I love life-sim computer adventure games. I first played Harvest Moon for the SNES on an emulator back in the 90’s and I never looked back. The board game version of Stardew Valley is pretty awesome, but it’s sort of a difficult solo/coop board game.
As a board gamer, another YouTube channel that I follow is called, Thinker/Themer. It’s some wonderful ladies from Australia who talk about board games from the perspectives of mechanics and theme. The themer of the duo, Maggie also plays a lot of board games solo. Maggie posted a video some time ago that addresses playing the Stardew Valley Boardgame solo. I thought that her approach may appeal to the folks here.
The board game has a timer in the form of season cards. Normally, players use a limited selection of these. In addition, things that you are able to build, like your barn, or a mill, etc. are limited from game to game. Maggie’s solo approach is to use all the season cards and all the buildings. This extends the game greatly making the year (and the game) much longer, and your options pretty much limitless. You get to experience every festival and complete your personal objectives at a more leisurely pace.
This transforms the board game’s, play to “win” focus, into a casual, play to “experience” focus. This is closer to the kind of experience that players of the computer game are looking for. I know that a lot of times, for viewers of the Dungeon Dive the play is about the experience more than winning or losing, so I thought this post might find some resonance here.