Am I Addicted to Stardew Valley?

I’m pixellating at the seams

Gameplay screenshots courtesy of author

I am homesick for a country I can’t go back to. Between the throes of Brexit and the landslide of debt early repatriation would bury us in, I know I won’t be going home any time soon. For all its loveliness, Vancouver’s forest of glass towers will never feel like the woods and fields of England’s green and pleasant land. Although I have made new relationships, the established friends — some who I’ve known for more than 15 years — live just slightly too far in the future for a weekday Skype.

Adventures have moments of isolation, and this is mine.

Lately my evenings have been a fog of social media scrolling and YouTube comedy shorts, as a lethargic summer depression has settled in. My head has been too cloudy to write, and I haven’t mustered the motivation to exercise. This was my mindset when I decided to watch a James Veitch* parody review of Stardew Valley.

I don’t think Mr. Veitch meant to make an advert. The series highlights the absurdities of this strange pixel-art farming simulator, its small-town digital dramas over crop seasons, courtship, and village fetes. He points out how ridiculous it is for a farm to have its own theme song — and he’s right — but there was something so soothing about the music, so peaceful about the close-knit community and their…