Stardew Valley creator teases multiplayer and new additions

The last we heard from Chucklefish regarding Stardew Valley's forthcoming multiplayer mode was that they were "pushing that beta back to Q1 2018 in order to make room for polish and QA." Today, the game's creator 'ConcernedApe' tweeted out a single screenshot, showing a four-player LAN game in progress.

4-player Stardew Valley LAN party at my house... it's really fun. It still needs some work, but the underlying network code is solid. Being in the same room and yelling at each other about what to do next, or if anyone has any stone, is great fun. Can't wait to share this pic.twitter.com/Sjxyd712BKJanuary 15, 2018

There are a couple of interesting things about that screenshot. The first is the two houses side by side, one of which is made of stone unlike the regular wooden cabins. Looks like we'll be able to be neighbors with our friends. The other new thing is the flamingo right there in the middle of the crops, which is presumably a new kind of scarecrow. That's not much in the way of new additions to go on but we'll take anything we can get.

In a subsequent tweet ConcernedApe confirmed that work on the new single-player content he's adding to the game (including the long-awaited profession-respec) has been completed, and he's now "shifted all my attention to getting multiplayer ready!"

In the meantime, if you can't wait to get farming with your friends, here's our guide to using the unofficial 'Makeshift Multiplayer' mod.

Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.