If like me you have a second home in Pelican Town, you probably don’t get to spend as much time there as you’d like. If that’s the case, there are some great board games with a Stardew Valley feel for IRL.
Stardew Valley: The Board Game
Although this is obvious, I think it’s worth mentioning. I wasn’t particularly keen to try this, until a friend asked me to play and I’m glad they did.
Sharing the charming art and capturing lovely cosy Stardew vibes, it really does feel like the video game. Players work together through the four seasons to meet objectives and restore the Community Center. Gameplay involves cooperative worker-placement corresponding to a series of mini games for different Pelican Town locations reflecting the original game experience.
Although there are rich rewards for Stardew fans, players needn’t be familiar with the original if they enjoy strategic, puzzly cooperative games. However, some hardcore fans might be a little disappointed as it’s a more intense experience than the original cosy style game. Still, it’s an immersive experience, a bigger time commitment for sure, but for me that’s a good thing. I never waste my time in Stardew Valley.
If you like the farming…
If you’re all about the cottage-core cosiness of the original, Harvest is the perfect choice. It’s sweet and charming with whimsical art, as well as playing quickly with a little crunch.
Players are farmers in Furroughfield rather than Pelican Town expanding fields, planting and harvesting their crops through a series of worker placement actions. Each sunrise players draft a tile to secure their income and resources as well as determine turn order. Crops can be sold during the course of the game adding a simple resource management element. In some ways it feels like it more directly simulates the specific mechanics of the farming in the original Stardew Valley.
Although big immersive games are my favourite, I really appreciate Harvest. Time constraints often mean that I need something that feels satisfying to play, but a little less taxing. I really love this one, it’s beautiful to look at and relaxing to play, much like the original Stardew Valley.
If Stardew Valley is the original cosy game, Agricola is perhaps the original farming game?
Based in 17th century Europe players take worker placement actions to grow and manage their crops and livestock, managing resources to ensure that they can feed everyone working on the farm. To accommodate their growing family, players can also upgrade their house and use occupation and improvement cards for additional benefits across the farm.
The theme works really well with the mechanics in the game so it’s another immersive experience. Farming takes careful planning; fences must be in the right places to accommodate different livestock as well as leaving space for them to breed. Growing a family means more helping hands, but it also means more mouths to feed. For me this is pretty near perfect, the weight and complexity is just right, although like Stardew Valley: The Board Game, feels less cosy and more intense. Still, it’s a theme I love, both when it’s warm and fuzzy and stark and harsh.
If you like raking in the ‘g’ by selling your artisanal products then Viticulture: Essential Edition is a great choice. Like all Stonemaier products the components are beautifully produced and a pleasure to play with, but that is not to take away from near perfect gameplay.
Players own Tuscan vineyards and are looking to fulfil wine orders by planting vines harvesting the grapes, transforming them into wine, and aging wine. It’s a worker placement game played over rounds, each one a year split into four seasons. Workers are assigned to different tasks depending on the season all of which help towards players to produce wine and fulfil orders. As well as specific actions there is the opportunity to collect visitor cards. The visitors have specialisms that may provide resources or one-time powers.
Worker placement is my favourite, and Viticulture is my favourite game (I will always try and add it to any list if I can). The tension and strategy are balanced beautifully. The Tuscany expansion even adds cheese-making!
If you want a game that’s all about making and selling cheese I have recently discovered Fromage, and it’s quickly become an extremely close second to Viticulture as my favourite game.
This is an incredibly speedy worker placement game played through a series of mini games with their own objectives and scoring. Each player will manage different resources by collecting fruit and livestock that they can use to produce cheese, construct different buildings and fulfil orders. One of the reasons this plays quickly is the simultaneous play, but this has the additional twist of players placing workers (and cheese) in different quadrants of the board. The board rotates and controls when workers become available. When you place workers, they will occupy a space which determines how long cheeses age for. Although maturer cheese is
more valuable, it will take longer to retrieve your worker, an elegant balance of timing, strategy, and theme.
I’ve already played this a lot. It’s so easy to set up and play but has surprising depth for such a quick game. A couple of people I’ve played with have found it a bit tricky to get to grips with, but I don’t think this is a big problem since it’s so speedy, you can easily play a game to learn and then play again straight after.
If you like the foraging…
Apothebakery: The Culinary Alchemists
If you’re all about the cosy, then I’m not sure you can get much cosier than this. The artwork is adorable with cute little foraging creatures and kawaii inspired patisserie.
Each player is trying to heal injured adventurers with their culinary creations by foraging in enchanted woods for magical ingredients. Players forage by blind bidding which sets the turn order and ‘stamina’ available for collecting resources. Once players have some ingredients, they make restorative elixirs and heal adventurers. Unfortunately, some adventurers don’t make it, and they come back in, albeit super cute, ghost form to haunt everyone!
To be honest, it doesn’t make total sense to me, but it’s just really fun, there’s a bit of strategy but it’s silly and whimsical and has some push-your-luck. It’s very approachable and there’s an ‘easy mode’ which makes it even more welcoming. It may err towards being a little luck dependent, but hopefully when you play, Welwick will have been in touch with the spirits, and they will do their best to shower everyone with good fortune!
When Demetrius asked me to help with his research, I chose the mushroom cave (if you picked the bat cave you might want to check out Atiwa). Whilst you’re not exactly foraging in Under Grove (you play as a Douglas-fir tree) the overall woodland theme and gorgeous art make this a good fit for Stardew Valley fans.
Together players will create the forest floor by placing their mushroom tiles. These will also create a number of different actions and benefits for players to select from throughout the game. As well as activating these player powers, players can grow their underground mycorrhizal network by adding seedlings or growing roots, or harvest and absorb carbon to grow trees and move up the carbon track, which is effectively the timer for the game. There are public objectives for different mushroom patterns as well as points for area control based on where roots have been placed by each player.
I love how the board is built cooperatively, but the public goals can make the competition for placing seedlings on available tiles quite fierce. You can feel the love and care in this game and the attention to detail to embed the theme. I also enjoy playing just to see the stunning artwork and weird and wonderful mushroom names. If like me, you think there aren’t enough beautiful games about the ecology of fungi you should also check out Mycelia.
If you like the fishing…
Nusfjord mixes a couple of Stardew Valley activities in addition to fishing as players must manage forests and construct buildings to successfully run their fishing company.
This is another worker placement game, in which players build, gather resources, deploy their fleet, stock their reserves, distribute shares, or take an Elder. The Elders provide ongoing abilities in return for being fed fish at the banquet. There’s lots to think about, with only three actions, each decision is important.
I love this because it’s such a neat and satisfying worker placement game. It’s from the same designer as Agricola but slightly simpler and does a lot of the same things without taking up a as much time.
Admittedly there’s not that much actual fishing in this one, but I think it qualifies at it very much shares the cuteness of Stardew Valley. Whilst the gameplay isn’t similar, the aesthetic is likely to appeal to Stardew fans.
Set in the north of Everdell, perhaps near Ginger Island, players gather resources to build their towns and sail around the bay to collect additional resources, treasure and points. Like Stardew Valley it’s played over seasons in which players take worker placement turns and play critters or structures into their city paying with the resources they’ve collected. Just like the original Everdell there’s lots to think about, resources are limited so turns can feel quite competitive.
Also like the original Everdell, the artwork and components are gorgeous. I love Everdell but marginally prefer Farshore as it feels like a well refined version of the original whilst retaining its cutesy charm. The streamlined elements of the game make it slightly simpler, a great starting point if you’re new to the Everdell series.
If you like the mining and combat…
In Snowdonia players are constructing the Snowdon Mountain Railway and to lay track must mine for the stone, coal and ore they need.
Players take turns assigning workers to excavate rubble and gather resources, lay track, build stations or fulfil contracts. It requires careful resource management to convert resources into the right materials. The speed at which you can excavate and build tracks will be helped or hindered by the weather and an event track affects the progress of the rail track.
I love the player interaction here, you need to be paying attention to your opponents and adapting your strategy throughout the game. The way the weather and events work are really clever and feels so thematic to me. It has great iconography making turns feel intuitive. Plus, there’s a pub, which I’m always happy to see. Snowdonia’s answer to The Stardrop Saloon.
Players are delving for treasure in a deck-building dungeon crawl. Like scouring the mines or plumbing the depths of Skull Cavern in Clank!
Players use cards with boots to move around the board, cards with swords to fight monsters, and cards with skill to acquire new and more powerful cards to build their deck. However, some cards also generate ‘clank’ or noise that threatens to awaken the dragon. Different events trigger a dragon attack in which players may suffer damage. Once an artifact is collected the countdown begins and all players must escape. Only those players who make it out will score.
Deck-builders are not my favourite, but the combination of exploration, combat and push-your-luck make this really exciting and accessible. Clank! has some fun variants like Catacombs and two legacy versions, the first of which I’ve played and had a great time with.
In summary
If your heart belongs to Pelican Town but real life keeps you away, there are plenty of board games that capture its wholesome charm. Whether farming, crafting, foraging, or adventuring, these games bring cozy vibes and satisfying gameplay. There’s a game to make every Stardew fan to feel right at home.
