game, I’ve racked up nearly 100 hours of playing time, working to achieve all the silly sidequests the game sets up while also trying to build friendships with the different characters in the game.

Whether you like to spend your days trying to make every townsperson fall in love with you, working to reach the bottom of the mines, fishing at the end of Willy’s dock, or playing Junimo Cart in the saloon, there’s something to keep my hands and mind occupied while decompressing after a long day — no matter what part of the game I’m in the mood for that day.

— Contact reporter Karly Graham at kgraham@petoskeynews.com. Follow her on Twitter at @KarlyGrahamJRN.

This article originally appeared on The Petoskey News-Review: Rotating hobbyist: A trip to Stardew Valley