Valley of Stars developer Eric “ConcernedApe” Barone juggles a plot right away. Between the development of massive update 1.7 for Stardewcatching up on lots of fan mail and celebrating Stardew tenth anniversary with a bunch of interviews, I don’t understand how this guy has time to sleep. However, it is Also managing to move forward on his next project, Haunted Chocolatierwhich is apparently going to be even bigger than some fans expected.
In an interview with Game Informer published on May 12, Barone spoke about the appeal of making games and his current schedule. Of course, he also had to hint at some news regarding his next project.. He said he was now trying to work on Haunted Chocolatier five days a week and spend the other two Valley of Starswhich is expected to receive its much-publicized Update 1.7 soon (take a day off, dude!). Now that Haunted Chocolatier takes up most of his time, this is shaping up to be a pretty in-depth project.
“It’s much bigger than Valley of Stars”, at least in terms of the amount of cards, monsters, depth of the whole item system, all the equipment slots and all that kind of stuff,” he said. Game Informer. “Everything has ramped up.”
Barone suggested that Haunted Chocolatier has slightly darker themes than Valley of Stars. He also spoke about his fear of making certain changes, such as making characters like Caroline and Robin romantic through divorce, to Stardew because plots like these can seem “too real”. In Haunted Chocolatierhowever, it allows his writing to become a little less comfortable (and even scary).
“I want to explore a darker theme, a darker atmosphere,” he said. “The ghosts, the haunted nature, the castle, allow me to do a lot of interesting and creative things that are kind of scary, not totally horrific, but maybe slightly, you know, scary stuff.”
Barone had some particularly endearing things to say about creating art (and also criticized AI as a “soulless machine”):
Ultimately, I just want to bring magic to people. I want to delight people with magical feelings. It’s the same way that when I played games as a kid, I felt this way – and not just games but other things, movies, books or whatever – but [games] gave me this special magical feeling that’s almost hard to describe… It’s this ethereal feeling that it creates… I think kids are very sensitive to that kind of thing.
Like they’re seeing gnomes and they’re seeing things, because I think they’re more connected to that creative, spiritual side, in a way. We kind of like it as adults, and I think it’s sad. I want to at least create a space where adults can kind of suspend their disbelief and feel that way again for a little while. And I think I succeeded sometimes Valley of Starsand this is what I hope to continue to achieve with Haunted Chocolatier.
I’m always a big fan of hearing game developers talk about their craft, especially when they get a little weird with it, so I really enjoyed hearing Barone compare the mystique of Stardew to children who see gnomes. Valley of Stars is one of the few games I’ve poured hundreds of hours into, and I’m excited to see if Barone is able to elicit that same sense of wonder again in Haunted Chocolatier (with or without the gnomes).