I’ll finish the video, but this conversation just feels like a rehash or rediscovery of older conversations. We used to call every shooter “Doom clones” and we used to call every MOBA “Dota Clones” before we developed the names and nuances for the genre. I think people just forget that genres are forged by reinterpretations and remixes of what came before it. All genres have the prototype, the archetype, and then the stereotype, and that’s a sign of good health.
I think it's also worth mentioning that clone didn't used to be an insult. nowadays I'll see someone call something a stardew clone and people act like it was called a rip-off. clone was just an easy way to say what a game plays like.
@@salmence100 yeah that’s totally fair, and I think this video does do a good service for this community to advance the conversation beyond “this game copied that game therefore its lesser.” I was just reflecting on my own time on the internet and having flashbacks to the days of yore lmao
Rougelike, Rougelite, Metroidvania, Soulslike, they're all pretty arbitrary in terms of what conditions needs to be met to be "close enough" to be considered as part of a genre. Genre definers, genre originators, genre progenitors, and genre popularifiers(?), can all be separate instances. STV was, AFAIK, the one that made the Farming Game popular. But the aspects that define farming games is more of an innate thing that all farming games would have regardless. In terms of other traits of a game that can be similar to SDV, it can often cause them to fall under a "SDV, but ______" category. The sort of "why would I place this over SDV?" category. Because that "but _____" needs to be something added, or something removed, but something different. Which brings us to the snag SDV / farming games in particular: mods. SDV is, in many ways, very simple. So if you play SDV and think "but what if ______?", then there's probably a mod for that. Not to say that's all encompassing for the thought process behind these games.
Here is the thing. Yes you can said about Harvest moon is the inspiration for SDV But, no Harvest moon sold 30 Million copies. Even with all their series combine.
Not that having more sale is the point. I also started love playing farming sims because of HM and now I play SDV like an addiction. Gotta start humble.
I feel like while there are some clear rip offs but things like Fields of Mystria and Moonstone Island each bring something new, adding to what stardew valley added to Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons. I consider ripoffs things that directly copy but don't add to the game they are trying to imitate.
I will admit to the "surely everyone knows by now that Harvest Moon came first?" kneejerk reaction, but usually vidoes like this make a point to clarify that early on
I feel that Fields of Mistria is more of a love letter to farming games such as Harvest Moon and Stardew Valley than a rip off. Its 80s anime aesthetic and different mechanics (such as bug hunting, archaeology and levelling up system), along with a really well designed dialogue system and NPC functions are so unique in its own way and really make the game feel special.
I don’t count what animal crossing added to new horizons as something stardew valley inspired. I see the crops being added as an extension to the crafting system new to this series they implemented into this game. They wanted to get more things to craft but in new ways so it didn’t seem the same as other ways already in the game. And besides, the crops themselves are kind of an extension of how trees and flowers work in AC already, which have been there since the beginning decades ago.
@ryninja5788 Yeah I thought that take was a stretch lmao. Fans of AC had wanted food items to display for a long time, and the harvesting/cooking system just felt like a fun way to implement that with the already-existing crafting system.
i don't think it was stardew valley inspired at all, but there was a wave of "cozy farming" hype going on at the time, and it capitalized off of it. i love the cooking in acnh--the food models are well designed and it's really fun!! but still, you can't deny that it wasn't necessarily unexpected
But it definitely is a neighborvania. With New Horizons having a heavy focus on crafting and decorating, with the farming and cooking being a thing to support both crafting and decorating instead of being a main focus of the game.
Lukewarm take, I'd still be playing SoS - Sunshine Isle if it got free updates making it better every so often. The best thing to ever happen to Stardew is that ConcernedApe never made a Stardew Valley 2.
My only point of contention is that there are so many fantastic Harvest Moon, and then, Story of Seasons games between the first game and Stardew! Animal Parade, Magical Melody, Trio of Towns (just to name a few great ones!). They're real gems that really improved upon the farming sim genre and are still worth playing today imo.
Yeah but they all belong to the same franchise, which I believe is the point here. There are pretty much no other games outside the Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons franchise in this genre before Stardew Valley came along, and that was one of the major points why the creator of SV made it in the first place - he wanted to play Harvest Moon on his PC but it didn't exist. Stardew Valley then went and breath new wind on the whole industry, making even HM/SoS come back with things inspired by SV in them. Of course HM/SoS is the original, that's impossible to deny, but SV is a genre-defining game and changed the gaming industry as a whole. It's very likely that none of the other farming sims we see today would exist without Stardew, just none did before of it regardless of Harvest Moon already existing. To me that's what makes Stardew Valley such an important game for the farming sim genre.
I haven't watched the video yet, but I will say I think fields of mistria is an incredible game. It's just different enough from stardew to be enjoyable without straying too far from what I like about it
I guess for me it doesn't matter. I just want to go and farm and romance people. I have noticed a lot of people say X is Stardew because they've Stardew'ed first. (which is me. I remember my best friend gushing about it and I said and i quote "Why would I want to waste my time doing that?" (enter covid, and a very long illness where all i could mentally handle is farming games and 1180 hours and counting.lll because i love it LOL). There are times where i say "I wish the farming was ala stardew" but there are a lot of times i say I wish stardew was like this game." there is no perfect game, (stardew included) and that's why there are so many versions. beacuse people want. something to scratch that itch. I am still surprised no one has made a farming sim where all the romancable people are 30++ because that's a HUGE chunk of the market.. that's a BIG backlash on games (like stardew, SoS and Rune Factory etc. the fact that they are older now and the marriagables are so young - or seem young are just immature). so. yeah I am happy for all the ripoffs for there is more land to till!
Honestly while I do love both games, as a longtime Harvest moon/SOS fan who's had to deal with Stardew fans dismissing all new releases from the series as "ripoffs" (including the remake of AWL, a game which originally released in 2003), watching Stardew fans freak over people praising Fields of Mistria has been great schadenfreude. Like damn there's a group of fans of a new game who are unfairly dismissing an earlier series you really love? That sucks, I can't imagine what that's like.
@@safetyboots come on, I acknowledge and appreciate Harvest moon for basically kickstarting an entire genre, but let's be honest, Stardew Valley has objectively surpassed Harvest Moon and is definitely the standard that other farming games are compared to. Like it's not even close
@leonidesbabanto1585 Stardew Valley being better doesn't mean it set the standard. Besides, Stardew Valley doesn't implement anything groundbreaking to the genre, it only improves on the foundations laid out by Harvest Moon. You could say that Stardew Valley is the new industry standard, but that's not what we're talking about. Every new game on this genre is following the steps of Harvest Moon.
Perhaps someone said this already, but Dreamland Village Life didn't take kickstarter money and run. They cancelled the project (during the funding period) and nobody got charged, there was no money lost.
As someone who has loved cozy farming sims ever since I was a child, I love the fact that there are so many new ones coming out! Pardon my language but who gives a crap if not all of them are as „good“ as the ones hailed to be the best in the genre. As long as they are unique in some ways they can still be enjoyable. I dont like all this nitpicky comparing that the gaming community does to farming sims. Edit: I also firmly believe saying Stardew Valley is the blueprint is false. If not for the harvest moon series, stardew valley wouldnt exist as it was a huge inspiration. Game devs only picked up on it because of the huge hype it (deservedly) got at the time and how people seemed to be more open to the genre, but its not the number 1 just for that. That feels wrong imo.
First isn't always best. There's a reason "X invented a thing Y perfected it" is a cliche. Stardew is the standard in the sense that it's the reference point people measure other games against.
@@evilgeniusha01 I guess it's just my nostalgia or boomer take. I grew up with Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town and played that so much as a kid and other installments of the series (not the current crappy pay 2 win ones though. The Story of Seasons installments). Don't get me wrong, I love Stardew as well and Fields of Mistria is just as enjoyable.
the reason people compare it to Stardew is 'cause that's what most people know as the standard now. Stardew was inspired by HM but these new ones are inspired by Stardew, so it makes more sense to compare to that. like, I always see someone mention the originals but I never see people talking about the new Harvest Moon or Story of Seasons games.
@evilgeniusha01 Harvest Moon did it really well, Stardew Valley is just the most famous currently. Your argument is no different from saying that Undertale perfected the "Earthbound formula", which is a ridiculous and nonsensical oversimplification. The thing is that farming games as we know would exist without Stardew Valley, but not without Harvest Moon.
The sooner we can get rid of the "Stardew Valley ripoff" garbage the better. And no, I will still call Stardew a "Story of Seasons ripoff" if we're using the word ripoff. The good things in Stardew are the Story of Seasons parts. And no, ACNH did not copy because ACNH actually has focus and plays what it does very well. Story of Seasons a New Beginning has crafting, arranging buildings, different ways to farm, some online multiple functionality, etc. that was way before Stardew. Idk how A New Beginning is considered "empty", I think its more focused. Rune Factory (also by Marvelous) implemented a lot of cool things to go with the farming and combat, the first game has farming monsters and camping in dungeons. I didn't really care for Rune Factory and kinda wrote it off since the NDS but it apparently got really good with soil mechanics and stuff, so I'm buying Rune Factory games on Switch. Stardew's dungeons don't really feel like I should care about, its very separated from farming. I'm not going to look forward to the farming sim genre if we keep using the "Stardew Valley ripoff" garbage because the direction of Stardew feels very unfocused. I love farming games like Story of Seasons and Farming Simulator (and Animal Crossing since apparently we're talking about it), I don't like the farming sim genre direction for a lot of current games. Farming Simulator = (realistic) farming genre. Story of Seasons = farming sim genre. We should stop calling it Stardew ripoffs, farming sim is a better word that explains it. Do we really want to be the Doom Clones, Soulslike, Metroidvania crowd when we already have a word? I still call MOBA games as MOBA, not League of Legends even tho thats the MOBA game I like. Pokemon Unite BARELY plays like LoL yet people still call it Pokemon League of Legends. Comparisons works better when the people are more knowledgeable about the games in the genre, otherwise it just sounds confusing, I will just have to assume you mean farm sim. I think the best thing that came out of Stardew is that farming games are cheaper now...and same sex marriage. The rest feels very detrimental. Neighborvania also has zero traction on Google, so I doubt I would use that word unless it becomes used more. -Vania tho...what is that suffix? Its from Transylvania for Castlevania. Okay...Its wood, forest or land. Well, finding that out was more interesting than hearing about Stardew "ripoffs". People just use the words "cozy games" instead. Does cozy games really paint a clear picture? Not really, but I prefer it over Stardew Valley ripoff.
Good video, but I'd argue pixel art is a medium, not a style. Compare the original XCOM to Super Metroid, or those to modern games like Octopath Traveler, Celeste, or Carrion. These all have wildly different art styles, despite all being pixel art.
If anything for single player games, what could kill it is another game that most people would think of first. If someone ask me for a relaxing farming game, I think Stardew first. If asked for another I've played a Harvest Moon (one on the Switch can't remember the name), or Sun Haven. I still recommend other games too, but Stardew is first to mind.
Nice summary of the "problem", but I have to ask, what does Atelier Ryza have to do with it? That can hardly be likened with a neighbuorvania? And the Atelier series goes back as long as Harvest moon if I not misstaken.
I believe that Neighborvania can describe more than just farming games. There are a lot now games where main focus can be on any kind of stuff. Like alchemy, smithing, shop or restaurant ownership etc. And s lot of them can be united in the case that they are about doing it in some sort of society, being part of neighborhood so to say
I feel like this video topic is important for this genre of games (Neighborvania) because it is so tiering to just hear "xyz is a clone/dupe/ripoff" when folks don't understand it is a GENRE. great job!
The nintendo direct thing is really funny to me. I think it definitely put the phenomenon on to people radars. On the other hand Considering that two of the titles were remakes of Story of Season/Harvest Moon games (Rune Factory is a spinoff of Story of Seasons, for those who don't know), and one was the next entry in the Atelier series. I don't know much about the other games that were announced, but it's very funny to me that this big thing that made people start talking more about Stardew Valley ripoffs contained 3 games that were so far from being that.
I tend to call the genre "new in town" games, because to me, more important than and other single mechanic is the fact that you're building up from nothing in terms of skills and relationships. I also think the genre relies very heavily on vibes. More than any other kind of game, I'm inclined to write off new in town titles on art style alone. The story and mechanics aren't likely to win me over if I don't fundamentally enjoy just being in the world.
Great video! I like the bit about that everyone will have their favorites and that's a good thing. I know Traveller's Rest has gotten a ton of accusations of being an imitation, but I love that game for such different reasons than I love SDV.
Neighborvania sounds horribly inaccurate. I want to fight Dracula with a shovel before I consider it as such. More seriously, I have a more important distinction: Which games let you ACTUALLY SAVE IN THE MIDDLE OF A DAY and not have to fully commit to that day to save. And yes, Stardew is included on the negative side here because you need a mod for that. Rune Factory lets me and that's one BIG reason it's my go-to for these games.
Nah, the -vania comes from Castlevania, it's not just a thing you slap on genre names. You wanna make a portmanteau for the genre it should be like Harvestdew or something.
It makes literally no sense. There's absolutely nothing even remotely related to Castlevania in these games, whatever straw you can grasp at can be attributed to pretty much every video game ever.
It comes from a previous portmanteau of “Metroidvania”, much as Sal said in the video. Sure, it effectively drops the Metroid part out of it, but the term is used so much enough beyond those two franchises at this point that any portmanteau of ‘Metroid-something’ or ‘something-vania’ is probably a reference to a genre of non-linear game.
I believe it's really the age of the community that insists on this being a "problem". Not the age of the player base but with the bulk of the games coming in after 2016 the community is still young and subsequently will claim everything is a rip-off for a long while yet. There were years and years of FFPS called Doom rip offs and MOBAs Dota rip offs. But you've also got to recognise that Souls-like is it's own genre now and every deck builder is a "rip off" of the boardgame Dominion. Stardew gets to take its seat in history with Harvest Moon and Story of Seasons as pioneers of this genre. New games can come out and you can compare them to your fav game but immediately shutting it down for being a rip off because it's the same genre is a childish take.
Octopath travelers reference my Sals a gamer, but might I recommend the 8 playable character GRAND DADDY Romancing SaGa Minstrel Song. The original came out on the nes as sprites, got a remaster on the PS2 in full 3D that was banned in the US for reasons, and true to their word Square said they would take excess money made from FF14 and remaster their lesser successful titles and they delivered there is a full PC remaster of this game on steam $25 USD.
Because before SDV, all Harvest Moon game so hard to get at least... 1 Million copy sold Then, SDV is 30 mil sold. People never ever think farming game can be that popular.
All these farming games so far, have not yet beaten either Harvest Moon Hero of Leaf Valley, HM Back to Nature or Stardew Valley, for me yet. Also calling out Atelier games is owning to the fact you never played an Atelier game, they are magical.
Critter Cove showed up in the video for, like, a second, so I'm here to tell all furries (and honestly anyone who wants to mess with a good character creator) PLEASE check out the demo. So good
If it wasn't for crash issues, I might have moved on from Stardew to Coral Island. Of all the follow-ups, it seems to have kept the stuff that works and expanded the stuff that CA probably couldn't have made on its own. It feels both bigger and broader, a natural evolution of a classic. But...the crashes.
I really enjoyed Travellers’ Rest, there’s the Stardew element of growing ingredients, cooking/brewing with your ingredients and serving the townspeople. The pub also gets an adorable cat.
I think I prefer the term "Slice of life game" myself. Neighborvania just doesn't roll of the tounge as easily (maybe because I ain't a native English speaker?). There is always a discussion about if a game is a clone, inspired by or just generally in the same genre and I don't think we should use "clone" too often. Clone implies it is a cashgrab, trying to get a piece of the pie from a successful games and those games tend to be pretty soulless. Mistria is heavily inspired by SDV, that is clear but I think they put in a bit too much effort into it for it just being a clone. I am not so sure it can sell more then 30 million copies like Stardew though, but Stardew really had no competition at release and it came out at the perfect time so I have my doubts if any similar games actually can beat in in sales. Stardew also have another advantage: It is a game about escaping the stress of modern life to settle down in a small town and becoming a farmer. I think many people have fantasized about doing just that so it is a theme anyone can understand and see themselves in. A fantasy adventurer settling down in a small town is less general. On the other hand, Mistria do add more customization to your house which certainly have a lot of fans. Personally, I think it's biggest weakness is that all the NPC have anime styled portraits while the player only have the chibi character they walk around with. I hope they add that because the character portraits are rather good, they should have the character creation system focus on that instead and just simplify it for the walking sprite.
If I'm honest i think calling them neighborvanias kinda sucks. I feel like it's somehow less intuitive than metroidvania. I've been calling them resource management games, because of the diverse game systems. But i understand why that name pops up, my description is too vague and doesn't point to the town aspect of the game. I guess i just don't vibe with neighborvania :/
I think your comment that visual novels tend to be very similar is a bit like saying "books tend to be very similar". Mechanics by the nature of the genre isn't really relevant at all - and unlike other genres vn fans tend to deride these pushes away from the formula as being gimmicky and often distracting from the core point of just telling a good story.
I haven't watched the video yet, but I will say I think fields of mistria is an incredible game. It's just different enough from stardew to be enjoyable without straying too far from what I like about it
The whole thing with games that dont have heart and just chase the money is something thats really annoyed me for awhile, its gotten to the point where a vast majority of games i play are indie games cause most AAA games just dont have any heart anymore. Even if i dont like a game after playing it if i can tell the devs were passionate about it i have a very hard time hating it, but the games that are unapologetically bad and lack any passion just upset me.
less than a minute ago im guessing there's a lot of stardew valley games because they are relaxing and people enjoy turning off their brain while gaming and also developers want a slice of the stardew pie and they view making farming games as easy i hope i am correct in this prediction edit; okay my prediction was COMPLETELY wrong!! this video was not what i thought it'd be and i am embarrassed for commenting this now with how the video actually was but this has changed my outlook on what i view as a "generic farming game" / "omg such cool not generic farming game". neighborvania is such a cool word aswell?? like my god i want this word to become widely used,, that ending tie in to pokemon was also an amazing parallel omg
I think Coral Island is definitely a rip off. The devs took it out of early access way too early, which there were so many game breaking bugs, an unfinished story, and it's literally just Stardew Valley but a little more 3-D and you get to scuba dive. There's even a community center with community center bundles to complete- at least name the tasks different! (At least in Fields of Mistria it follows more so the Animal Crossing fill the museum up spiel and the only 'bundle' looking thing is unlocking further floors into the mines.) Not to mention the evil corporate Pufferfish corporation, what's that sound like??? Joja. It's a rip off and they took it out of early access way too quickly as a cash grab. >:/ Gives me My Time at Portia vibes which is another game that could fall into the Neighborvania genre- buggy, incomplete, didn't pay their voice actors, left early access in a state of needing major bug fixing to start selling DLC with it.
As someone who played Harvest Moon as a kid, it's always funny to see people calling every farm-sim a Stardew Valley ripoff rather than what's been around for much longer. Hope you stick to Stardew for the next 20 years of your life, because it's clear you can't appreciate what inspired it in the first place. Gotta love genre tourists.
"Does harvest moon should be a part of this discussion at all?" What? The actual argument and point that debase all the 'ripoffs' complain? YES. IT SHOULD. Deny it is just saying 'i'm not considering it because it would make all my points null'.
All I know is concerned ape's stardew valley and music soothes my soul! I suffer from anxiety and I've learned to save myself by playing a recorded playthrough on my RUclips. I also play a few others, but I don't know why they'd be called rip off when it's a genre, or category. Good vid anyway! I wish you'd play Livestreams. ❤❤❤
RUNE FACTORY MENTIONED 🎉🎉🎉 anyway, i think its just because this is a very small genre. imo it's best compared to something like soulslikes, all taking much of the structure from a few games and trying to turn it into something new. sekiro plays way different from elden ring plays way different from lies of p, and like the farming sims. a lot of importance is in the details too. learning the world... and there is quite some diversity within the niche here even.. i've played a 'farming sim' without any farming, even! (i can't remember the name, i'll have to tell later)
While I mostly agreed with the video, I certainly don't agree with the visual novel take. You wouldn't say Steins;Gate is as similar as Katawa Shoujo just because both of them share the VN ui and both need you to date girls. You also have a lot of ways to describe what kind of VN you're dealing with: you're not gonna read a KEY VN that are mainly known to be a cryingfest when you want to read a cute brainrot slice of life. That's how both DDLC or Muv-Luv got so much popularity: they disguised themselves as one genre (a cute dating slice of life) only to turn opposite. That's not something "Visual Novel" can describe. A lot of VNs also tend to sprinkle more than just words_on_screen_with_cute_jpeg.png, and that's why Utawarerumono can be considered a VN despite going almost fire emblem in gameplay.
I think rather than portmanteau’ing genres it would be great if we could find descriptors that actually catch the essence of these games. I saw someone here call them “New-in-town” games. And the Besties podcast calls Metroidvanias “search-action” games. I think it goes a long way to helping categorize games and genres in a way that isn’t incentivizing rip-off culture. Maybe semantics but I really like those terms.
I always wondered why people would look at the current amount of players (or whatever Steam shows) and call a game dead. That happened in a My time at Sandrock discussion. Like what? It's mainly a single player game! I've seen it more since too. MMO... 😆
I love the idea of Neighborvania, it helps unite different games that are spiritually very similar while not necessarily being about farming, like how My Time at Sandrock is attractive for very similar reasons (to me, at least) as Stardew Valley is, despite it being about a builder instead of a farmer.
tbh I think modern copyright law has done terrible things to the way we perceive ideas and ownership of those ideas. Think of how we related to fairytales 200 years ago. No-one was going to call you a rip-off hack for telling your own version of a fairy story with your own embellishments to suit how you liked it. No-one claimed they told a fairytale first. In practice, that's not how ideas work. Originally, copyright laws were supposed to maintain that idea, while giving creators enough time to profit fairly from their work before it was released to the public domain. Now, ownership of an idea is ZEALOUS. Bodies fight tooth and nail to hold onto creative control of a work for decades, and though artists absolutely should profit fairly from their works, even in circumstances where neither money nor reknown are on the line, people are still just as possessive against potential copycats. It's a deeply unhealthy and anti-creative mentality, and the system itself does far more for large corporations than it does for smaller independent creators. We have got to find new ways to suitably compensate artists for their work, in order to facilitate a move away from the ownership of ideas.
IIRC, the Harvest Moon vs Story of Seasons thing is due to Natsume, who localized the older HM games, holding onto the name rights after some kind of split. (I'm not invested enough to google it for a youtube comment, just remember something along those lines.) Since HMDS Cute was my intro to the genre, I refer to them as anime farm sims lol. I used to call them my guilty pleasure, but Stardew has been my main game for a while now so I think it's well beyond that level lol.
Neighborvania is such a weird way to call farming games. You farm crops and engage in the dangerous task of joining society, not go to fight a god/demon/being deity that threatens to destroy the whole world.
I remember when Stardew Valley first came out. They were calling it a Harvest Moon ripoff. Now people don't even remember Harvest Moon and compare the same games in the genre as Stardew Valley ripoff.
I just genuinely want to know have you heard of Dragon Quest Builders 2 and 1 and do you think they would be considered a neighbor- vania game. And if you never heard about it please check it out.
People need to chill how many first person shooters and looter shooters do we have yet people still buy them I'm glad to have a lot of farming games and cozy games coming out instead of having Stardew Valley and Harvest Moon/Story Of Seasons being the only ones.
The creators of Harvest moon and Stardew Valley both deeply care about their works and how it affects players. ConcernedApe is updating because he sees we love this crap. Thank you for calling out all the farming misfits that attempted the money grab.(Animal Crossing) I love both series, but I don’t want to farm in every game, I have options for that.
Yep, even a game that's still in development, Palia, was treated the same way. Even though this is still a cozy game, it's also MMO. It will be interesting to see how people react to that particular neighborvania
Unless you want more parent nonsense like Nintendo are doing, ripoffs are completely fine. They live or die by whether they are successful. I'd even argue mobile games, even though I think they're bad have a right to exist as do the money chasers. The idea a good game can't come out of an attempt at a money grab just isn't true. The only time it should be a problem is if the copy breaches copyright or trademarks, which in the case of all these games, including Palworld, just don't do. The industry is built on people copying. Saints row had some nice quality of life features that GTA didn't have, and because rocksger are so adverse to copying others ideas they never got looped back into the gra series. Even a Rio off of stardew could have some nice ideas the genre to reincorporate. I was so reluctant to buy any more stardew like games and then I played coral island in game pass and realise I'd been missing out. That game has all the same features, strikingly similar but changes a few things, expands a lot, and is the better for it.
There are a lot of ripoffs out there, no doubt. But games like Roots of Patcha and Fields of Mistria are getting so much unnecessary hate, as you said and showed.
This video would be better without the Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons disrespect. I understand that this isn't a "History of farming games" video, but that is a big oversimplification of HM's legacy, as if they only ever made one kind of game. Yes, they're all farming games/neighborvania, but if you erased the names and references I bet most people would think they're made by entirely different people. Because they are, they just happen to come from the same company and can be lumped together because of it and the "farming game" concept, yet at the same time they can all very extremely different.
You can just mention the obvious fact that stardew valley is basically a spiritual successor to some entities of harvest moon, not a entirely different idea in the same game genre, and harvest moon was dead enough to have a spiritual successor, then we can start this conversation properly.
There are a lot of "farm sim" games id love to try. But the hang up co-op. So many interesting looking ones dont have it and i enjoyed playing Stardew with the wife. A lot of cool games are left in the dust for me because i have just one requirement for me to consider it. Most farm sims arent as appealing to me as a single player experience. Or, at least, not enough to stick with longer than a handful of hours solo. Stardew included.
There's another factor as well - people find their favourite and latch onto it. For most people, Stardew Valley was their first farming/life sim, and formed their opinions that anything that came after it was a clone. People of a certain vintage referred to SV as a Harvest Moon clone. People that are fans of vampire lore, Arthurian lore, Robin Hood lore, any form of mythical lore will latch onto the first novel/movie/wiki article they read on it and declare that that is the true source of lore. To them. every other farming/life sim is a clone because it dares to stand in the shadow of the first one they first loved.
Finally someone who doesn't shit on Fae Farm for no good reason. I also believe people have a responsibility to curate what they play. Games being very similar to each other doesn't matter when you only play a couple of them. I'd get bored of Farming or Neighborvania games too if all I played were those types of games. Same with shooters or any other genre.
Your timeline in the beginning was only empty because you left out the games that were released after the FIRST Harvest Moon. There are so many Harvest Moon and later renamed Story of Seasons games and they are still being released! You make it seem as if there was one Harvest Moon game, on Rune Factory and that's it. Which is not true. Edit: Did you really call AWL remake a rip off? You know that the original came out way before SDV, right? And that Marvelous started way before to rerelease their older games? Like...SDV drew inspiration from the games you "called out". 😂 Just because the next remake was in a time somewhat near SDV's release, doesn't mean it is a rip off, especially when it is true to the original and the original came out before SDV. You really should have done your research before that video. That was a hot mess and didn't do the genre justice. It was just riding the wave Fields of Mistria caused.
@rauchschwalbelp7693 yeah I love this person's content but I think brushing past Harvest moon/SOS and the direct influence it had on Stardew was a big misstep
Agreed. If anything, the writing of Feilds of Mystria feels inspired by Story of Season's games and Harvest Moon Animal Parade more than Stardew. It feels so strange to act like this genre of game had no fanbase before Stardew when the Wii games by Story of Seasons and Rune Factory 4 have had active fanbases for a while.
i'm pretty sure he wasn't saying no other HM games came out, but that no other series came out. Harvest Moon was popular enough to get sequels and the Rune Factory spin-off but there weren't a bunch of other studios seeing a new genre for them to move into. the HM series and its genre were always considered a niche thing until Stardew came out. like, do you know of other games in this genre that came out before Stardew that aren't Harvest Moon? I've never seen anyone mention any. it's always just Harvest Moon.
I’ll finish the video, but this conversation just feels like a rehash or rediscovery of older conversations. We used to call every shooter “Doom clones” and we used to call every MOBA “Dota Clones” before we developed the names and nuances for the genre. I think people just forget that genres are forged by reinterpretations and remixes of what came before it.
All genres have the prototype, the archetype, and then the stereotype, and that’s a sign of good health.
That did come to mind, the genres are just so different that the same conversation needs to be had with a different audience
I think it's also worth mentioning that clone didn't used to be an insult. nowadays I'll see someone call something a stardew clone and people act like it was called a rip-off. clone was just an easy way to say what a game plays like.
@@salmence100 yeah that’s totally fair, and I think this video does do a good service for this community to advance the conversation beyond “this game copied that game therefore its lesser.”
I was just reflecting on my own time on the internet and having flashbacks to the days of yore lmao
Doom is just Doom idc about it.
Rougelike, Rougelite, Metroidvania, Soulslike, they're all pretty arbitrary in terms of what conditions needs to be met to be "close enough" to be considered as part of a genre.
Genre definers, genre originators, genre progenitors, and genre popularifiers(?), can all be separate instances.
STV was, AFAIK, the one that made the Farming Game popular.
But the aspects that define farming games is more of an innate thing that all farming games would have regardless.
In terms of other traits of a game that can be similar to SDV, it can often cause them to fall under a "SDV, but ______" category. The sort of "why would I place this over SDV?" category. Because that "but _____" needs to be something added, or something removed, but something different.
Which brings us to the snag SDV / farming games in particular: mods.
SDV is, in many ways, very simple. So if you play SDV and think "but what if ______?", then there's probably a mod for that.
Not to say that's all encompassing for the thought process behind these games.
Bro Fields of Mistria is to Stardew what Stardew is to Harvest Moon. I love both games!
agreed! you can tell it's a love letter to Stardew like Stardew was to Harvest Moon and that's beatiful!
Here is the thing.
Yes you can said about Harvest moon is the inspiration for SDV
But, no Harvest moon sold 30 Million copies. Even with all their series combine.
100% agree
Not that having more sale is the point. I also started love playing farming sims because of HM and now I play SDV like an addiction. Gotta start humble.
I feel like while there are some clear rip offs but things like Fields of Mystria and Moonstone Island each bring something new, adding to what stardew valley added to Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons. I consider ripoffs things that directly copy but don't add to the game they are trying to imitate.
Stardew revitalized the farming Sim genre. It's not different than any other hit bringing a genre back into focus
spot on!!
Lmao that thumbnail is gonna grab so many rage bait viewers
had to click when i saw animal crossing
I will admit to the "surely everyone knows by now that Harvest Moon came first?" kneejerk reaction, but usually vidoes like this make a point to clarify that early on
@@m.ceniza4688same 😭
It got me but then I was like wait maybe this is to go AGAINST that and I am glad to findout it did!
I feel that Fields of Mistria is more of a love letter to farming games such as Harvest Moon and Stardew Valley than a rip off. Its 80s anime aesthetic and different mechanics (such as bug hunting, archaeology and levelling up system), along with a really well designed dialogue system and NPC functions are so unique in its own way and really make the game feel special.
Omg I like that game Fields of Mistera
Me too! I agree with you @jaffiaguy9991
New gaming vocabulary has been added to my lexicon, Neighborvania, thank you Salmence
Yea I really like that as a name for it. It feels right.
It's a terrible name that doesn't make sense. Even the vague "cozy games" handle is better.
@@safetyboots Fr, that's gotta be the worse made up genre name I've ever heard lol
I don’t count what animal crossing added to new horizons as something stardew valley inspired. I see the crops being added as an extension to the crafting system new to this series they implemented into this game. They wanted to get more things to craft but in new ways so it didn’t seem the same as other ways already in the game. And besides, the crops themselves are kind of an extension of how trees and flowers work in AC already, which have been there since the beginning decades ago.
@ryninja5788 Yeah I thought that take was a stretch lmao. Fans of AC had wanted food items to display for a long time, and the harvesting/cooking system just felt like a fun way to implement that with the already-existing crafting system.
And an entire parade of farming games on N. Direct (don't sue me) the very next year is a coincidence.
i don't think it was stardew valley inspired at all, but there was a wave of "cozy farming" hype going on at the time, and it capitalized off of it. i love the cooking in acnh--the food models are well designed and it's really fun!! but still, you can't deny that it wasn't necessarily unexpected
Oh it absolutely was.
But it definitely is a neighborvania. With New Horizons having a heavy focus on crafting and decorating, with the farming and cooking being a thing to support both crafting and decorating instead of being a main focus of the game.
Lukewarm take, I'd still be playing SoS - Sunshine Isle if it got free updates making it better every so often. The best thing to ever happen to Stardew is that ConcernedApe never made a Stardew Valley 2.
My only point of contention is that there are so many fantastic Harvest Moon, and then, Story of Seasons games between the first game and Stardew! Animal Parade, Magical Melody, Trio of Towns (just to name a few great ones!). They're real gems that really improved upon the farming sim genre and are still worth playing today imo.
Yeah but they all belong to the same franchise, which I believe is the point here. There are pretty much no other games outside the Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons franchise in this genre before Stardew Valley came along, and that was one of the major points why the creator of SV made it in the first place - he wanted to play Harvest Moon on his PC but it didn't exist. Stardew Valley then went and breath new wind on the whole industry, making even HM/SoS come back with things inspired by SV in them.
Of course HM/SoS is the original, that's impossible to deny, but SV is a genre-defining game and changed the gaming industry as a whole. It's very likely that none of the other farming sims we see today would exist without Stardew, just none did before of it regardless of Harvest Moon already existing. To me that's what makes Stardew Valley such an important game for the farming sim genre.
I haven't watched the video yet, but I will say I think fields of mistria is an incredible game. It's just different enough from stardew to be enjoyable without straying too far from what I like about it
I guess for me it doesn't matter. I just want to go and farm and romance people. I have noticed a lot of people say X is Stardew because they've Stardew'ed first. (which is me. I remember my best friend gushing about it and I said and i quote "Why would I want to waste my time doing that?" (enter covid, and a very long illness where all i could mentally handle is farming games and 1180 hours and counting.lll because i love it LOL).
There are times where i say "I wish the farming was ala stardew" but there are a lot of times i say I wish stardew was like this game." there is no perfect game, (stardew included) and that's why there are so many versions. beacuse people want. something to scratch that itch. I am still surprised no one has made a farming sim where all the romancable people are 30++ because that's a HUGE chunk of the market.. that's a BIG backlash on games (like stardew, SoS and Rune Factory etc. the fact that they are older now and the marriagables are so young - or seem young are just immature). so. yeah I am happy for all the ripoffs for there is more land to till!
Honestly while I do love both games, as a longtime Harvest moon/SOS fan who's had to deal with Stardew fans dismissing all new releases from the series as "ripoffs" (including the remake of AWL, a game which originally released in 2003), watching Stardew fans freak over people praising Fields of Mistria has been great schadenfreude. Like damn there's a group of fans of a new game who are unfairly dismissing an earlier series you really love? That sucks, I can't imagine what that's like.
Stardew set a standard but other farming games still rock too!!
No, the standard was set by Harvest Moon. Stardew Valley is just the most famous currently.
@@safetyboots come on, I acknowledge and appreciate Harvest moon for basically kickstarting an entire genre, but let's be honest, Stardew Valley has objectively surpassed Harvest Moon and is definitely the standard that other farming games are compared to. Like it's not even close
@leonidesbabanto1585
Stardew Valley being better doesn't mean it set the standard. Besides, Stardew Valley doesn't implement anything groundbreaking to the genre, it only improves on the foundations laid out by Harvest Moon.
You could say that Stardew Valley is the new industry standard, but that's not what we're talking about. Every new game on this genre is following the steps of Harvest Moon.
Perhaps someone said this already, but Dreamland Village Life didn't take kickstarter money and run. They cancelled the project (during the funding period) and nobody got charged, there was no money lost.
As someone who has loved cozy farming sims ever since I was a child, I love the fact that there are so many new ones coming out! Pardon my language but who gives a crap if not all of them are as „good“ as the ones hailed to be the best in the genre. As long as they are unique in some ways they can still be enjoyable. I dont like all this nitpicky comparing that the gaming community does to farming sims. Edit: I also firmly believe saying Stardew Valley is the blueprint is false. If not for the harvest moon series, stardew valley wouldnt exist as it was a huge inspiration. Game devs only picked up on it because of the huge hype it (deservedly) got at the time and how people seemed to be more open to the genre, but its not the number 1 just for that. That feels wrong imo.
I'm so saddened that people call Stardew the standard of farming games when Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons did it first.
First isn't always best. There's a reason "X invented a thing Y perfected it" is a cliche. Stardew is the standard in the sense that it's the reference point people measure other games against.
@@evilgeniusha01 I guess it's just my nostalgia or boomer take. I grew up with Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town and played that so much as a kid and other installments of the series (not the current crappy pay 2 win ones though. The Story of Seasons installments). Don't get me wrong, I love Stardew as well and Fields of Mistria is just as enjoyable.
the reason people compare it to Stardew is 'cause that's what most people know as the standard now. Stardew was inspired by HM but these new ones are inspired by Stardew, so it makes more sense to compare to that. like, I always see someone mention the originals but I never see people talking about the new Harvest Moon or Story of Seasons games.
@evilgeniusha01
Harvest Moon did it really well, Stardew Valley is just the most famous currently.
Your argument is no different from saying that Undertale perfected the "Earthbound formula", which is a ridiculous and nonsensical oversimplification.
The thing is that farming games as we know would exist without Stardew Valley, but not without Harvest Moon.
It is the standard. Harvest Moon and Rune Factory walked so Stardew and its brethren could run. The standard means baseline in quality, not first.
In the end, calling (the majority of) these games ripoffs is the re4l rip-off in the end
I know it's for clicks, but I take umbrage at having a Harvest Moon character on a thumbnail of a video talking about "Stardew Valley ripoffs".
The sooner we can get rid of the "Stardew Valley ripoff" garbage the better. And no, I will still call Stardew a "Story of Seasons ripoff" if we're using the word ripoff. The good things in Stardew are the Story of Seasons parts. And no, ACNH did not copy because ACNH actually has focus and plays what it does very well.
Story of Seasons a New Beginning has crafting, arranging buildings, different ways to farm, some online multiple functionality, etc. that was way before Stardew. Idk how A New Beginning is considered "empty", I think its more focused. Rune Factory (also by Marvelous) implemented a lot of cool things to go with the farming and combat, the first game has farming monsters and camping in dungeons. I didn't really care for Rune Factory and kinda wrote it off since the NDS but it apparently got really good with soil mechanics and stuff, so I'm buying Rune Factory games on Switch. Stardew's dungeons don't really feel like I should care about, its very separated from farming.
I'm not going to look forward to the farming sim genre if we keep using the "Stardew Valley ripoff" garbage because the direction of Stardew feels very unfocused. I love farming games like Story of Seasons and Farming Simulator (and Animal Crossing since apparently we're talking about it), I don't like the farming sim genre direction for a lot of current games.
Farming Simulator = (realistic) farming genre.
Story of Seasons = farming sim genre.
We should stop calling it Stardew ripoffs, farming sim is a better word that explains it. Do we really want to be the Doom Clones, Soulslike, Metroidvania crowd when we already have a word? I still call MOBA games as MOBA, not League of Legends even tho thats the MOBA game I like. Pokemon Unite BARELY plays like LoL yet people still call it Pokemon League of Legends. Comparisons works better when the people are more knowledgeable about the games in the genre, otherwise it just sounds confusing, I will just have to assume you mean farm sim.
I think the best thing that came out of Stardew is that farming games are cheaper now...and same sex marriage. The rest feels very detrimental. Neighborvania also has zero traction on Google, so I doubt I would use that word unless it becomes used more. -Vania tho...what is that suffix? Its from Transylvania for Castlevania. Okay...Its wood, forest or land. Well, finding that out was more interesting than hearing about Stardew "ripoffs". People just use the words "cozy games" instead. Does cozy games really paint a clear picture? Not really, but I prefer it over Stardew Valley ripoff.
Good video, but I'd argue pixel art is a medium, not a style. Compare the original XCOM to Super Metroid, or those to modern games like Octopath Traveler, Celeste, or Carrion. These all have wildly different art styles, despite all being pixel art.
If anything for single player games, what could kill it is another game that most people would think of first. If someone ask me for a relaxing farming game, I think Stardew first. If asked for another I've played a Harvest Moon (one on the Switch can't remember the name), or Sun Haven. I still recommend other games too, but Stardew is first to mind.
Can we get a list of every game you showed in this video in the comments or description? I'm interested in checking them out!
Nice summary of the "problem", but I have to ask, what does Atelier Ryza have to do with it? That can hardly be likened with a neighbuorvania? And the Atelier series goes back as long as Harvest moon if I not misstaken.
I didn't categorize Atelier Ryza as a "Harvest Moon-like" game, just as another release that also had farming in that Nintendo Direct
I believe that Neighborvania can describe more than just farming games. There are a lot now games where main focus can be on any kind of stuff. Like alchemy, smithing, shop or restaurant ownership etc. And s lot of them can be united in the case that they are about doing it in some sort of society, being part of neighborhood so to say
I feel like this video topic is important for this genre of games (Neighborvania) because it is so tiering to just hear "xyz is a clone/dupe/ripoff" when folks don't understand it is a GENRE. great job!
The nintendo direct thing is really funny to me. I think it definitely put the phenomenon on to people radars. On the other hand Considering that two of the titles were remakes of Story of Season/Harvest Moon games (Rune Factory is a spinoff of Story of Seasons, for those who don't know), and one was the next entry in the Atelier series. I don't know much about the other games that were announced, but it's very funny to me that this big thing that made people start talking more about Stardew Valley ripoffs contained 3 games that were so far from being that.
I tend to call the genre "new in town" games, because to me, more important than and other single mechanic is the fact that you're building up from nothing in terms of skills and relationships. I also think the genre relies very heavily on vibes. More than any other kind of game, I'm inclined to write off new in town titles on art style alone. The story and mechanics aren't likely to win me over if I don't fundamentally enjoy just being in the world.
Great video! I like the bit about that everyone will have their favorites and that's a good thing. I know Traveller's Rest has gotten a ton of accusations of being an imitation, but I love that game for such different reasons than I love SDV.
I used to think "ripoff" is a neutral term of something is copying something else. So I would call a game ripoff while saying it is a better version.
Neighborvania sounds horribly inaccurate. I want to fight Dracula with a shovel before I consider it as such.
More seriously, I have a more important distinction: Which games let you ACTUALLY SAVE IN THE MIDDLE OF A DAY and not have to fully commit to that day to save. And yes, Stardew is included on the negative side here because you need a mod for that. Rune Factory lets me and that's one BIG reason it's my go-to for these games.
You can save in the middle of the day in Fields of Mistria.
Fields of Mistria allows you to save in the middle of the day.
The name Neighborvania is fantastic. I sincerely hope it gets widely adopted.
Nah, the -vania comes from Castlevania, it's not just a thing you slap on genre names. You wanna make a portmanteau for the genre it should be like Harvestdew or something.
It makes literally no sense. There's absolutely nothing even remotely related to Castlevania in these games, whatever straw you can grasp at can be attributed to pretty much every video game ever.
It comes from a previous portmanteau of “Metroidvania”, much as Sal said in the video. Sure, it effectively drops the Metroid part out of it, but the term is used so much enough beyond those two franchises at this point that any portmanteau of ‘Metroid-something’ or ‘something-vania’ is probably a reference to a genre of non-linear game.
Neighborcore is what i’ve been calling them 😊
Ironically, Stardew Valley is a Harvest moon rip-off.
I believe it's really the age of the community that insists on this being a "problem". Not the age of the player base but with the bulk of the games coming in after 2016 the community is still young and subsequently will claim everything is a rip-off for a long while yet. There were years and years of FFPS called Doom rip offs and MOBAs Dota rip offs. But you've also got to recognise that Souls-like is it's own genre now and every deck builder is a "rip off" of the boardgame Dominion.
Stardew gets to take its seat in history with Harvest Moon and Story of Seasons as pioneers of this genre. New games can come out and you can compare them to your fav game but immediately shutting it down for being a rip off because it's the same genre is a childish take.
Octopath travelers reference my Sals a gamer, but might I recommend the 8 playable character GRAND DADDY Romancing SaGa Minstrel Song. The original came out on the nes as sprites, got a remaster on the PS2 in full 3D that was banned in the US for reasons, and true to their word Square said they would take excess money made from FF14 and remaster their lesser successful titles and they delivered there is a full PC remaster of this game on steam $25 USD.
Funny how now the term is StarDew Valley ripoff, when Stardew itself is based off of Harvest Moon.
Because before SDV, all Harvest Moon game so hard to get at least... 1 Million copy sold
Then, SDV is 30 mil sold. People never ever think farming game can be that popular.
All these farming games so far, have not yet beaten either Harvest Moon Hero of Leaf Valley, HM Back to Nature or Stardew Valley, for me yet.
Also calling out Atelier games is owning to the fact you never played an Atelier game, they are magical.
Critter Cove showed up in the video for, like, a second, so I'm here to tell all furries (and honestly anyone who wants to mess with a good character creator) PLEASE check out the demo. So good
If it wasn't for crash issues, I might have moved on from Stardew to Coral Island. Of all the follow-ups, it seems to have kept the stuff that works and expanded the stuff that CA probably couldn't have made on its own. It feels both bigger and broader, a natural evolution of a classic. But...the crashes.
I really enjoyed Travellers’ Rest, there’s the Stardew element of growing ingredients, cooking/brewing with your ingredients and serving the townspeople. The pub also gets an adorable cat.
I think I prefer the term "Slice of life game" myself. Neighborvania just doesn't roll of the tounge as easily (maybe because I ain't a native English speaker?).
There is always a discussion about if a game is a clone, inspired by or just generally in the same genre and I don't think we should use "clone" too often.
Clone implies it is a cashgrab, trying to get a piece of the pie from a successful games and those games tend to be pretty soulless.
Mistria is heavily inspired by SDV, that is clear but I think they put in a bit too much effort into it for it just being a clone.
I am not so sure it can sell more then 30 million copies like Stardew though, but Stardew really had no competition at release and it came out at the perfect time so I have my doubts if any similar games actually can beat in in sales.
Stardew also have another advantage: It is a game about escaping the stress of modern life to settle down in a small town and becoming a farmer. I think many people have fantasized about doing just that so it is a theme anyone can understand and see themselves in. A fantasy adventurer settling down in a small town is less general.
On the other hand, Mistria do add more customization to your house which certainly have a lot of fans. Personally, I think it's biggest weakness is that all the NPC have anime styled portraits while the player only have the chibi character they walk around with. I hope they add that because the character portraits are rather good, they should have the character creation system focus on that instead and just simplify it for the walking sprite.
If I'm honest i think calling them neighborvanias kinda sucks. I feel like it's somehow less intuitive than metroidvania.
I've been calling them resource management games, because of the diverse game systems. But i understand why that name pops up, my description is too vague and doesn't point to the town aspect of the game. I guess i just don't vibe with neighborvania :/
I think your comment that visual novels tend to be very similar is a bit like saying "books tend to be very similar".
Mechanics by the nature of the genre isn't really relevant at all - and unlike other genres vn fans tend to deride these pushes away from the formula as being gimmicky and often distracting from the core point of just telling a good story.
I haven't watched the video yet, but I will say I think fields of mistria is an incredible game. It's just different enough from stardew to be enjoyable without straying too far from what I like about it
"Neighborvania" is as imbecilic a genre name as "souls-like" or "multiplayer online battle arena." Just saying.
Harvest moon is the OG farming game and ConcernedApe never hide the fact that he got inspired by harvest moon and Minecraft
The whole thing with games that dont have heart and just chase the money is something thats really annoyed me for awhile, its gotten to the point where a vast majority of games i play are indie games cause most AAA games just dont have any heart anymore. Even if i dont like a game after playing it if i can tell the devs were passionate about it i have a very hard time hating it, but the games that are unapologetically bad and lack any passion just upset me.
I mean one could say stardew is a harvest moon clone.
In the end when something is popular, people replicate it, and try to expand on it
I think this kind of games should be called "farm life simulators"
less than a minute ago im guessing there's a lot of stardew valley games because they are relaxing and people enjoy turning off their brain while gaming and also developers want a slice of the stardew pie and they view making farming games as easy i hope i am correct in this prediction
edit; okay my prediction was COMPLETELY wrong!! this video was not what i thought it'd be and i am embarrassed for commenting this now with how the video actually was but this has changed my outlook on what i view as a "generic farming game" / "omg such cool not generic farming game". neighborvania is such a cool word aswell?? like my god i want this word to become widely used,,
that ending tie in to pokemon was also an amazing parallel omg
Come back in 2 months, I think this video will do really well
I think Coral Island is definitely a rip off. The devs took it out of early access way too early, which there were so many game breaking bugs, an unfinished story, and it's literally just Stardew Valley but a little more 3-D and you get to scuba dive. There's even a community center with community center bundles to complete- at least name the tasks different! (At least in Fields of Mistria it follows more so the Animal Crossing fill the museum up spiel and the only 'bundle' looking thing is unlocking further floors into the mines.) Not to mention the evil corporate Pufferfish corporation, what's that sound like??? Joja. It's a rip off and they took it out of early access way too quickly as a cash grab. >:/ Gives me My Time at Portia vibes which is another game that could fall into the Neighborvania genre- buggy, incomplete, didn't pay their voice actors, left early access in a state of needing major bug fixing to start selling DLC with it.
Yay!!!!! A Salmence video on my birthday.🎉🎉🎉🎉
Stardew Valley is a marriage and divorce simulator game
As someone who played Harvest Moon as a kid, it's always funny to see people calling every farm-sim a Stardew Valley ripoff rather than what's been around for much longer.
Hope you stick to Stardew for the next 20 years of your life, because it's clear you can't appreciate what inspired it in the first place. Gotta love genre tourists.
I know this guy is gate keeping something he knows nothing about
"Does harvest moon should be a part of this discussion at all?"
What? The actual argument and point that debase all the 'ripoffs' complain? YES. IT SHOULD. Deny it is just saying 'i'm not considering it because it would make all my points null'.
All I know is concerned ape's stardew valley and music soothes my soul! I suffer from anxiety and I've learned to save myself by playing a recorded playthrough on my RUclips. I also play a few others, but I don't know why they'd be called rip off when it's a genre, or category. Good vid anyway! I wish you'd play Livestreams. ❤❤❤
RUNE FACTORY MENTIONED 🎉🎉🎉
anyway, i think its just because this is a very small genre. imo it's best compared to something like soulslikes, all taking much of the structure from a few games and trying to turn it into something new. sekiro plays way different from elden ring plays way different from lies of p, and like the farming sims. a lot of importance is in the details too. learning the world... and there is quite some diversity within the niche here even.. i've played a 'farming sim' without any farming, even! (i can't remember the name, i'll have to tell later)
Helo from Australia!
I absolutely love your thoughtful take on this
While I mostly agreed with the video, I certainly don't agree with the visual novel take.
You wouldn't say Steins;Gate is as similar as Katawa Shoujo just because both of them share the VN ui and both need you to date girls. You also have a lot of ways to describe what kind of VN you're dealing with: you're not gonna read a KEY VN that are mainly known to be a cryingfest when you want to read a cute brainrot slice of life. That's how both DDLC or Muv-Luv got so much popularity: they disguised themselves as one genre (a cute dating slice of life) only to turn opposite. That's not something "Visual Novel" can describe. A lot of VNs also tend to sprinkle more than just words_on_screen_with_cute_jpeg.png, and that's why Utawarerumono can be considered a VN despite going almost fire emblem in gameplay.
I think rather than portmanteau’ing genres it would be great if we could find descriptors that actually catch the essence of these games. I saw someone here call them “New-in-town” games. And the Besties podcast calls Metroidvanias “search-action” games. I think it goes a long way to helping categorize games and genres in a way that isn’t incentivizing rip-off culture.
Maybe semantics but I really like those terms.
I always wondered why people would look at the current amount of players (or whatever Steam shows) and call a game dead. That happened in a My time at Sandrock discussion. Like what? It's mainly a single player game! I've seen it more since too. MMO... 😆
I love the idea of Neighborvania, it helps unite different games that are spiritually very similar while not necessarily being about farming, like how My Time at Sandrock is attractive for very similar reasons (to me, at least) as Stardew Valley is, despite it being about a builder instead of a farmer.
tbh I think modern copyright law has done terrible things to the way we perceive ideas and ownership of those ideas. Think of how we related to fairytales 200 years ago. No-one was going to call you a rip-off hack for telling your own version of a fairy story with your own embellishments to suit how you liked it. No-one claimed they told a fairytale first. In practice, that's not how ideas work.
Originally, copyright laws were supposed to maintain that idea, while giving creators enough time to profit fairly from their work before it was released to the public domain. Now, ownership of an idea is ZEALOUS. Bodies fight tooth and nail to hold onto creative control of a work for decades, and though artists absolutely should profit fairly from their works, even in circumstances where neither money nor reknown are on the line, people are still just as possessive against potential copycats.
It's a deeply unhealthy and anti-creative mentality, and the system itself does far more for large corporations than it does for smaller independent creators. We have got to find new ways to suitably compensate artists for their work, in order to facilitate a move away from the ownership of ideas.
IIRC, the Harvest Moon vs Story of Seasons thing is due to Natsume, who localized the older HM games, holding onto the name rights after some kind of split. (I'm not invested enough to google it for a youtube comment, just remember something along those lines.) Since HMDS Cute was my intro to the genre, I refer to them as anime farm sims lol. I used to call them my guilty pleasure, but Stardew has been my main game for a while now so I think it's well beyond that level lol.
Neighborvania is such a weird way to call farming games. You farm crops and engage in the dangerous task of joining society, not go to fight a god/demon/being deity that threatens to destroy the whole world.
I remember when Stardew Valley first came out. They were calling it a Harvest Moon ripoff. Now people don't even remember Harvest Moon and compare the same games in the genre as Stardew Valley ripoff.
I just genuinely want to know have you heard of Dragon Quest Builders 2 and 1 and do you think they would be considered a neighbor- vania game. And if you never heard about it please check it out.
People need to chill how many first person shooters and looter shooters do we have yet people still buy them I'm glad to have a lot of farming games and cozy games coming out instead of having Stardew Valley and Harvest Moon/Story Of Seasons being the only ones.
Mistris us way better
Why are there so many Harvest Moon "Ripoffs"?
FIxed the title for you :)
The creators of Harvest moon and Stardew Valley both deeply care about their works and how it affects players. ConcernedApe is updating because he sees we love this crap. Thank you for calling out all the farming misfits that attempted the money grab.(Animal Crossing) I love both series, but I don’t want to farm in every game, I have options for that.
Yep, even a game that's still in development, Palia, was treated the same way. Even though this is still a cozy game, it's also MMO. It will be interesting to see how people react to that particular neighborvania
Unless you want more parent nonsense like Nintendo are doing, ripoffs are completely fine. They live or die by whether they are successful. I'd even argue mobile games, even though I think they're bad have a right to exist as do the money chasers. The idea a good game can't come out of an attempt at a money grab just isn't true.
The only time it should be a problem is if the copy breaches copyright or trademarks, which in the case of all these games, including Palworld, just don't do.
The industry is built on people copying. Saints row had some nice quality of life features that GTA didn't have, and because rocksger are so adverse to copying others ideas they never got looped back into the gra series.
Even a Rio off of stardew could have some nice ideas the genre to reincorporate.
I was so reluctant to buy any more stardew like games and then I played coral island in game pass and realise I'd been missing out. That game has all the same features, strikingly similar but changes a few things, expands a lot, and is the better for it.
There are a lot of ripoffs out there, no doubt. But games like Roots of Patcha and Fields of Mistria are getting so much unnecessary hate, as you said and showed.
This video would be better without the Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons disrespect.
I understand that this isn't a "History of farming games" video, but that is a big oversimplification of HM's legacy, as if they only ever made one kind of game. Yes, they're all farming games/neighborvania, but if you erased the names and references I bet most people would think they're made by entirely different people. Because they are, they just happen to come from the same company and can be lumped together because of it and the "farming game" concept, yet at the same time they can all very extremely different.
You can just mention the obvious fact that stardew valley is basically a spiritual successor to some entities of harvest moon, not a entirely different idea in the same game genre, and harvest moon was dead enough to have a spiritual successor, then we can start this conversation properly.
There are a lot of "farm sim" games id love to try. But the hang up co-op. So many interesting looking ones dont have it and i enjoyed playing Stardew with the wife. A lot of cool games are left in the dust for me because i have just one requirement for me to consider it. Most farm sims arent as appealing to me as a single player experience. Or, at least, not enough to stick with longer than a handful of hours solo. Stardew included.
There's another factor as well - people find their favourite and latch onto it. For most people, Stardew Valley was their first farming/life sim, and formed their opinions that anything that came after it was a clone. People of a certain vintage referred to SV as a Harvest Moon clone. People that are fans of vampire lore, Arthurian lore, Robin Hood lore, any form of mythical lore will latch onto the first novel/movie/wiki article they read on it and declare that that is the true source of lore. To them. every other farming/life sim is a clone because it dares to stand in the shadow of the first one they first loved.
Finally someone who doesn't shit on Fae Farm for no good reason. I also believe people have a responsibility to curate what they play. Games being very similar to each other doesn't matter when you only play a couple of them. I'd get bored of Farming or Neighborvania games too if all I played were those types of games. Same with shooters or any other genre.
Is Pokemon a neighborvania like this? I mean, you can plant and water berries in different versions...
Same could be said about RTS, for example with C&C and Age of Empires.
I really love pixel art being used in this genre because it makes gridding out your farm and house much easier and cleaner looking.
I feel like Moonstone Island is not supposed to be here, it's a completely different game, too different to even be called a stardew clone.
Great video! Could you please add the games described/shown in the description?
I believe the term "neighborvania" game from the podcast Into the Aether, on their Fields of Mistria episode
Literally just watched your youtuber hot takes and then this pops up... LOL
We live in the age where we can call harvestmoon a ripoff of both harvestmoon and stardew valley
I do wonder if harvest moon/sos/rune factory utilised PC would it be different
I dunno if you've tried it, but I think you'll really enjoy Sun Haven
NGL, the first game that came to my mind when Sal said the word "vania" was Undertale
i mean personally this video is making me want to play fields of mistria, sounds fun
i love that harvest moon is in the thumbnail as if it wasnt around long before stardew valley lol
Your timeline in the beginning was only empty because you left out the games that were released after the FIRST Harvest Moon. There are so many Harvest Moon and later renamed Story of Seasons games and they are still being released! You make it seem as if there was one Harvest Moon game, on Rune Factory and that's it. Which is not true.
Edit: Did you really call AWL remake a rip off? You know that the original came out way before SDV, right? And that Marvelous started way before to rerelease their older games? Like...SDV drew inspiration from the games you "called out". 😂
Just because the next remake was in a time somewhat near SDV's release, doesn't mean it is a rip off, especially when it is true to the original and the original came out before SDV.
You really should have done your research before that video. That was a hot mess and didn't do the genre justice.
It was just riding the wave Fields of Mistria caused.
@rauchschwalbelp7693 yeah I love this person's content but I think brushing past Harvest moon/SOS and the direct influence it had on Stardew was a big misstep
I second this comment
Agreed. If anything, the writing of Feilds of Mystria feels inspired by Story of Season's games and Harvest Moon Animal Parade more than Stardew. It feels so strange to act like this genre of game had no fanbase before Stardew when the Wii games by Story of Seasons and Rune Factory 4 have had active fanbases for a while.
@@rochellerodriguez6431 Agreed, Fields of Mistria feels very Rune Factory inspired to me, which I love!
i'm pretty sure he wasn't saying no other HM games came out, but that no other series came out.
Harvest Moon was popular enough to get sequels and the Rune Factory spin-off but there weren't a bunch of other studios seeing a new genre for them to move into. the HM series and its genre were always considered a niche thing until Stardew came out.
like, do you know of other games in this genre that came out before Stardew that aren't Harvest Moon? I've never seen anyone mention any. it's always just Harvest Moon.
10:55 to 11:02
Whoa Salmence I've never heard you swear in your videos before
dislike and unsub for the bait, have a nice day
imma need a full list of all of the farming games shown here bc i wanna play them all LOL