Stardew Valley in space.

No, I mean, it's literally Stardew Valley in space. Instead of a downtrodden wage slave who chucked it all and took up your late grandfather's dilapidated farm, you're a rookie Space Alliance officer assigned to take command of a small starship.

The ship has been neglected by a series of deadbeat captains and is in a pretty shocking state of disrepair when you arrive, the crew is demoralized and disgruntled, and the mission of exploration it's supposed to be on has been left unresolved for so long that the Alliance has basically given up on it. So it's up to you, as the untried new captain nobody trusts, to roll up your sleeves, fix up the ship, try to get to know your shipmates, and maybe even explore some space.

Practically every gameplay mechanic from Stardew Valley is replicated exactly, only it's outer-space-themed. If you're an experienced Stardew player, you'll recognize them left and right and instinctively know exactly what you're supposed to be doing at least 80 percent of the time. It is as similar to Stardew Valley as X-COM: Terror From the Deep is to X-COM: UFO Defense, except without the wildly exaggerated difficulty curve.

That said, for all that it's a fairly shameless Derivative Work™, it scratches an itch I didn't know I had. Who knew that "what if this game were set on a starship?" was something I was unconsciously wondering all throughout my many, many hours in Pelican Town?

--G.
besides, I'm hardly in a position to be taking shots at Derivative Works™, am I right
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

There's another one coming in Q4 2025 that, while it isn't set in space, is looking to be incredibly cute. Starsand Island. I don't have a link handy, but it's already listed on Steam, so... do with that info what you will.

LAST EDITED ON Oct-25-25 AT 05:30 PM (EDT)
 
>There's another one coming in Q4 2025 that, while it isn't set in
>space, is looking to be incredibly cute. Starsand Island. I
>don't have a link handy, but it's already listed on Steam, so... do
>with that info what you will.

Coming back to this thread because I've been playing the demo of this one. It does feel like a sort of "Stardew Valley but with higher-res graphics" thing, but the vibe hits me differently for some hard-to-define reason. The starting premise is very similar--you inherit your grandpa's old cottage (in this case on the eponymous Starsand Island) and move in, clean the place up, get to know the neighbors, etc.

The overtone that you're fleeing a soulless corporate existence isn't there, though. NPC dialogue indicates that you grew up on the island but haven't been there in a long time, so you're not a complete stranger to the community like the PC in Stardew. That might be the difference.

The gameplay loop is similar, though. Clean up the farm, find or figure out how to build things you need, collect materials to build them, make friends with the islanders, and so on.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.