Stardew Valley gets yet another update, adding new mine layouts and ominous-sounding "fish frenzies"
Plus fixes and changes for modders
It's starting to feel like ConcernedApe (aka Eric Barone) may in fact be a modern day Sisiphus, destined to work on Stardew Valley forever. Following on from the mega update of 1.6 a month ago, and 1.6.3 soon after that, the hardy perennial farming game has a new 1.6.4 mini update. The key addition this time is more new layouts that will appear after you reach the bottom of the mines, and more layouts for the volcano mines too. If you've not played Stardew Valley you might wonder why there are deep mines and volcanos, and to you I say "Pah! You should play Stardew Valley."
1.6.4 also has a lot of bug fixes (including fixing disappearing pets, new pets being a key feature of 1.6) and some balance changes, as well as a host of fixes for modders and modded players. ConcernedApe said early on that 1.6 would be an update for modders, so it's nice to see that being supported. You can read the full patch notes here.
There aren't really many weird additions, although my eye was caught by "added fish frenzies" near the top. I assume this means that the fish can, at some times of year, in particularly rainy seasons, go on a murderous rampage and lay waste to the town, meaning players and townsfolk must cower indoors. Or you will sometimes get the chance to catch a bunch of fish all at once. Which seems more likely?
PCGamer also noted that under "other changes" is the reveal that two "inappropriate" names have been added to the exclusion list from the name generator. What could they be? What, at this late stage in the game's development, could have popped up as inappropes?
Still, one must hope that we're approaching another period of quiet on the Stardew updates front, if only for Barone - who keeps saying that work will resume on Haunted Chocolatier at some point. What will happen when there are two lovely life sim games to constantly update?