I was one of the people completely new to Stardew Valley at the beginning of the quarter. Amidst the talk of Stardew Valley as an open-ended game without a core objective, it was hard for me to shake the completionist feeling in me of doing everything that the game had to offer. With naive optimism, I went into the game thinking it would be a casual endeavor. With basic controls and straightforward tasks, it started out that way. However, very quickly, it devolved. Every misclick that led to watering the wrong plant or gifting a fish to Vincent or placing a seed before I placed fertilizer was time that ate away from my ability to try other features of the game. Pretty soon, the actual day (not the one in the game) was over and I couldn’t do any more. All that I had managed to figure out was how to plant seeds and fail at fishing. It became clear that a main feature of the game was time management, especially if you are interested in experiencing everything that the game has to offer in a timely manner. I was bummed. Not only because I wasn’t meeting my need for completion, but it made me feel unqualified to speak on any of the features of Stardew Valley that give it a lot more depth than a fail-to-fish simulator.
Then came the CJB Cheats mod. Essentially, when the mod is enabled, you get access to a new menu when you press “P.” The menu allows you to customize every game mechanic and by every mechanic, it really does mean all of them. You can change or freeze time at will, give yourself unlimited money and health, teleport anywhere, make fishing automatic, manipulate your friendship scores, level up any part of your character, and more. You can even go so far as to maximize your luck. You’ve become God.
The game instantly became much more enjoyable. As low-stakes and open-ended as Stardew Valley was before, this was even moreso. While you can definitely make the case that such an overpowered cheat defeats any purpose the original game had, I think there is an argument to be made for accessibility. Time is a luxury. With just the base game, several hours have to be dedicated to collect important information about the villagers or items for the community center for the deeper elements of Stardew Valley to kick in. This is assuming that you know what you’re doing in the first place. If you go in blind, no wiki research beforehand, that’s even more time necessary to achieve anything in the game. It also doesn’t help that time seems to move faster while you’re playing. There is a valid argument to be made that a big appeal of a low-stakes, casual game like Stardew Valley is the satisfaction of dedicating time to something. However, not everyone has that same luxury. As such, the only people who get to experience the depth of Stardew Valley are those who have the time.
This mod allowed me and my roommate to learn about Shane’s depression. We finally entered the Adventurer’s guild. We found out what exactly was in those chests that sometimes appear when you fish. Rather than defeating the purpose of the game, it opened it up in a way that allowed us to appreciate the game to a much wider extent.
