Stardew Valley Recruits Help For Co-op

The promised co-op multiplayer may be coming to Stardew Valley [official site] sooner than you'd expected. The farming/adventuring/country-living sandbox RPG is mostly the work of one chap but adding co-op is not a small amount of work so huzzah, he's called in help! Stardew publishers Chucklefish, who also make Starbound, are pitching in to help with Stardew Valley's co-op and Mac and Linux versions while creator ConcernedApe works on new content. Which is great, because we really dig the game.

ConcernedApe explained his plans for Stardew Valley in a blog post over the weekend. He's focusing on Version 1.1, which he calls "a substantial content update". His current plants for v1.1 (which may change) include:

• More late-game content
• New farm buildings
• New crops
• New artisan goods
• New advanced farming/producing mechanics
• Shane and Emily will be marriage candidates. They will also have more events and dialogue as a result.
• More marriage content for all spouses
• More events for the non-marriage NPC's
• Improvements/Additions to mining and combat
• Ability to move buildings and other convenience features
• More bug fixes
• More secrets
• More small, fun touches to the world

ConcernedApe also explained why he's not one-manning it.

"Now, there's obviously a huge amount of work involved to achieve all this... and I am just one person. I know in the past I've been very adamant about doing everything myself... and I still am, when it comes to game design and content. However, I've decided to seek outside help for some of the more technical things listed above. More specifically, I've accepted an offer from Chucklefish in which they will handle the porting, localization, and the technical side of multiplayer. This will allow me to focus on creating new game content for version 1.1, which I will continue to do entirely on my own."

No word yet on when either co-op or version 1.1 will arrive, but having two teams working on it will surely bring both sooner.