Tag Archives: crafting game

[Game: Spiritfarer, Thunder Lotus Games, 2020]
Spiritfarmer:

Comparing Fundamental Mechanics of Spiritfarer to the Same Mechanics in Stardew Valley

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Introduction:

In narrative, setting, and artstyle, Stardew Valley and Spiritfarer are very far apart: the former is about rejuvenating a grandparent’s abandoned farm and embracing a rural lifestyle in pixel art; the latter is about coaxing souls onto a boat and ferrying them to their final rest in high-res illustration. But in terms of tone and mechanics, they’re extremely similar. They’re both laid-back 2D indie management sims with farming, ranching, crafting, cooking, fishing, mining, beekeeping, foraging, rigid day-night cycles, base building that involves resource checklists, minigames for basic actions, optional co-op, slow traversal with fast travel nodes, and a cast of quirky NPCs that give quests and offer benefits if you make them happy.

Yet it is a stark fact to me that the implementation of the individual mechanics in that list is done, by and large, far better in Stardew Valley than Spiritfarer. For immediate clarity, I’m not here to point out that Stardew Valley is the more complete and varied experience. It’s true, but it’s also a trite, obvious, and uninteresting observation. Spiritfarer hasn’t received the boundless support and resources which allowed Stardew to steadily expand in features across the past decade. It is (of course) impressive that Stardew Valley, in a manner reminiscent of Terraria, has been subject to so much free expansion since its release. But that’s simply not what this article is about.

The comparison I’m here to make is between the handling of specific mechanical elements in Spiritfarer and the handling of the closest corresponding elements in Stardew. The quantity and variety of such elements in each game will be, for this exercise, ignored. Their aesthetic and narrative differences will also be mostly ignored here. They could swap themes and artwork and I’d be writing the same article. In fact, they could swap practically everything other than the details I’m about to discuss, and a session spent playing Stardew Valley would still be preferable—due to the mechanical functioning of many basic interactions with the gameworld.

Spiritfarer screenshot with Stella near navigation, blueprint station, and dinghy - Stardew Valley, Comparison Continue reading

[Game: Spiritfarer, Thunder Lotus Games, 2020]
Spiritfarmer:

Comparing Fundamental Mechanics of Spiritfarer to the Same Mechanics in Stardew Valley

 was last modified: April 2nd, 2025 by Daniel Podgorski

[Game: Factorio, Wube Software, 2020]
Bug Hunt at Outpost Mine:

An Ecocritical Analysis of Wube Software’s Wildly Addictive Optimization Simulator Factorio

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Introduction:

Any analysis of the relationship between the player-character and their environment in Factorio must begin with an acknowledgement that Factorio is a game that does considerably more to accurately depict the environmental impact of human industrial development than the vast majority of its peers in the simulation, management, strategy, and puzzle genres.

In Stardew Valley, for instance, not only do forests rapidly regrow and lakes never deplete of fish, but quarries, mines, and caves also replenish with stone and ore from day to day. Similarly, while Infinifactory does periodically foreground topics like mining, exploitation, and waste in its story and puzzle design—it nevertheless provides an infinite supply of inputs that can be accelerated or decelerated at will, even when those inputs are living creatures. Even games like Terraria and Minecraft, which go so far as to represent resource acquisition as a zero sum game, nevertheless depict all processing, combining, and consuming of those resources as a pollution-free, byproduct-free non-zero sum game.

By contrast, in Factorio, resources are finite; resources don’t always combine cleanly into singular products; pollution results from production; and pollution has consequences for both the world and the player. Nevertheless, despite its demonstrable steps in the right direction, Factorio preserves a great many of the negative practical and psychological trends embodied by such optimization- and development-focused titles. In fact, it is precisely because Factorio does so much to emphasize the topics of resource scarcity and pollution that its weaknesses in the realm of environmentalism shine so brightly.

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[Game: Factorio, Wube Software, 2020]
Bug Hunt at Outpost Mine:

An Ecocritical Analysis of Wube Software’s Wildly Addictive Optimization Simulator Factorio

 was last modified: April 16th, 2021 by Daniel Podgorski

[Game: Terraria, Re-Logic, 2011]
Yes Half Measures:

5 Reasons You Should Play Terraria on Mediumcore Difficulty

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Introduction:

Any players of Re-Logic’s Terraria will know that difficulty levels in the game do not merely affect the stats of enemies. A ‘softcore’ (now also known as ‘classic’) character will only drop held money on death. A ‘mediumcore’ character will drop held money as well as held and worn items on death. A ‘hardcore’ character, when it dies, just stays dead. (Terraria possesses an overabundance of difficulty-related terminology, so, just to be absolutely clear: I’m not talking about normal mode versus expert mode or master mode, and I’m not talking about pre-hardmode versus hardmode.)
Terraria screenshot with home base - Re-Logic - Mediumcore Difficulty

These are pretty dramatic differences in consequences for each character’s demise, and as a result the vast majority of players choose softcore mode. Those looking to prove what they’ve learned, on the other hand, are likely to crank it up to hardcore immediately. My personal opinion is that both are sub-par options when seeking the best playthrough of the game.

Here is my one caveat to this difficulty advice: if you’re really just playing Terraria as an artist or an architect (i.e. you just like building things), then softcore obviously makes the most sense. But if you want the most enjoyable possible RPG adventure experience, then I highly recommend mediumcore. Here’s why:

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[Game: Terraria, Re-Logic, 2011]
Yes Half Measures:

5 Reasons You Should Play Terraria on Mediumcore Difficulty

 was last modified: August 26th, 2020 by Daniel Podgorski