Stardew Valley is a wonderful game that gives its players plenty to do in whatever way they’d like. Players are free to explore the world, develop their skills, create deeper bonds with the townspeople and showcase their creativity within organizing their farm fields. It has both inspired other game devs to create something similar as well as creators who love the game so heartily that when inspiration struck, they decided to add to it.
SMAPI is a free application service that allows for players to download mods to alter and further customize a unique experience for Stardew Valley. There exists thousands across many sites, namely Nexus that offer landscape changes, character changes, both cosmetic as well as technical in altering already existing assets within the game. Here’s just some of the fun ways that you can choose to either give yourself a challenge or take more creative liberties when it comes to our favorite cozy game.
Expansive Mod
As if there wasn’t already enough to do within the game, Stardew Valley Expanded mod adds a few new farm maps for the player to plow through and clean up. But not only that, it adds in several new characters that can be discovered through the player’s adventures and adds in more dialogue options for preexisting characters as well as new quests to unlock. Overall, the Expanded mod just adds more to the game for players to spend even more hours on the game trying to unlock it all with new crops, new fish and many more events to experience throughout the year.
Art / Style Mods
One of the most exciting aspects to expand on in any game whether it’s Stardew Valley or Minecraft is the skins and textures. Players can give their farm a more personal feel to it so they can explore their own aesthetic whether that’s a pretty pastel wonderland or a gothic Victorian landscape. Among these popular mods are the portrait mods where designers have created alternate designs for the characters that exist in the game, bringing them more to life and straying away from the pixel style in avatar alone. A sweet and stellar design is that of DCBurger who has made portraits for all of the original cast as well as those added in the Expanded mods in a beautifully rendered style.
Quality of Life Mods
While devs work their hardest to keep bugs from the games and keep updates to make the player experience more fluid, there’s always going to be something that could be improved on. Such mods that are pretty helpful to add to the experience are enemy health bars or crop labels that’ll include the sale price. Or perhaps players would like a cheeky cheat like fast travel to skip having to run for valuable minutes on end from one place to another. Personally, the LookUp Anything mod is especially helpful when it comes to remembering all of the items within the games as well as what items certain characters would like either to build a better relation with or to celebrate their birthday with a gift they’d appreciate.
Jordan is a student studying Digital and Print Journalism at the University of North Texas. After discovering how much fun gaming journalism can be, she hopes to make a career in it once she graduates. When she isn’t writing, she enjoys playing games such as Genshin Impact, Ace Attorney, and Fire Emblem or watching Murder, She Wrote late at night on weekdays.
