Right in the death rattle of 2016, Stardew Valley comes along and sits itself down at the Game of the Year table. It’s a remarkable game, warmly familiar, yet fresh as a daisy. In a year where indie games have stepped up to the plate and hit home runs-a-plenty, Stardew Valley is the one that knocks it out of the park and into a neighbouring city.

Alongside much lengthier save times at the end of days, the interface issues are irksome enough to mar the special, very real sense of escapism Stardew Valley can so masterfully afford. Still, that escapism is so strong it’s impossible to ignore. [March 2016, p76]

The constant churn of daily activities may prove thankless and repetitive for those impatient and unwilling to immerse themselves, but if you surrender yourself to Stardew Valley and dig deeper beneath the surface you’ll find one of the best, most impactful games you play this year, homage or not.

Stardew Valley's transition to consoles is a smooth one. Both the PS4 and Xbox One versions include the great post-launch updates we've seen in the PC version, like the new farm templates, divorce, bug fixes, and more romance options. The controller mapping is taken from the PC version, so they're familiar, but the mouse cursor that's used to navigate menus is a little on the slow side. Still, most of my time was spent farming, talking with neighbors, or in dungeons, so this wasn't a deterrent for me when playing these versions.

Stardew Valley is a charming farm simulator with the essence of classics Harvest Moon, but with a lot of more content and new gameplay mechanics.

Stardew Valley is a game so completely full of content, that it is hard to fathom that it was created by a single person.

The best version of Harvest Moon, or indeed any farming sim, ever made – even if it doesn’t move the concept on quite as far as you’d hope.