After ten years of slaving away making and then constantly expanding on Stardew Valley, Eric ‘ConcernedApe’ Barone has announced his next game: Haunted Chocolatier.
Check out some early gameplay from the game’s announcement:
Fans of Stardew Valley will immediately recognise the visual style of the game, retro pixel art and all having an awful lot in common with Barone’s first game. There’s also plenty of common ground in terms of gameplay, but there is a new driving force behind your journey through the game’s story. It’s not yet stated if this game is tied to Stardew Valley in any narrative way, but it’s almost certainly not a sequel.
Writing on his announcement, Barone said:
Why chocolate? I’m not sure. It just kind of came to me. I think sometimes the best ideas just appear in a flash, instead of being cleverly thought out. That’s how I like to work, anyway. What’s important is the execution. And after 10 years of practice, I feel more confident than ever in being able to bring an idea to life.
Regardless, I think a lot of people like chocolate.
The core gameplay will involve going to gather ingredients, making chocolate and then running a chocolate shop, but the trailer reveals that there’s more to it than that. There’s diving into paintings, battling little monsters, talking to people and mysterious encounters in bars.
In an FAQ, Barone explains the common ground that the gameplay has:
Like Stardew Valley, Haunted Chocolatier is another “town game”, where you move to a new town and try your hand at a new way of living. You’ll get to know the townspeople, achieve your goals and make progress in many ways. All of that is similar to Stardew Valley. However, the core gameplay and theming are quite a bit different. Haunted Chocolatier is more of an action-RPG compared to Stardew Valley. And instead of a farm being the focal point of your endeavors, it’s a chocolate shop.
Still, he cautions that what he’s made so far is the “meat and potatoes” of the game (which are unusual ingredients for chocolate), and that “what really brings a game to life is the spice, the sauce. And I haven’t really gotten to the sauce yet. That’s coming.”
There’s no real clue when Haunted Chocolatier might be ready fo release, whether that’s in early access or a finished product, but Barone cautions that the game is still quite some way away from being ready for public consumption.
“I tend to work with a “vertical slice” approach,” Barone says, “and so it’s easy to put together some video that looks like a finished game. But there is a ton of content I still need to make. So, please understand that it will be a while before this game is done. I’m going to be working on it as much as I can, though.”
Have patience, Stardew fans…
Source: Haunted Chocolatier
