The mod that I chose for this week’s assignment was the “Night Owl” mod, which can be found here : https://www.nexusmods.com/stardewvalley/mods/433
This mod takes one of the game’s core mechanics–the inability for the player to stay up past 2am, forcing them to fall asleep where they stand if they do–and removes it completely, leaving the player to be able to keep running around at all times of the day, 24/7. I originally chose this mod, as it’s one of the most frustrating things of the game to myself and many other players–the number of times I have lost track of time and had a mad dash back home, only to pass out somewhere near the bus stop.
With the use of this mod, I am able to not even have to glance at the time when it comes to my long hours fishing or mining, and I can continue to just keep doing those tasks as long as I see fit to get as many resources as I need. While at first, I found it to be very liberating, leaving me to gather as many fish to sell as I could have ever wanted… By the time I was hundreds of levels deep in the Skull Mines, I had to stop and ask myself. What season is it? Did I miss planting the Summer seeds? Sure, I had hundreds of iridium ore that I could potentially make more money than I would ever need with, but for what reason? What would I even spend that money on?
As much as I detest the falling asleep at 2 am mechanic, I started to realize the point of it–it creates game balance very deliberately in the game, in order to both ground the player in the calendar as well as to actually create difficulty in the game. The Skull Mines can only get so difficult, you can only need so much money in the first place, so the only thing really getting one to stop during such a mod is fatigue based on the hours spent doing nothing but mining. This brought up the question to me: am I even having fun anymore?
As much as I appreciate being able to stay up perpetually, I think that it leads to senses of ennui within myself in the gameplay. My motivation to try and get enough resources to start the next day strong was completely gone, and I found that I was completely without goals and stakes. This ended up making me more listless than anything, but also brought up the question–is Stardew Valley a game based in time limits as a major core mechanic? I hadn’t thought about it too much before, but as I played this mod more and more, I found the game to be completely broken to at least my own playstyle. From a critical lens, this brings up a question of why we have to be doing tasks at all times with time limits in the game, as without this pressure, I had no motivation to even try in what I was doing. Translating this to real life, I wonder if there is more that could be set about life in this lens–are the deadlines and time limits we put into place helping us, despite the absolute stress they cause?
So, final thoughts on the mod–I think that it’s a really good mod when it comes to making a lot of money, perhaps to get things done on the farm and in the game without the pressure of the time limit. However, when it comes to actually playing the game to have the experience of playing Stardew Valley, as well as keeping the motivation to keep prevailing in the face of a game that creates challenges for us, the mod completely breaks this part of the game design. To be honest, though, sometimes I wish I could do this in real life. Mod when?
