Playing Stardew Valley feels like walking your dog in the park on a breezy spring day; it’s pleasant, you’re doing something worthwhile, and you feel bad for the homeless guy on the bench. After a hundred hours of managing my farm(s), jamming out to chill grooves, fishing on the beach, and befriending the locals, one question still tugs at the back of my mind: why did they include the homeless guy? Or, more broadly, why are the people in this game so unpleasant?

Two design goals lie at the heart of Stardew Valley. The first is making the player feel like they’re accomplishing something. The game is full of systems designed to give positive feedback for player actions. Buy seeds, plant them in your farm, water them, and eventually you can harvest the plants to sell for a profit. Clear weeds, rocks, and trees from your yard to make room for crops and barns, and wild grass will fill in the gaps so that your animals can eat. Pet your animals every day and keep them fed so they’ll like you and give better produce. Every action the player can take in Stardew Valley sets up for a reward later on, producing a stream of positive feedback for our actions. What may look like chores on the surface feel good to do because they yield benefits so easily.

The second design goal is simple: pleasantness. This goal lines up nicely with the first. Since players spend lots of time doing fairly mundane things for mid- to long-term rewards, Concernedape took every opportunity to make the time invested as pleasant as possible. The blues, oranges, and greens utilize a “triad” color scheme- three opposite colors on the color wheel- for a vibrant aesthetic. The use of pastels softens the contrast between these colors to produce a colorful-but-gentle storybook aesthetic.

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The soundtrack contributes a lot to this pleasantness. Prominent beats and simple melodies make each track catchy, and songs crossfade with ambient sounds to keep from becoming repetitive. Flutes, oboes, xylophones, chimes, and synths give the songs a peaceful, happy sound, and the many swishes, bloops, and blorps of the in-game sound effects allow your actions to fit seamlessly into the soundscape set by the music.

By and large, the goals of accomplishment and pleasantness fit together beautifully. The immediate positive feedback of the game’s aesthetic elements sets the tone before giving way to the long-term sense of success. Pleasant color design allows you to look with pride on the pretty little farm you’re building, and the change in season brings along a change in both visuals and music as you sow the new crops you’ll be harvesting later in the season.

There is one place, however, where this delicate balance falls apart. One thing in Stardew Valley consistently breaks the mood, rips you out of that positive feedback loop, and reminds you briefly that things aren’t always great. What proved too unruly to adhere to this agreeable state? People.

The residents of the village you live in cannot seem to keep up a smile. While many are pleasant enough to be around, joking and being friendly or at least just tending to their own business, several of the townsfolk have deeply troubled lives, and even the genial types tend to wear their problems on their sleeves. As a result, a short walk through town tends to involve a polite two sentence chat each with five or six people, at least one of whom will act either rude or depressing.

This happens whether or not you take the time to get to know them all. Of the thirty or so villagers in Stardew Valley (depending on who you count as a “villager”), fifteen of them have lines that are either overtly rude to the player or are simply depressing, even if your friendship with them is at or near zero. Yes, half of the villagers say things like, “Each day’s just the same as the last.. If only I’d been born rich…” or “It’s irritating to have to meet all these new people, huh? Name’s George, by the way. Now buzz off… Hmmph,” to strangers and acquaintances.

Some of the residents, like Pierre, are positive to neutral most of the time except for the one line that exists to let you know that, secretly, their life sucks too. These lines include things like, “Business has been slow since Joja moved into town. It’s hard to compete with their selection. I’ve been having a harder and harder time turning a decent profit,” or Leah’s constant comments about eating foraged food that leave you wondering if she can afford to buy it (she can’t).

Other residents, though, are all gloom all the time. Shane’s entire personality is that he’s miserably depressed and spends all his time either working or drinking. Trying to talk to him only ever yields lines like, “What? What do you want? Go away,” until you become quite close to him. Pam and Penny are a mother and daughter who live in a trailer where Penny sleeps on the couch. In the evenings, Pam gets hammered and leaves the place trashed. All this is obvious without really even talking to them. Haley routinely insults the player, calling them ugly, dirty, or disgusting, and George acts bitter and hostile. Oh, there’s also Linus, the literal homeless person who sifts through garbage for food and says thinks like, “…Have you come to ridicule me? I’m just minding my own business,” or “Please don’t destroy my tent. It’s happened before.”

Remember, this is all how people who barely know you behave. Once you get to know them more closely all their dirty laundry comes to the forefront. This leaves me with one resounding question: WHY? Why would a game so focused on putting you in a good mood write all its characters to be so negative? It’s not that such things shouldn’t be written about at all, but they feel wildly out of place and kill the mood. They’re not even all unlikeable. I sympathize with Pierre and support his business, I appreciate Leah’s upbeat attitude and gift her food when I can. I feel bad for Linus, even if I do wish he wouldn’t show up to every town festival just to tell you how unwanted he is. Overall, most of the characters are likeable, so it’s not just a blanket failure in writing. So, what gives?

The issue is that your relationships with the townspeople are the one place where Stardew Valley’s two design goals come into conflict. In order to make building relationships with these people feel rewarding, they’re written to have arcs that leave them better off for having known you. You have a positive impact on these peoples’ lives if you take the time to befriend them, and you’re expected to feel good about that. But because that positive impact can’t come from nowhere, conflicts are introduced into these characters’ lives for you to resolve. ***SPOILERS***Shane works a dead-end job and contemplates suicide so that you can talk him into seeking therapy and find him a new job. Leah fails to get her art career off the ground so that you can give her the push she needs to start holding art shows and so that marrying her provides her the financial stability to pursue her art pressure-free. Pierre loses business to Joja so that when you drive the local Jojamart out of business his store can be revitalized.***END SPOILERS***

For what it’s worth, this aspect of the design works. By the end of the game, you feel good about having helped your neighbors and friends. But this feeling of accomplishment comes at the cost of massive amounts of unpleasantness throughout the course of the game, undermining its other central design goal.

Is that it, then? Is social interaction a lost cause for this design? Are we doomed to be either unpleasant or uninteresting? Not necessarily. The issue with Stardew Valley’s approach to relationships is that it tries to sow the seeds for the big issues too early. If the townsfolk’s problems were a little more subtle, this wouldn’t be an issue. Dialogue regarding things like Pierre’s struggling business, Linus’ distrust of people, or Shane’s depression could be reserved for players who have at least two (out of 10) hearts with that character. That way, people wouldn’t constantly bombard you with their issues. Instead, the characters you choose to befriend would slowly reveal their issues over time. This would be rewarding in its own way, as learning about the personal lives of people you like can help you feel closer to them. This only works if you like them first, though, which is why the Stardew Valley townsfolks’ heart-on-sleeve disposition doesn’t work.

Concernedape has made one of the most insidiously enjoyable games of the last decade, and it was only his second time up to bat. There’s a lot of room to grow, and I look forward to seeing what else he has to offer. I will be curious to see how he works dialogue and character development into his future titles, and whether he’s able to do so with a little more grace in his next endeavor.