A new island just came to Fortnite that features a digital reimagining of Qatar’s capital city, Doha, as well as Hamad International Airport and a Qatar Airways aircraft. Called QVerse Island, it’s meant to give travelers an immersive way to experience the sights of the city and its airport. There are lots of minigames, a glimpse at some of the city’s unique architecture, and a hidden golden ticket that you can find for a chance to win a free Qatar Airways flight.

You can reach QVerse Island within Fortnite by searching for “QVerse” or using code 6020-0265-6735. When you arrive on the island, you’ll pull up to Hamad International Airport and get a look at the skyline of Doha with re-creations of its real-life skyscrapers. You’ll be greeted by Sama, Qatar Airways’ digital cabin crew member, who will give you five quests to complete.

After you’ve talked to her, you’re free to explore the city and do things in whatever order you choose. Right off the bat, you’ll see floating coins that give you 10 gold each. You can spend that gold at the airport vending machines for things like faster running speed, a jetpack that lets you double jump, or consumable items. You can also look for a hidden door that takes you inside the Business Class cabin of a Qatar Airways aircraft, where you’ll join other Fortnite characters as passengers.

Once you exit the airport and make your way to the street, you’ll see you can summon a car with one button press, making traversal of the city quick and easy. Your HUD will have icons for the island’s biggest attractions, which is also where you can complete the quests Sama gave you. These are some of real-life Qatar’s most recognizable landmarks, like the National Museum of Qatar, West Bay, Katara Towers, and The Pearl Island. And QVerse Island has a persistent day/night cycle, so you can watch the sunset around these locations and see the whole city light up at night.

Each location has a minigame associated with it. At the National Museum of Qatar, you’re given a scavenger hunt to find five lost artifacts that lie scattered around the city. At West Bay, you can use your summoned car to complete a time trial race. At Katara Towers, you’ll need to cross between the towers, high in the air, while a rotating bar tries to knock you off. And at The Pearl Island, you can take on a parkour obstacle course that runs across the rooftops of the city.

While you’re exploring, you’ll notice a timer counting down to the next departure. Once the countdown finishes, you’ll be transported to a multiplayer minigame with other people currently on the island. There are four minigames in all: Wild Wheels Safari, Neon City Drop, Jumpus Maximus, and Home Run Rush. For all four, the last person standing wins.

In Wild Wheels Safari, you drive cars around a desert arena while floor tiles gradually fall away. If you fall into a hole, you’re eliminated. Neon City Drop is a similar concept, but you’re on foot and the floor is made up of brightly colored panels that fall away over time. Jumpus Maximus puts you on a giant spinning wheel in the air while rotating bars of different heights try to knock you off. And Home Run Rush gives everyone a superpowered baseball bat that can launch other players out of the stadium.

In between all the fun and games, you can explore QVerse Island to find the golden ticket. You’ll get an on-screen alert letting you know in what area of the map it just spawned, and then it’s up to you to find it. It only stays in one place for a few minutes, so you need to hurry before it moves again.

Once you find it, take a screenshot of your in-game character with it. Then post that photo to Instagram, Facebook, or X/Twitter with the hashtag #FlyWithQR, follow Qatar Airways on Instagram, and you’ll be entered in a drawing. A winning entry will be randomly selected, and that person will win a Qatar Airways flight ticket. There will be a new drawing each week and the contest will run for 10 weeks. If you don’t win one week, you can try again the next.

QVerse Island is available to explore now, and between February 7–20, gaming content creators around the world will join in on the fun, too. So be sure to check that out. Who knows who you’ll get to face off against in all those minigames? To keep up with the latest news and updates from Qatar Airways, you can follow them on Instagram, Facebook, or X/Twitter.

Humble Bundle has dropped a fresh new lineup of PC games as part of its Humble Choice for February, led by Core Keeper, Date Everything, and Resident Evil Village. The timing for including the latter couldn’t be better, considering this month we can finally get our hands on Resident Evil: Requiem. So, if you haven’t played Village yet, what better time to jump into it?

Alongside those three games, you'll get five more as part of this bundle, which costs just $14.99 per month when you sign up for the Humble Choice membership. That’s not all, though, as you also get a free month of IGN Plus as part of this bundle. It’s a real treat for PC gamers, so don’t miss out on this month’s excellent selection of games.

Humble Choice February 2026 Game Lineup

Looking for a big boost of Ichor to bolster your squad of Toons in Dandy’s World? We’ve got some redeemable codes that will load your wallet up with a ton of free cash. Below, you’ll find a list of all the currently active Dancy's World codes so you can get your hands on more Ichor and start buying some brand-new toons.

Working Dandy's World Codes (February 2026)

Below, you'll find a list of the active and working Dandy's World codes as of today:

• ICHOR - 50 Ichor

Expired Dandy's World Codes

The following Dandy's World codes are expired and no longer work, but we'll keep them here.

• HAPPYHALLOWEEN
• SPOOKYSEASON
• EASTER2025
• APRIL1
• FESTIVEGIFT
• 300K
• 1BILLION
• SKINTICKET
• 2HUNDREDMILLION

How to Redeem Dandy's World Codes

To redeem Dandy's World codes, boot up the game and, once you’re in, follow the steps below:

1. Look at the tabs on the left-hand side of the screen. You’ll see icons for five tabs.
2. Click on the tab that reads "Use Code" to access the codes bar.
3. Input your code in this bar, being careful to make sure it’s in the right case and spelt correctly.
4. Click the use button and you should see the resources you unlock appear at the bottom of the screen.

Why Isn’t My Dandy's World Code Working?

If your Dandy's World code isn’t working, it’s likely due to one of two scenarios. The first is that the code was inputted incorrectly. Make sure you have the code inputted exactly as it is in the Active Codes section above. You can even copy and paste codes directly from this article over to Roblox if you want to make sure you’re inputting them correctly.

The other possibility is the code has expired or you’ve already used it. If you’ve used it, you’ll get a message below the bar reminding you the inputted code has already been redeemed. If you’ve inputted it and it doesn’t recognise the code at all, it likely means it's no longer available to use and is expired.

How to Get More Dandy's World Codes

If you’re looking to scout out some Dandy's World codes yourself, the easiest way is through the game’s official Discord. After joining, you’ll be able to hop into the Announcements channel to find all the latest codes as they drop.

What is Dandy's World in Roblox?

Dandy's World is a mascot horror survival game in the same vein of spooky hits like Five Nights at Freddy's or Poppy Playtime. The major difference is Dandy's World is multiplayer, meaning you and up to seven other friends can jump in, pick a toon with unique abilities and perks to play as, and attempt to survive as long as possible while evading the game's endless supply of terrifying monsters. The longer you survive, the more Ichor you gather, allowing you to buy new toons to help you push further into the nightmare and get the drop on your foes.

Fresh from her appearance at the Grammys, Pink Pony Club singer Chappell Roan is hot to go in Fortnite this week.

Roan is the latest music icon set to headline the game's Fortnite Festival mode, which will feature a redesigned main stage decorated like a medieval castle — inspired by her recent tour.

Music Pass owners, including Fortnite Crew subscribers, will get the basic Chappell Roan outfit included, alongside themed instruments. But, as ever, there will be a snazzier, second skin available from the Fortnite Shop: the Roan of Arc outfit, inspired by her 2024 VMAs costume.

Several of Roan's best-known songs are already available as Jam Tracks in Fortnite, including Good Luck, Babe!, Hot To Go and The Giver. The infamous Pink Pony Club will also soon join this number — and there will even be a Pink Pony Sidekick pet for you to take along for the ride.

Roan herself is a Fortnite fan and previously noted her desire to appear in the game. Fans have expected her arrival ever since, which has recently been teased in-game and online, as Epic Games promised that February would be a "pink" month.

Fortnite's Chappell Roan collaboration will officially kick off this week on Thursday, February 5, as the game's previous Festival star Lisa (from Blackpink) departs. Previous Festival faces have included Billie Eilish, Lady Gaga, Sabrina Carpenter, Metallica and Snoop Dogg. Who might be next?

Tom Phillips is IGN's News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social

Any game built around gacha mechanics needs to have a certain hook to keep things interesting in the long term, especially if there’s potential to invest your hard-earned dollars into it. For all their systemic sins, Game of Thrones: Kingsroad and Persona 5: The Phantom X at least piqued my interest by expanding on already-revered lore, allowing me to entwine myself in their beloved worlds. The much more enjoyable Zenless Zone Zero, on the other hand, pulled me in with a mix of high-octane combat, endearing character development, and Y2K flair. Arknights: Endfield is the latest competitor in this genre’s fierce attention economy, offering not only an engrossing sci-fi open world to explore, but another mechanically moreish addition: base building and automation. It’s a clever combination that keeps you pushing, but, after 38 hours of grinding, I’ve found that Arknights leans a little too heavily on the tropes of the genre, and stops it just short of feeling like anything more than another solid gacha option to consider for your rotation.

You play as the Endministrator (or Endmin for short) who, after a 10-year absence and an unfortunate case of amnesia, returns to the world of the living to rebuild society on the planet of Talos-II and usher in a new era of safety for its inhabitants. Taming the wilds is no small task, though, and on top of trying to remember who you were before your big sleep, you’ll also face off against a range of evil entities, including leather-clad maurauders, shifting zoomorphic creatures, and other mythic, well-dressed baddies. It’s an intriguing premise framed in a collapsing cyberpunk world, unfortunately dulled by an exposition-heavy opening with awkward stop-and-start pacing. Thankfully, this dialogue-dense beginning does eventually open up somewhat, giving you the freedom to seek out battles across the planet’s atmospheric landscape.

With a set of companions in tow, you’ll venture to the surface of Talos-II to hunt for resources, solve simple environmental platforming puzzles, and clear out zones that you can then access in a larger metagame to construct and automate machinery. To do this, you’ll build a team of up to four Operators who fight and collect items alongside you to push the lengthy story ever onwards. Early on, you’ll have a limited pool of story-specific characters to play as, like the masked Endmin, the empathetic and mission-oriented Perlica, and the spirited Chen Qianyu, though eventually you’ll be able to use a gacha currency to randomly pull new pals, too. Endfield doesn’t have the most imaginative gameplay in the genre – most puzzles involve finding and pressing a few buttons, and you’ll soon tire of trawling through the same few groups of bad guys to dominate an area. The striking cyberpunk setting does much of the heavy lifting here, especially as you transform the oppressive industrial areas into machinery-filled green spaces.

While I’d like to say the story-related issues dry up after the early game, pacing problems do come back to haunt this otherwise compelling experience, particularly as you start to wrestle with the mid-to-late game. The gap between thoughtfully designed missions and filler expeditions is far more obvious, and while some jaunts do well to provide snippets of lore, the lion’s share are monotonous fetch quests. This split is especially frustrating, as there are genuinely interesting story threads to pull at, not only about the Endmin themself but the precarious political situations surrounding their organisation.

Throughout my playthrough, I enjoyed meeting a growing cast of triumphant heroes and elegant villains, like the leather-clad matriarch Nefarith, whose malevolent tone is as enthralling as it is threatening. New locations, like the bamboo-filled Wuling, also appear just in time to liven things up as the angular design of the opening areas starts to wane. Spirited vocal performances and sporadic helpings of humorous writing certainly add personality to the otherwise jargon-heavy story, too, which helped alleviate fatigue as I bashed my head against the same few mission types.

It goes without saying that there is an eye-watering array of currencies to consider here – a painful staple of gacha games. On top of the usual lottery-style pulls, which allows you to randomly unlock unique characters and weapons, there’s also a paid Battle Pass that rewards you with resources that can be filtered into systems that help speed up progression. You can find items to upgrade your weapon skills, as well as bolster your combat stats, with variant currencies offering specific amounts of level-boosting potency – it’s a monetary mouthful to say the least. If you aren’t keen on buying them, you can still find most currencies on the map or by completing daily challenges, but this is, as you can imagine, like wading through treacle. As costs rise and resources become more scarce, there’s an obvious incentive to pay to skip the hassle of hunting for yourself. It’s not entirely egregious, and I found that I could resist the credit card's call in this case. But that speaks more to my own stubbornness than Arknights' balance, which is inconsistent at best.

It’s not all bad, though, and one area Arknights makes a mark is in its character designs. In the early hours, I was more than happy with my humble team of hardworking warriors, but my feelings began to shift once I’d earned the currency needed to try out the character lottery. Every character you meet throws out a handful of quippy one-liners and flashy moves that are effective enough to tug on the heartstrings. There’s the cute peak-shredding Snowshine, whose fuzzy bear shoes and jumbo buster sword are immediately endearing. Another favorite is Arclight, a cyberpunk rendition of the Energizer bunny who dazzles with sparks and sharp movements. There’s plenty of variety available in the roster, and it’s clear developer Hypergryph has taken care to make each character stand out – so it doesn’t feel too bad when you don’t pull your dream bias.

It’s also handy that if, or more likely when, you pull multiples of the same character, you’ll earn tokens that can be used to update their “Potential,” boosting their battle stats and earning some cute art cards to boot. No matter how lucky you think you are, you’ll always pull the less desirable characters more often, and this system does well to soften the pain of seeing the same face pop up time and time again. Think of it like psychological warfare, but adorable!

Beyond their appearance, I also enjoy how a character’s personality tends to shape how they move in battle, and the flashy, if simple, combat quickly became my favourite aspect of Arknights. Connecting hits are delivered with vibrant visual payoff, so much so that even my silly mistakes looked like intentional moves. As you explore, you’ll encounter groups of various enemies camped out, like sedimentary spiders or sword-wielding bandits, all of which feature level indicators hovering above their heads. Once ready to engage, you run directly at them, weapons brandished, and start violently mashing buttons to begin your assault.

Instead of controlling the Edmin alone, you can switch between all the members of your team in battle, applying flashy combos that feel engaging in motion and extremely easy to pull off. Each character has a dodge, a light attack, and a special attack that string together nicely, delivering well-choreographed synergies. Once you knock back an enemy and start to juggle them, you can also call in your compatriots to deliver electrifying blows that feel slick in motion – the Endmin flips around in style, while Perlica shoots volts through her opposition. As with the Arknights' story, this too can lose its lustre as you push deeper into it and realize there’s only so much to find. That said, there is some meditative comfort to be found in the repetition.

Outside of combat, the rest of your time is spent investing in the infrastructure of your base. Unlike the complex, automation-based gameplay of beloved factory management simulators Factorio and Satisfactory, Arknights’ base building is much more tame. And, thanks to lengthy explanations delivered by NPCs and the option to import handy prefabricated designs, it’s a process that ensures even the most build-averse players can create a functioning base of operations. Paying attention to this system may seem unimportant at first, but these buildings are key to delivering all-important resources. Investing in them early is important if you want to avoid the draw of the easily clickable shop.

First, you’ll plant electric pylons and connect them with relay towers to supply electricity to the area. Though soon enough, you’ll also be able to implement mining as well as machinery that can refine and process raw materials, grinding them and cooking them into new, more useful shapes. Where you choose to implement your power also filters into the platforming challenges in the open world, and you’ll need to find and power hungry machinery and unlock broken-down bases to solve puzzles and unlock more loot. As someone who hasn’t always enjoyed the intense, efficiency-focused approach of similar automation games, Arknights provides a friendly alternative that’s ripe for community collaboration and experimentation, and it does well to fuel exploration in the open-world setting.

Epic launched its Epic Games Store back in 2018 in aggressive fashion, paying out millions of dollars to secure exclusives in a bid to steer PC gamers away from Valve’s all-encompassing Steam. Six years later, Steam effortlessly maintains its vice-like grip on the PC gamer consciousness.

So, how is the Epic Games Store actually doing? How has its strategy changed over the years? Can it ever topple Valve when it comes to PC gaming market share? Are Epic Games Store exclusives actually dead? And aren’t people just logging on to grab a free game as part of Epic’s compelling giveaways, before heading straight back to Steam?

It was with all this in mind that I interviewed Steve Allison, VP and GM of the Epic Games Store, about the store's 2025 and what's coming in 2026. Our chat began with a runthrough of last year's performance, which Allison pointed to throughout. The headline here is that $400 million was spent by players on third-party PC games in the Epic Games Store in 2025, up an impressive 57%. This figure was down about 18% last year, which, Allison said, means 2025 saw a “profound and positive change.” In total, $1.16 billion was spent by PC players on the Epic Games Store, up 6%. The Epic Games Store hit 78 million Monthly Average Users (MAUs) in December 2025, an all-time record. But the 67 million average MAU is down 1%, and the 31 million average DAU is down 2%.

Allison said Epic had noticed something happening on Steam when it gave a game away for free. As you’d expect, concurrent user numbers rise for a game on the Epic Games Store when it’s part of a free giveaway (over 77% of the 100 games given away for free last year set all-time peak concurrent users records on the Epic Games Store on PC). But the giveaways also cause a concurrent player spike for the game on Steam, of around 40%. Allison puts this down to Steam players who perhaps already have the game in their library and see coverage of it online because it’s gone free on the Epic Games Store, and their friends are talking about it, so they reinstall and dip back in. Sometimes they just buy it on Steam outright.

But Epic faces an uphill battle here, mostly because the Epic Games Store itself just isn’t as good to use as Steam for a whole bunch of reasons. To combat this, Epic is rebuilding the store on PC so the launcher is faster and doesn’t use as many memory resources. “It should feel fast and snappy and just be what you expect, frankly,” Allison said. The new and improved Epic Games Store should ship by June.

Epic’s vision for the Epic Games Store — and its point of difference with Steam — is that it’s a multiplatform store. That means one store connected across PC, Mac, iOS, and Android, and even other games. A big part of this is voice and text for parties independent of games, a bit like the console experience, but on PC and mobile. As most PC gamers know, community is pretty much non-existent on the Epic Games Store, and Allison acknowledged that. Forums are coming to the store, which sounds basic but has been in the works for some time. Expect Epic to make some noise about forums in the next few weeks.

And then there’s Fortnite. The battle royale behemoth. The everything game. Fortnite is key to this Epic Games Store push. It plans to use Fortnite to convince PC gamers to get their games from the Epic Games Store rather than Steam. To do that, it will tap into the marketing power of Fortnite, offering a Fortnite gift (a Fortnite cosmetic along with a matching character avatar for their Epic account profile) with a purchase of a game. Upcoming partners include Capcom, miHoYo, Pearl Abyss (Crimson Desert), S-Game, MintRocket, and Kakao Games, as the first to participate. Allison expects this to have a significant impact on sales.

After running through the stats, I asked Allison some questions on the details, some recent Epic Games Store controversies (Alan Wake 2, for example!), and about the master plan. Here’s the Q&A in full:

IGN: The perception online is that most of your MAUs are using the store to launch Fortnite, but you are suggesting that the stats counter that perception. But how exactly so?

Steve Allison: Our average monthly active users on third-party exceeds our average monthly active users on Fortnite. Now a lot of those users — it depends on how you define monthly active users — but in terms of player hours, yes, you're right. It's kind of 60, 66, 33 or 65, 35. But in terms of MAU, shopping, looking at stuff, maybe making transactions for free games or whatever, the MAU is flipped in the other direction. So we need to increase conversion through all the work that we're doing. That's what this is all about.

IGN: Similarly there is that perception online that people love your free games program, they dip in to grab the free games and leave. You must've seen this perception online. Are you seeing that shifting? Is there anything in the stats that suggests that?

Steve Allison: I think the answer is, not entirely true, right? The average conversion rate for a new player that's acquired through the free games program is about 16-25%. Depends, but no less than 16% over time. It's a pretty high conversion rate for scale. So that's one fact. The other is, you got to go back to that 35% of player hours coming from games using their own IAP (their own payment solutions for in-app purchases). We know anecdotally talking with Riot, talking with EA, the relationship on that spend is with the developer or the publisher. We don't see it and they're spending with them relatively at the expected rate that they would assume. So there's more commerce coming through the store than that argument would imply.

IGN: This touches on something the Larian publishing director was talking about on social media recently, which is that giving everyone everything for free might bump numbers but doesn't create a viable storefront from which to sell premium experiences. And I think that's his point, the conversion not just to play but to pay for new games. But you are suggesting that perhaps isn't the case?

Steve Allison: It's not the case. He was trying to frame Alan Wake in that context and it's just not true. Alan Wake sold really well and Remedy's statement there was on… we didn't talk to Remedy about it. They did that on their own to make sure that the world knew that wasn't true. Now, from a market share standpoint, we see some volatility there. So sometimes it'll be as small as a percent or two, and sometimes it'll be 25 up to 40% in some cases. So what we need to do is establish consistency and eliminate volatility. So it's really important for me that we get to… if we get to 20, 25, 30% of share predictably on all simultaneous ships, we will be $2 billion in third-party and that, including the people using IAP, right, so it'd be more. So our goal is really to be consistent. And so doing all the player work that's expected of us is going to drive conversion. And just in context of this conversation, that's one of the biggest things we need to do in order to create that consistency.

IGN: Bringing up Alan Wake, one of the things that isn't in your post is exclusives. Alan Wake too was a genuine exclusive. Are you still in this game? Are they still valuable for you? Is this something we're still going to see moving forward or do you take the position that actually there are better ways for you to operate the store than to have genuine exclusives in the way that Alan Wake 2 was?

Steve Allison: A couple things. So that was definitely a strategy early. There's so many releases on PC and we could add a thousand games and strike out a thousand times. So we focused on the most impactful content we could onboard, when we had some limitations on how many things we could bring on board. It's really important. We have 6,000 games on the catalog now. We've done less than 150 deals for exclusives in the history of the store. That's the first point I would make. And 120 of those deals we did in 2019. And then as we moved into self-publishing, we've kind of floated away from that strategy.

In the case of Alan Wake, we also have a third-party publishing team that is part of the store organization. We’ll fund projects differently than those minimum guarantee-based deals. We'll fund projects, we'll help them bring the games to market across all platforms, but the PC SKUs will be exclusive in that case. But we have eight, nine titles that we're funding through Epic Games Publishing right now. Other than that, we haven't done a minimum guarantee-style deal in about three years. So our strategy shifted there. But if we fund and publish the title, the context is a lot different than the conversation that happens on how we did things in 2019. And we own that. That was really successful for us. Things have changed and the publishing businesses, those games will be exclusive from the store.

IGN: It'd be great to get some insight on the long-term play here. You're up against Steam, which is a huge competitor, very difficult to shift, not just in terms of the stats, but the mindset. And I've always heard, not just anecdotally but from Epic people that the Epic Games Store is not profitable. Is the goal to grow bigger than Steam? Is that actually feasible? Are you profitable? Can you ever be profitable in this venture?

Steve Allison: So there's a couple ways of looking at it. When you talk about Steam, you talk about everything including their first-party games. If you talk about the Epic Games Store, first-party plus third-party, and you just credit the store with 12% of the revenue that comes from Epic's first-party games, which isn't how we do accounting, but we sometimes do these views internally, the store is pass break even and reasonably, marginally profitable.

On the third-party side on its own in isolation, right now we continue to invest. We have a ton of work to do. We invest in these programs for developers. We will continue to invest in content through publishing. And that investment is going to show up as sunk costs. But it's all in the context of scaling. But if we get to 25, 30% market share, which is our plan… yes, if we do such a great job that we push share past Steam or whatever, I think we'll be super happy. But our goal isn't to dance on top of Steam's grave or anything like that. It's to establish a consistent place where developers can expect to sell 25-30% of their games. That will, when we get there, we will be profitable in third-party and we'll be very profitable with third-party plus first-party.

Third-party is where we're investing. We got to do all this work. Remember also it's like 60% of our audience uses both. 40% doesn’t. There's a bunch of that audience on Steam that will never turn, but we continue to get a cohort of players that are discovering PC gaming for the first time. They're shifting from console. We're going to have different feature sets, different opportunity around the multi-platform store. It's all about establishing the consistent performance of market spending, like 25-30% now. And if we blow past that, we'll be super stoked, but once we get there we'll be in good shape.

IGN: So, just to clarify, is the Epic Games Store profitable?

Steve Allison: First-party, very profitable. First-party plus third-party, if you credit the store 12% of first-party's revenue like it was a customer on the store, profitable… slightly.

Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

For Stardew Valley's 10th anniversary, we didn't just speak to creator Eric Barone (ConcernedApe) about the game's present and future. We also went out into the community to find out how Stardew Valley has changed the lives of its players, from everyday fans to popular content creators. Here, we've shared three stories – from a music farm creator, a speedrunner, and a mod maker – on how Stardew Valley impacted them. And we've interspersed those with testimonials from fans whose experiences with Stardew Valley have helped them overcome personal challenges, work through grief, and connect with loved ones.

Responses have been very lightly edited for length and clarity.

"Over the past 10 years [my wife and I] have played [Stardew Valley] off and on, on our own farms and together once co-op released, and we always come back for more. We're sitting on well over 1,000 hours of combined playtime. We love everything about the game – the music, the characters, all of the creatures and animals and crops, and most of all the story. There is so much heart and reality packed into this game. For my wife and I it's what we turn to for comfort, for joy, and for nostalgia... I have bought this game as a gift at least a dozen times, and will continue to do so. We have played together four-player with my best friend and his wife and we're all nearing 40. I have given it to coworkers and friends and family. We have the cookbook and the board game and a dozen shirts. Stardew Valley is so important to us." -u/SPECPOL

"It's a comfort I can always fall back on during hard times. On tough days I boot up my saved game, and fish, farm, or spend countless hours decorating until I feel better (and it always works)." -u/WildMoonChild0129

"It was the first video game that I felt I could wholeheartedly share with my young children. Even though it has some adult storylines in it, I knew they would go completely over their heads. We played together in the living room, everyone on their own device, but chatting all the while about how our melons were coming in or how annoying Clint was being. I named all of my chickens after my daughter’s classmates, and all of my cows after my son’s. It faded after a while, but came back with a roar after we took ourselves to Symphony of the Seasons when it came through town last year. They are teenagers now. We all started playing again and doing three-part harmonies around the house of the best songs. (I like to do the baselines: bleep blop- bleep bleep blop.) It’s our special fun thing. None of their friends are into it and they usually tell me that they can’t imagine sharing it with anyone besides us." -u/Sad_Hovercraft_1367

"It's basically what has kept me sane throughout cancer treatment! I feel like ConcernedApe is part of my medical team at this point

"I was diagnosed with very aggressive but treatable cancer last February and have been through brutal chemo, countless hospitalisations, two major and four minor surgeries, and am currently in round 11 of 16 of immunotherapy... I had to take nearly five months off work (back part time now!) so I spent a lot of time in bed playing Stardew!

"I have nearly 2,000 hours in the game and through my treatment I have done loads of little challenge runs. I'm currently on farm number four of my colour run challenge — based on the dye pot colours, I can only sell items which are red/orange/yellow/green/blue/purple and my goal is to make 1 million gold and decorate the farm in the colour theme.

"I have been living in a hellish time of my life the last year but my farmer lives safely and happily in the Valley and it gives me strength." -u/RedTheWolf

Malblueeyes

During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Malblueeyes suddenly found herself with a lot of extra time on her hands. Her job had been deemed inessential, and she was out of work.

With her free time, she turned to Stardew Valley. Her husband saw her playing more, and suggested she try streaming it. At first, Malblueeyes wasn't so sure she wanted to. But then one day, she just went live. She didn't even tell him she was doing it.

"This was never a thing that was planned," she says. "It was a thing that at the time I needed something to make me feel like I had a purpose."

Malblueeyes had loved Stardew for years, having played since 2017. It was very different from anything she'd played prior, and was her first true resource management/sim game.

"There were just so many moments where I was just sitting back going, 'My God, I'm having a lot of fun and I'm not terrified.' And so, I just, how could you not love a game that is as difficult as you make it?"

On stream, Malblueeyes started just playing casually. Later, to focus her streams a bit more, she began to do "Challenge Farms," or farms where you try to achieve certain goals under very limited conditions, such as only growing one crop or only raising animals. She began to pick up a following on Twitch. While a lot of her audience just seemed to be there for good vibes, she says that a large number of people were first-time players, asking questions on how she was accomplishing certain things in-game.

"If you're a Twitch streamer, you feel that pressure to know stuff," she says. "And I figured out very quickly, even with the 1,200 hours of Stardew I had on my Xbox, that there was a lot to Stardew I didn't know. And so, I started developing these challenge farms that would force me to confront aspects of Stardew that I was otherwise unfamiliar with or just didn't really interact with unless I had to. So, like unlocking the Joja Warehouse, that's become a staple in my challenge farms because I had never done it before and shockingly enough, a lot of Stardew players don't, they refuse. And so, one of the best ways I've discovered is to allow people to vicariously experience that through my challenge farms. They don't have to unlock Joja, but they can at least see what it's like to unlock Joja."

One of Malblueeyes' first challenge farms was called "Floja," where she unlocked Joja only raising money by growing flowers — an activity she hadn't really engaged with in Stardew Valley before. She had a great time, and kept doing different challenge runs. Until one day, she was struck with a different idea.

"I was sitting and I was watching one of my friends streaming one night trying to think of challenge farms and it was somebody's birthday in her chat and I was just tootling around and I thought, 'Oh, you know what would be fun? Making a happy birthday farm, that would be fun to make a happy birthday farm.' So anytime someone's in chat and they say it's your birthday, it's my birthday. You just go on the farm and you have a little party set up. And then I thought, 'Okay, but what other than just a table and flowers, what's really going to set this farm apart?' And that's when I thought of the flute blocks. That's how that started."

Stardew Valley includes "Flute Blocks," blocks that are placeable out in the world that play a selected note when a character walks past them. By combining strings of these, players can design little melodies that will play as they walk. Malblueeyes wanted to make one of these for the Happy Birthday song, but she self-admittedly isn't a musician. She can read music, but can't identify notes by ear. So she went hunting for assistance online, trying to figure out what note she should even start on. It was then that she discovered Music Farms: farms dedicated solely to playing elaborate tunes by walking through flute block mazes that often span the entire map.

"I took the happy birthday farm and I balled it up and I threw it away, because who wants Happy Birthday when I can do something even bigger? And I spent 12 hours doing He's a Pirate. That was my very first music farm was He's a Pirate from the Pirates of the Caribbean soundtrack and I was so proud of it. And when I look back on it now, oh, it was terrible. Oh, it was so bad. It was awful. But at that time, it was like the coolest thing I had ever done."

With some encouragement from friends, Malblueeyes showed the Music Farm to her audience, and everyone loved it. So she started making more. As she improved her skills, she eventually opened up a channel point redemption incentive so her audience members could request songs, and was quickly hit with numerous requests for all sorts of complex songs.

"And I would figure out a way to do it," she says. "I would always tell people, 'Give me a week.' Nah, I would sit there for hours after stream and figure it out and make it work. And then the very next stream I would be like, 'Your farm's done. It's done. Let's watch it together.' And people just loved it and I loved it. And I had never felt so vital before in a community."

Malblueeyes took a break from Twitch for nearly two years, during which time she was still making music farms and posting them on TikTok. She couldn't help herself. She started streaming again back in November, and while the break was much-needed, she's glad to be back in the community.

"It makes me happy to make other people happy," she says. "And I don't think that there's anything I've ever done that has ever made people as happy as when they request a music farm and I make it for them. People just, they love it and I love it."

"Got me through the stress and isolation of covid. It's fun to see how high I can get my sales at the end of each year while clearing my mind. Great game." -u/onebluephish1981

"It helped me through grieving both of our dogs who we lost within a year of each other." -u/spookychick12

"Stardew came out right before I graduated high school. At the time, I felt overwhelmed by the weight of deciding what to do with my future. I didn't get into my dream program at my dream school, but I did get into a great school and needed to pick a major soon. I was constantly reminded that childhood was about to end, and what happened next could affect the rest of my life.

"Then, I found this cute farming game that reminded me of the hours I spent on Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life, and for the first time, I wasn't worried about my future. I was worried about having the right items prepared for the community center, or guessing which gifts would make my villager friends happy. Then, I read about ConcernedApe's story and how he too began this chapter with a door closed... and he chose to open a window. That set me on a path to pursue game development on my own, and I fell in love with it. There's something so special about this art form; creating your own worlds where other people can relax, challenge themselves, or just escape. I didn't think any of it was possible until I played the absolute labor of love that Stardew is.

"It's still a big part of my life; I've gotten all of my friends into it, included the main overture in my wedding, have seen both of the concerts, and even got to meet the big man himself in New York. I made sure to thank him for the impact he's had on my life as well as plenty of other farmers out there." -u/TinyBoatDev

"When I started playing, I was in college. I had just met my partner. Now we're grown ass adults with a house and a 1.5 year old son. I can't wait until our son is old enough and we can play with him!

"Actually, confession: I already made a save for the baby on my Switch because he's always trying to press buttons while I play. So far he hasn't made it past the first day because all he does is walk in circles, open the pause menu, and attempt to throw away his tools. But when he's ready, it'll be there for him!" -u/pyramidheadlove

Lichatton

Lichatton, a Stardew Valley streamer, speedrunner, and world record holder, did not start out playing the game with any great ambitions. She never even intended to be a streamer when she first went live one New Year's, just as the clock ticked into 2021.

It was thanks to the recommendation of a streamer friend that she was inspired to try streaming for the first time, playing Stardew Valley's new-at-the-time 1.5 update. Lichatton had already played Stardew Valley before and even had a file on Year 8, but describes herself at the time as more into League of Legends. Her streams managed to attract a few viewers, and one day, some speedrunners showed up in her stream and suggested she give that a shot. So Lichatton rushed to complete a fish bundle, and loved it so much she started running regularly.

Now, Lichatton is the world record holder for reaching Level 50 in the Mines, has over 15,000 Twitch subscribers, and over 8,000 hours in Stardew Valley itself.

"I told my husband, I'm like, 'I just need a break. Can you watch the baby? I'm going to go speedrun,'" Lichatton tells me. "And then I came back upstairs and I looked at him and I'm like, 'I just got a world record off-stream. Do you think people will be mad at me?'"

No one was mad at her. Lichatton says that the community that has formed around Stardew Valley is one of the best things about the game. She's found it especially friendly toward women in a way that other online gaming communities are not, and in speedrunning especially she's seen an increase in the number of women on the leaderboards in recent years.

"Stardew Valley is a very supportive community. I haven't ever had trolls on Twitch or anything like that, because my community usually bashes them. But they talk to each other's communities, so like all of my friends are Haboo's [another record-holding Stardew Valley speedrunner] friends or other people's friends and it's kind of like people bounce around from one place to another."

Speedrunning Stardew Valley has changed over the years, particularly with major patch updates, Lichatton explains. Patch 1.6 especially shook things up due to all the content that was added. "I'll give you an example," she says, offering one that admittedly may not make sense if you haven't played Stardew Valley yet but which should click immediately for avid players. "Community Center, before you needed to do a house upgrade for 10,000 gold and 450 wood to be able to get two of the items for one of the bundles, and now you don't need to upgrade your house. So that changes things quite a bit because you need less money.

"Even the mining has changed a lot, which is kind of where the grinding came from. Because before you would run on previous patches, but then we discovered that you can get a club on level five. So the enemies that you kill give you a chance at a ladder, so that kind of changed everything up and shook it up."

Now, Lichatton is working on what she describes as a "randomizer" of Stardew made by a friend of hers. You choose a letter of the alphabet, and the randomizer gives you an item in the game, and you play to see how fast you can acquire that item in a new file. "We're almost at the end of it. We're on Z. So for Z, she did Zuzu City Express, which is a poster you can get from the crane game in the movie theater."

Future ambitions for Lichatton include working on her times for reaching the 120th level of the Mines. She also wants to eventually do a modded playthrough of the game, as she's never played with mods before despite all the hours she's sunk in.

"I think the coolest thing I've been able to do because of this game is, my husband and I got to be on [Summer Games Done Quick] a couple of years ago, and that was a very, very rewarding experience."

Stardew Valley and speedruns of it have changed Lichatton's day-to-day life significantly. She now has a massive audience, new goals to reach, new friends, and a following she never imagined. But while she loves both speedrunning and streaming, she also just loves Stardew for what it is.

"Stardew is just one of those games that always got me through difficult days," she says. "You can have a bad day at work and go home and you're just going to be in a happy Stardew world where you can farm, you can do whatever you want, you can just hang out. It's just one of those games that's always been a part of my life and it's very, very special to me."

"I’ve been playing for a little under two years, but it’s my favourite game in the world. I do go through ruts where I won’t play for a month, then nonstop for hours everyday. I love decorating my house and farm, dating Haley, memorizing everyone’s loved gifts, all while keeping track in a meticulous spreadsheet. It’s also nice to love something that was made by a good person, ConcernedApe has created an incredible game that I will forever rave about." -u/ks_wizard

"I started the game eight years ago over the holidays after my stepfather suddenly died and was in this weird limbo. I don't remember how far I progressed in my farm that week but it was the calm, relaxing vibe I needed to not think about real life. I'd played Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons so I would have played it eventually but it holds a special place in my heart to help bring calm structure and comfort I needed that week.

"I've made several farms since then but I'm currently back on that first farm save trying for my first perfection.

"To me this game is cozy perfection I will forever return to. I will never repay [ConcernedApe] the mental stability and entertainment he's given me for only $15. (Technically more as I've gotten it on every platform I own to try to throw more money at him)." -u/get_hi_on_life

"As someone who has struggled with addiction and some extreme life lows, Stardew has been a very wholesome escape for me. It was a pleasant distraction during recovery or anytime I felt like achieving a small goal in the game. The music was always calming and serene, and I really like what ConcernedApe has had to say about the roots of the game's creation and the meaning it gives to people around the world." -u/wikkineaver

"It brought my bride and I closer together.

"She started playing it at the suggestion of our children. One night I surprised her. I bought the game, created my person, and joined her online game that she had created for our kids to join her. When she realized it was me, she was quite shocked to say the least. Cozy games are not really my thing, but now after more than a year we've reached perfection once, started a couple more farms, and tried out some Palia. She and I playing cozy games together has kind of become a nightly ritual." -u/PiperDon

"It was the first thing I felt like I could enjoy after becoming a mother for the first time. I struggled deeply after having my first baby. Looking back it was probably [post-partum depression], but at the time I didn’t know what was wrong with me. My husband finally convinced me to download this game and it was something that brought me joy in hard times. Even now, after five years of playing the game, I still play it often. When I’m not playing the game, I’m probably watching Stardew Valley related content on YouTube. I just recently hit perfect about a week ago after five years of playing and I may have cried a little. This game will always be special to me." -u/phyrgianhalfcad

Devin Hedegaard

Devin Hedegaard went to school for accounting… only to end up making one of the most popular Stardew Valley mods ever, and eventually, working on Stardew Valley itself.

Hedegaard, aka FlashShifter, had absolutely no actual experience modding when he first started on Stardew Valley Expanded. He tells me he used to mess around in Photoshop making avatars and forum signatures, and he had made custom maps in Advance Wars and StarCraft. He started playing Stardew when it came out in 2016, but it wasn't until he was laid off during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic that he discovered its modding community.

At the time, he says, there were only about 800 or 900 available mods for the game, in contrast to the more than 28,000 now available on Nexus Mods. Hedegaard downloaded a bunch of them, and loved them so much that he started teaching himself how to make his own. He learned how to program, make pixel art, compose music, and create maps. All of this eventually led to Stardew Valley Expanded, a massive expansion for Stardew Valley that adds "28 new NPCs, 58 locations, 278 character events, 43 fish, reimagined vanilla areas, three farm maps, a reimagined world map reflecting all changes, new music, questlines, objects, crops, festivals, and many miscellaneous additions."

Why expand the already expansive Stardew Valley?

"Well, the way I looked at it is, Stardew Valley is already perfect the way it is. You don't need mods to enjoy Stardew Valley. I fell in love with version 1.2 of Stardew Valley, and that's just all Eric [Barone, creator]. That's entirely just Eric's work there, all himself, and you see what the game did to me. It made me want to make a huge mod for it, but when it came to me wanting to expand the valley, the way I went about it is I just wanted more of everything in the game. I wanted more NPCs, I wanted more locations, I wanted more crops, I wanted more character events, I wanted more machines, more items, more quests, more of everything. You can think of my mod as a well-rounded meal with all the meat and potatoes and green beans and maybe a cocktail on the side. It's the full show, a full meal of everything. There are some mods that just focus on some potatoes, there were some mods that just focused on some meat. A lot of work that goes into that, but I was fueled by my love for the game, my love for the community, and I had a lot of determination and a lot of excitement about the game in general that just fueled my desire to add everything that I did over all these years."

Stardew Valley Expanded first released in 2019, and at the time included three dozen new character events, three new locations, redesigned some base game maps. Hedegaard was going to stop there, but the mod started to blow up. It became so popular, he didn't want to leave it there. So he made it even bigger. He was in the process of working on version 1.15 of the mod, when his life was suddenly upended.

"My car got stolen and I was screwed, because I didn't have theft insurance on it and I was in a hole, and not to mention I had all my student loans I had to pay off still," Hedegaard explains. "I'm just like, 'What am I going to do?' I was modding full time, but modding full time, I was making a bit of money from it, but it's enough money to pay for food and rent, not pay for my student loans and pay for a new car. I like Christmas, I like buying Christmas gifts for my family and friends. It's like, 'What am I going to do? What am I going to do?'"

It was then that Hedegaard did something astonishing. He reached out to Barone, and asked him for a job.

"I was just like, 'You miss every shot you don't take.' So I went to the office and it was like, 'Yeah, do you want to hire me?'"

This isn't quite as crazy as it sounds. Hedegaard did already know Barone – they had hung out 3-4 times before, he says, describing them at that point as "acquaintances." They also both lived in the Seattle area, so it's not like he flew across the country to do this.

Even more shocking was that Barone entertained the idea. He told Hedegaard that he'd have to think about it. Then, just a few days later, Hedegaard received a job offer.

"I remember that day fondly, it was one of the best days of my life," he says. "At that moment, my life changed. My life had already changed when I had first started playing Stardew Valley, it had changed when I had first released my mod, and then the other time it changed was when Eric hired me that day."

That's how Hedegaard came to be employed by ConcernedApe, LLC and working on the next update to Stardew Valley. Hedegaard was also able to complete version 1.15 of Stardew Valley Expanded, which he considered a "finished" product. He's still providing bug fixes to the mod as needed, and is planning on updating the mod to be compatible with the future 1.7 update when it lands.

But other than that, he's fully devoted to Stardew Valley itself now. The game, its creator, and the job that he now holds and loves have transformed his life in the best possible way, he says.

"I think that this is what I was born to do, it's like my fate or my destiny," he says. "I wasn't meant to be an accountant working at Joja Corp, going in with a suit and tie in downtown Seattle, because I was really starting to feel like… I'd go home and I'm like, 'I don't want to do this anymore. I wish I would get a letter from Grandpa,' and you know what? Eric gave me that letter from Grandpa. And it changed my life. His game, what he made, working for him, working with this team, everything that Stardew Valley has given to me has improved my life so much and it's made me so happy. Part of my development process is I just want to give all that love and happiness back to the community and to the world and to keep creating… I like seeing people be happy, I like seeing people playing this game, seeing people come together.

"...I feel like, as time goes on, more and more and more people will play. Heck, even 20 years from now, there will be even more millions of people who have discovered the game. What's crazy is Stardew Valley is 10 years old. In year one, year two, some people had kids, they had babies, and eight years later, their kids are now playing Stardew Valley. The next generation of players are playing Stardew Valley. It's crazy. Eric and I and the whole team, we deeply understand how much Stardew Valley means to people, and that's why we always want to do right by the community at every turn, every possibility. And like I've been saying, to give all that love and happiness back that we've gotten."

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.

It's almost Stardew Valley's 10th birthday, which emans that for a decade players have combed over every inch of Pelican Town and the surrounding area, unearthing secrets, deciphering Dwarvish manuscripts, and putting Strange Buns in hidden boxes. But the game's creator, Eric Barone (ConcernedApe), says there's still one secret that fans have never found, though he hopes one day they do.

We spoke to ConcernedApe for a big interview in honor of the game's 10th anniversary, and among the many topics we discussed was the question of in-game secrets. ConcernedApe has said in the past that there was still an outstanding secret, so we wanted to check in and see if that was still true. And, yup, it is, though maybe his cheeky teasing will help someone find it now. Here's exactly what he said:

There's still a secret that no one has ever found. I don't think they ever will. Maybe I'll reveal it someday, but the problem with the secret is that it's, it's basically a secret message that's in the game and it reveals something that actually isn't even true anymore. It was revealing a thing about- Do I want to reveal it or not? Well, that's all I'll say. I'll say it was a secret message that was basically announcing something that I actually shifted gears and that thing wasn't even true anymore, but it's still in the game. I just don't know if anyone will ever discover it because it's so obscure.

I followed up by marveling at this knowledge, as the game has been combed over and datamined all to heck over the years. However, ConcernedApe replied that "there's certain ways to hide messages that can't really be datamined. If you hide something in the code, it's going to all be found because people decompile the code and look at everything. If you say hide it in the art or something, if it's a secret message that's hidden in the artwork somehow, then people can't really discover that as easily. They have to see it."

Could that be a clue as to what this is? Possibly! Get to work, secret hunters. ConcernedApe concluded by saying he doesn't think anyone will find it, but hopes that someone does.

Stardew Valley turns 10 years old this February, and we're celebrating with a bumper crop of stories. We interviewed ConcernedApe and chatted about topics such as the addition of two new marriage candidates with 1.7, why there isn't a Stardew Valley TV show, and how Haunted Chocolatier is doing. We also chatted with the Stardew Valley community about what the game has meant to them over the years.

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.

Stardew Valley is 10 years old this month: happy 10th birthday, Stardew! The beloved farming sim is still as popular as ever, with nearly 50 million copies sold and tens of thousands of players every single day. So why hasn't it ever had a TV or film adaptation?

It's a fair question, right? Video game TV and film adaptations have become wildly popular in recent years, and are finally seeing widespread success with shows like The Last of Us and Fallout and films like Sonic the Hedgehog (and sequels), Detective Pikachu, A Minecraft Movie, and The Super Mario Bros. Movie. Stardew is widely loved and seems like it'd be easy enough to adapt, especially into some kind of series about Pelican Town and its inhabitants. So where is it?

Speaking to game creator Eric Barone (ConcernedApe) ahead of and in honor of the 10th anniversary, I asked him if he'd ever been approached to do a movie or TV adaptation of Stardew Valley. Unshockingly, he told me he had been approached; "many times," as a matter of fact. So why didn't he ever agree to have one made?

"I think the main reason is that I would be worried that I wouldn't be happy with the final result. Stardew Valley is very much about the characters and the world and the tone of the game. So to take those characters, which, they don't have voices in the game. You have to use your imagination a bit to fill in the gaps, which I think makes the game more personal to every player. They're filling in the gaps. If it becomes a movie or a TV show, suddenly those gaps are all filled for you.

"One example I'll use is Harry Potter. When I read the books, I had my own idea of what Harry looked like, what Ron looked like and everything. Then you see the movies. I can't remember what my own idea was anymore. It's all just now what the movies are. Same with Lord of the Rings or any of these IPs. With Stardew Valley, I'm a little bit wary of taking that step because I feel like it might- I care about Stardew Valley so much that I don't- Even though it would be cool to see Stardew Valley on the silver screen and drive by a movie theater and see Stardew Valley on the marquee, that would be cool, but it's like, 'Is it really the best for Stardew Valley?' I guess that's my worry.

"And I could potentially imagine it being cool. That's why I said once, that if David Lynch had wanted to make a Stardew Valley movie in the style of Twin Peaks or something, I would've been like, 'Yeah, great. You can do whatever you want, Mr. Lynch.' Honestly, I would've let him just do whatever. I think it would've been great. Especially if it's like this mainstream Hollywood Stardew Valley. It's like, 'Is this really the heart and soul of what Stardew Valley is about?' And I'm sure someone could do a great job, but it feels like it's a bit of a roll of the dice."

Barone hasn't been shy about his love for Lynch in past interviews, so earlier in the interview I asked him to talk a bit more about what he admired about the late filmmaker's work and its influence on him, especially given Lynch passed away last year. Here's what Barone had to say:

"I feel like David Lynch, he was... He just had a transcendental understanding of the world. And you could see it in his art. I never met the man, and unfortunately I never knew him, but I felt like in his art, I always felt a connection. There's something about David Lynch, he's connected to the spiritual world it almost feels like and that always appealed to me. And another thing I really admired about him is that he never seemed to really try to be popular. He always seemed to be authentic to himself and his artistic vision, for better or for worse, in terms of popularity.

"Twin Peaks season two was very abrasive. Not a lot of people, I think, would necessarily enjoy it, but I felt like David Lynch was just being true to himself and he didn't care about whether this was going to be a commercial success. He just stuck to his guns and I really admire that. I just think that in general, the world needs more artists who are pure and not necessarily trying to be popular. That's the stuff that I like best is when, you might call it Outsider Art almost, because it's just a random person's unique vision. And I feel like everyone has this capacity, but a lot of people will instead be influenced by what's popular or what might be successful.

"And I would just hope that people would instead just stick to their true vision. I want to see everyone's unique perspective and vision. And David Lynch was the ultimate form of that, in my opinion. And I just liked his stuff. I mean, I loved Eraserhead, Twin Peaks, The Straight Story. Again, even in The Straight Story, which was not very avant-garde, it was his most wholesome, straightforward movie, but you could kind of still feel the David Lynch essence in it. And I always love that when you can just tell this is a certain artist's thing. No matter what they do, they just have this unique flare that you can always pick up on."

We're celebrating Stardew's tenth birthday this month with a bumper crop of stories. We interviewed ConcernedApe and chatted about topics such as the addition of two new marriage candidates with 1.7, the one secret players still haven't found yet, and how Haunted Chocolatier is doing. We also spoke with the Stardew Valley community about what the game has meant to them over the years.

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.

Stardew Valley's upcoming 1.7 update will include, among other things, two brand new marriage candidates, IGN can exclusively reveal.

This comes from our interview with the game's creator, Eric Barone (ConcernedApe) in celebration of Stardew Valley's 10th anniversary. When we asked him for updates on 1.7, Barone said the following:

I'm trying to not reveal too much because I like for it to be a surprise. What I will say without maybe being too specific is that with this update, one of the things we're trying to do is... Well, there is a popular fan request, which has to do with the children, trying to make the children a little more interesting. So I'm trying to do something with that, but there's a lot of other things in the update as well that no one's really asked for, but I think people will appreciate it.

I'm going to be adding two more marriage candidates, but I'll reveal who it is on the anniversary day.

This is, quite frankly, huge! Players have been asking for more romanceable characters for years now, and the only new additions since the game's launch were Shane and Emily, added way, way back in 1.1. We don't yet know who these two mystery partners will be, though. It's possible that ConcernedApe is adding two brand new characters to the game, but it's also possible that existing characters that players have wanted to marry for a long time will finally get their due. I'm thinking of folks like Marnie, Sandy, Linus, Clint, or even the elusive Wizard. There's also a contingent of folks who want to break up Robin and Demetrius, but that seems like it would cause some drama, to say the least.

Whoever it is, we know they'll get additional scenes for heart events, lots of new relationship-focused dialogue, and their own unique area on the farm. So whether these are new or old characters, we're sure to see some cool new story content surrounding them.

Stardew Valley is turning 10 years old, and we're celebrating with a bumper crop of stories. We interviewed ConcernedApe and spoke about topics such as why there isn't a Stardew Valley TV show, the one secret that players still haven't found yet, and how Haunted Chocolatier is doing. We also chatted with the Stardew Valley community about what the game has meant to them over the years.

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.

Stardew Valley is 10 years old this month.

The popular life/farming simulator made waves when it first dropped on February 26, 2016 on PC, quickly becoming beloved for its loving recreation of some of the best aspects of the old Harvest Moon games, while also determinedly following its own path with elements such as the mines, a much wider variety of crops and animals, and queer relationships.

Over the last 10 years, a series of updates have kept the energy alive, adding even more farming activities, more people to marry and befriend, more dungeoning adventures, more seasonal events, and just... more. Of everything. It remains wildly popular as a result, having sold nearly 50 million copies since its initial launch and still drawing hundreds of thousands of players on a daily basis on Steam alone, not to mention all the other platforms it's come out on.

Stardew is consistently among the most-played games on Steam, and retains a massive community of players, content creators, modders, and other artists all participating in its fandom. We re-reviewed it in 2024 and gave it a 10/10. There's a cookbook. And a symphony tour. My most normie, non-video game friends have played it. It's everywhere. And it's somehow not done. A planned 1.7 update is still in the works and (as you'll soon see) it seems unlikely creator Eric Barone (ConcernedApe) will be able to put the game away even after that.

The story of Stardew Valley's creation has been told and retold across numerous articles and interviews, so in celebration of its 10th anniversary, we took a different approach. We sat down with Barone for a lengthy interview not about the game's beginnings, but about its journey over the last 10 years, and its future. You can read some shorter highlights in our stories about new marriage candidates coming in 1.7, why there isn't a Stardew Valley TV show, the secret no one's found yet, and how Haunted Chocolatier, Barone's next game, is doing. We also spoke to a handful of Stardew Valley fans and creators about what the game has meant to them over the years, and you can read that here.

But for the fans who want everything, as we did, we've republished the full Q&A with Barone here, lightly edited for clarity:

IGN: Well, let's start off easy. You're about to enter year 10 of Stardew Valley. How do you feel?

Eric Barone: That's right. It's been so long. I just can't believe that 10 years has gone past. It was a blur, I would say. And it's 10 years since launch, but it's been almost 15 years since I started working on Stardew Valley. So for me, the majority of my adult life now has been basically dedicated to Stardew Valley. This is my entire life. So it's hard to even be objective about it, to be honest.

I've been blown away by how popular Stardew Valley is, how many people have played it, how it continues to be popular 10 years after launch. I think that's a crazy thing. It's not something I would've ever expected, but the amount of love for the game is one of the reasons I've continued to work on it for so long. It's difficult to stay locked into one project for 15 years. I definitely have urges to work on other things, but then Stardew Valley keeps drawing me back in, really just because there's so many people who love the game.

You've talked a lot about the development of the game in the past and that process. So I don't want to make you retell that story. But in these 10 years since it's released, I'm curious about your evolution as a developer. You've been working on this game for far longer than that, but what do you think are the biggest changes you've undergone as a game developer since Stardew Valley released?

Barone: I think the biggest thing was transitioning to working with other people. When Stardew Valley first came out in 2016, I literally did not work with anyone, not a soul. It was entirely my own project and I did everything. Since then, now I have a pretty good-sized team of people helping me with the updates and with the business side of things. Really with everything, managing the forums and all that stuff. So that's been a big change. I wasn't used to it. It took me a while to get used to working with other people.

I mean, it's been really great with my team that I have now. They do great work. They add their own unique sensibilities and ideas to the melting pot of Stardew Valley. There's just so many things that I couldn't have done on my own. For example, translating it into 12 different languages, adding multiplayer. There's some technical things that are just beyond my skill level. I'm a very amateur developer. I still feel that way. I'm just a total amateur. It's good to have some people who are more technically focused, for example, and can help me with some of those things. Really polish up the game, make sure it's running smoothly, that multiplayer works in a seamless way and all of that.

That's been the biggest thing is working with other people, but also just, I guess, getting used to the prominence of Stardew Valley. I think back to, I think it was September, I was at one of the Stardew Valley concert shows in LA and it was at this huge outdoor venue with 5,000 seats and it was sold out. It was this cool outdoor venue. I was standing there just looking at the audience and thinking, "This is crazy." I don't even know how to think about it. It's surreal, but I'm also used to it at this point, I guess. So I try not to take it too seriously, but it is surreal that this has all happened.

I do want to back up and poke at that a little bit because you said you still feel like an amateur. Are you just being deferential or do you really feel that you're still an amateur after working for 15 years?

Barone: No, I still definitely feel like an amateur.

Why?

Barone: I think it's because my approach to development is very scrappy. I've never really become super professional in the way I do things, but I think in a way it's part of what gives Stardew Valley and hopefully Haunted Chocolatier it's a, you might say indie soul, is that it's not too professional. There's a little bit of rough edges around it. Also, my mindset is that I never think of myself as a master of anything. Pixel art, I feel like I'm bad and I need to always get better. I feel that way about every aspect of the game. I'm not good enough. I need to improve.

To me, that's a helpful mindset because that inspires me to always want to strive to improve and not just think, "Yeah, I'm perfect. I don't need to do anything else." It's like I always need to be working to improve and get better at every aspect of development.

So in the 10 years since release, can you talk about a couple major moments in your life connected to Stardew Valley that stood out to you as really big or notable or joyful?

Barone: Well, I think the first one was just when the game launched, that was a very, I would say stressful day, but also just blew my mind that this was finally coming out, people were going to play it. I didn't have much time to really marinate in that feeling. I just had to lock in and start doing updates and everything. And that's been a blur ever since. When multiplayer came out, that was also a big deal. I think that really expanded the game and brought a lot more people into the game.

I guess another highlight would be the concert tours. The first time I was at one of these shows, these Stardew Valley shows, and it was 1,000 people in a room who were all mega-Stardew Valley fans, that made it sink in that there's a lot of real people that have been touched by Stardew Valley. Because a lot of my experience as a developer, from my perspective, I'm sitting here looking at a monitor all day. I'm seeing messages and things from real people, but there's a lack of a real physical human connection. So to actually bridge that gap and meet real players in the flesh and shake their hands, that was very touching.

It just reminded me of why I'm doing this. It's partly because I want to share my ideas with the world. What keeps me going after 10 years of still working on this. Because as an artist, I guess, I have a desire to just move on and do something else. I want to be always doing something new. Ideally, every month I'd be doing something totally new and different. Whatever whims I have.

There's so many people that say Stardew Valley changed my life or saved my life or helped me bond with my family members or all these things that makes me feel like there's a more important purpose that I have here than to just share my ideas. It's part of it, but I feel like a responsibility to all the players because I feel like I've been granted a very rare opportunity to be in this position. I have the capacity here to touch the lives of millions of people. That's a big responsibility and I want to do it as best I can and hopefully be a positive influence in people's lives in a real way, a real physical, real life way.

It's a heavy burden, then? The way you describe it.

Barone: Yeah, it is. Like I said, I just feel like I've been granted a special opportunity. This feels like it was my destiny and I just want to do the best I can to maximize that opportunity.

This might just be the same question, but I also wanted to ask if there's anything in the last 10 years that you can pinpoint as something that you're the most proud of, like an accomplishment, maybe not including the launch of the game?

Barone: I think the last update, the 1.6 update, I was pretty proud of that because it was a whole team effort. It felt like the apex of this transition from being a total solo developer to actually incorporating several different people and their ideas and their work all into a cohesive package. And I think it was very well received by the players as well. That was a fun moment. It was fun to be able to share that with my team and with the community. It felt like a little celebration when we launched it and then we're all working together. So it wasn't just me alone. For better or for worse, it's like if there was any stress, it was distributed among the team too, so that was helpful.

I'm sure you're aware of this, but you've been held up over the years as an example of a successful "solo developer." And you did make Stardew Valley largely by yourself with the support of family members and things like that, but it sounds like what you're saying now is you've discovered since release, is that it does take a village to keep it sustained. Do you have any thoughts about that?

Barone: It's true. People say, "No, it's just one developer." It's true and not true because it was true up to a point. I made a complete game that was successful completely by myself. So it does prove that it is possible to do that. There's so much that couldn't have happened post-launch without the help of other people. And I think that was crucial for making Stardew Valley as complete and as good as it is today. It's true. It's like both things are true, I would say. It just depends on how much you want to expand the game.

It's like the game became so popular that in order to meet the needs and demands of the player base, I feel like I did need to expand the team. There's been a lot of benefits of that. There's a certain thing where not every single thing in the game now is completely done by me, which does make it a little bit less of my personal baby, but I'm fine with that at this point. I feel like when it launched, it was like my baby that I was incubating and then it went out into the real world and Stardew Valley has become its own being that's external from me.

The best analogy would be, it feels like I was a parent and the child grew up and now it left the house and it's developed a life of its own that is beyond just me. And that's how I feel about Stardew Valley now. It's not my personal baby anymore. I'll always have a father connection to the game, but it's also become its own being. And that's not just me and the team, but also the entire Stardew Valley community and all the players, all the modders have really turned it into its own thing. So that's been, I guess, an evolution over the past 15 years as well.

So I asked you about big positive moments in the last 10 years. What about challenging times? Is there any moment in the last 10 years of Stardew that you recall as being exceptionally difficult or frustrating?

Barone: I think the hardest part is just staying totally high energy about it for 10 years. Like I've said, I've wanted to move on and work on other things and I've struggled with that and with thinking about, "What is my purpose? What is my life purpose? Is it going to be to just work on Stardew Valley forever, for the rest of my life?" That's been a little bit challenging. So I have to keep reminding myself of all the people that are affected by the updates and playing Stardew Valley to try to stay locked in for so long.

In terms of technical difficulties, it hasn't been too bad. There's been some issues and I've brought more people onto the team that have been able to help with that. It's true that managing a team and being the leader of a team is something that I wasn't really prepared for necessarily. I had to learn and grow in that regard too, but I just view it as one other aspect of being a game developer. There's a lot of things you don't think of. At first it's like, "Okay, I'm programming. I'm drawing pixel art, I'm making music." But then it's like, "Okay, I also have to have a public persona." I'm managing my social media, I'm doing business stuff, I'm doing taxes and all this stuff.

And then it's also, I'm managing a team. So there's so many different aspects to this, which have been a learning experience, I would say, but I'm trying to get better and try to always improve and increase my skills in that regard. And sometimes it's been difficult, but I think things have been getting better and better over the years.

You touched on this slightly earlier, but when you've been considering updates to Stardew over the last 10 years, how much of what you have done has been influenced by community requests or mods versus how much of it is just you coming up with stuff you think is cool?

Barone: Yeah, I mostly try to just do what I think is cool because I think that that will keep Stardew Valley, Stardew Valley. I don't want it to be developed by the public necessarily. It's like I do consider what people request and if it lines up with things that I agree with, then I might lean in that direction a little bit because I do want to make the players happy. But I think sometimes what will make the players happy is for Stardew Valley to still be my creative ideas ultimately, whether they realize it or not.

I try to do a mix, I guess. A few things that maybe the fans are asking for if it lines up, but then I also like to just do whatever. I mean, my favorite way to come up with ideas for the update is just play the game myself. And when I'm playing, I'm like, "Hmm, this would be cool." And then I'll just add it. I think that's always a crucial part of any new update is me playing the game. And usually what happens is, I or my team will work on the update for a while and then we'll play through some of the new stuff we've done. And then as we're playing through it, we're always thinking, "Oh. Okay, this would be cool to add." There's always things that come up.

My favorite thing to do is just whatever weird thing pops into my head, I'll just add that in. For example, 1.6, I added the family of raccoons that lives near your farm. That wasn't a player request. It was just something I had thought of and I was like, "This would be fun." I think those things are what gives Stardew Valley its authentic character.

Are there any particular mods or fan projects that you found super cool or super interesting or super inspiring?

Barone: I actually don't really play with mods, to be honest. I try not to look at mods too much because I actually don't want to be influenced by mods.

Yeah. That makes sense.

Barone: I know people think that I take ideas from mods, but it's probably just that there are natural ideas that make sense that would be added to the game. I end up adding those things, just because it naturally makes sense. Or maybe someone suggested it to me and it came from a mod, but I wasn't even aware that it came from a mod. I just thought, "Hey, that's a good idea."

Speaking of ideas, are there any updates on 1.7?

Barone: Yeah. I'm trying to not reveal too much because I like for it to be a surprise. What I will say without maybe being too specific is that with this update, one of the things we're trying to do is... Well, there is a popular fan request, which has to do with the children, trying to make the children a little more interesting. So I'm trying to do something with that, but there's a lot of other things in the update as well that no one's really asked for, but I think people will appreciate it.

I'm going to be adding two more marriage candidates, but I'll reveal who it is on the anniversary day.

This was a couple years ago, but I think you said there was still a secret or two that at the time fans hadn't yet found. Can we get an update on that? Is there anything in the game that people haven't seen?

Barone: There's still a secret that no one has ever found. I don't think they ever will. Maybe I'll reveal it someday, but the problem with the secret is that it's ... It's basically a secret message that's in the game and it reveals something that actually isn't even true anymore. It was revealing a thing about- Do I want to reveal it or not? Well, that's all I'll say. I'll say it was a secret message that was basically announcing something that I actually shifted gears and that thing wasn't even true anymore, but it's still in the game. I just don't know if anyone will ever discover it because it's so obscure.

It's really interesting that there is still something because, I mean, this game is on PC. It's been datamined all to heck. People have seen all the puzzle pieces of this game.

Barone: That's true. That's true. But the thing is, there's certain ways to hide messages that can't really be datamined. If you hide something in the code, it's going to all be found because people decompile the code and look at everything. If you say hide it in the art or something, if it's a secret message that's hidden in the artwork somehow, then people can't really discover that as easily. They have to see it.

This is going to drive people crazy. I'm going to write this and this is going to drive people crazy for months.

Barone: I feel like no one will ever find it, but I hope someone does. It'd be interesting.

So Stardew Valley in the last 10 years helped spark a new wave of, I guess we can call them cozy games in a similar tradition. Do you play any of those? What do you make of that trend?

Barone: I've played a few. The trend, I mean, I'm glad if Stardew Valley inspired people to make these games. The whole idea of cozy games, I feel like, I've never called Stardew Valley a cozy game. That's just a genre that formed, I guess, and people started calling it that and people started retroactively calling Stardew Valley a cozy game, which is fine. I don't really call it that, but I mean, I would say Stardew Valley is cozy. But a cozy game, I feel like there's certain aspects to this whole genre that have gone beyond or different than my conception, which is fine.

Well, it's not like Stardew Valley was the first. Harvest Moon obviously was the first farming game, the original so-called cozy game, but it's like if you're the first screamo band, you probably weren't calling your band a screamo band. It's just the music you made. And then people started calling it screamo, and then they retroactively call your band a screamo band. It's like, "Well, okay."

In terms of the genre itself, I think it's cool because I mean, the reason why I liked Harvest Moon was because it wasn't just about fighting and going on some big grand epic adventure. It was the opposite. Instead of going out on a huge adventure, you were at home, it was domestic. It was just one little area and just trying to go deep on that one area, which for some reason that just really appealed to me. I don't know why. Maybe I've always been a homebody, but I think that idea resonates with a lot of people. And maybe a lot of people that didn't classically like video games, but maybe because this whole thing where it's all about fighting and combat and competition and going on a big adventure, maybe that's not appealing to a lot of people. It's appealing to some, like a subset of the population, but Stardew Valley maybe brought this whole other idea. Which is part of the human experience, an important part of the human experience, and brought that to the mainstream in a way.

So people are like, "Hey, we could actually make games that are about cooking or running a household or running a small business." Things that are a lot more, I don't know. I guess I would call them domestic, but it doesn't really quite capture it because a lot of cozy games aren't just about being at home. They're just more, I would say, less about fighting and competition and they're more about the normal everyday things that people do.

There's a certain sense of growth in these games too. It's about acquiring resources and then developing those resources into something, a life that you want to live. And that's such a core part of being human that I think it just naturally appeals to people. It's like something we're all meant to do in a way.

When I was researching for this article, I saw that you had talked a lot for understandable reasons this year about how much you admire David Lynch. And I was wondering if you'd be willing to talk a little more specifically about what it is you love about him and how you feel he's influenced your work.

Barone: Yeah. I feel like David Lynch, he was... He just had a transcendental understanding of the world. And you could see it in his art. I never met the man, and unfortunately I never knew him, but I felt like in his art, I always felt a connection. There's something about David Lynch, he's connected to the spiritual world it almost feels like and that always appealed to me. And another thing I really admired about him is that he never seemed to really try to be popular. He always seemed to be authentic to himself and his artistic vision, for better or for worse, in terms of popularity.

Twin Peaks Season 2 was very abrasive. Not a lot of people, I think, would necessarily enjoy it, but I felt like David Lynch was just being true to himself and he didn't care about whether this was going to be a commercial success. He just stuck to his guns and I really admire that. I just think that in general, the world needs more artists who are pure and not necessarily trying to be popular. That's the stuff that I like best is when, you might call it Outsider Art almost, because it's just a random person's unique vision. And I feel like everyone has this capacity, but a lot of people will instead be influenced by what's popular or what might be successful.

And I would just hope that people would instead just stick to their true vision. I want to see everyone's unique perspective and vision. And David Lynch was the ultimate form of that, in my opinion. And I just liked his stuff. I mean, I loved Eraserhead, Twin Peaks, The Straight Story. Again, even in The Straight Story, which was not very avant-garde, it was his most wholesome, straightforward movie, but you could kind of still feel the David Lynch essence in it. And I always love that when you can just tell this is a certain artist's thing. No matter what they do, they just have this unique flare that you can always pick up on.

Are there any other people just across all different kinds of craft who have been big influences on you over the years?

Barone: I mean, I don't know about big influences. Obviously Miyazaki, Studio Ghibli has been pretty big. A lot of people have been influenced by that, me included. And I feel like he's [Miyazaki] another one of those artists who you can always feel the artist in whatever he does. There's just a certain thing and I really appreciate that. Obviously, Yasuhiro Wada, the Harvest Moon creator, has been a huge influence on me. You could say that he started it all. So I have to shout him out and point to him as the original farming game person. He made it all possible.

We've talked a little bit already about continually updating the game and why you feel it's so hard to step away from Stardew Valley and why you keep going back to it over and over. Do you see a future where it's ever done?

Barone: Yeah, I could see a future where it's done. Just to be realistic at this point, there's been many times where I was like, "All right, I think it's going to be done after this update." And then that never happens. So I think just realistically, it might not ever be done. I do want to release Haunted Chocolatier. I want to finish Haunted Chocolatier. That will require me to spend time working on Haunted Chocolatier. And it's like if I'm always working on Stardew Valley as well, it's going to probably take a long time. That's one worry I have.

Maybe if everyone stopped playing Stardew Valley, if it fell off, then maybe I wouldn't be as inspired to keep working on it. A big part of it is just because it's so popular. And like I mentioned earlier, it's like when there's so many people still playing it, I feel a responsibility and an inspiration to want to keep adding to the game because I just know that it's basically the best avenue for any ideas or any of my work to reach other people. And that's why I have always created things in my life is because, I guess I would say it's probably my way of connecting to the rest of humanity is through art or music. For me, it was always primarily music before Stardew Valley.

I created music and art and stuff always. Even I think if I was the last person alive on earth, I would do it because I want to get stuff out. I have ideas and I want to actualize those ideas. But I think in a way, it was also my way of trying to connect with the rest of humanity. So Stardew Valley has become by far the best avenue that I've ever had to do that. Before Stardew Valley, no one ever listened to my music or anything, which is fine.

As long as people are still playing it and it's still popular, I'll probably want to keep making updates for it. The only thing is, I don't want the game to become too bloated with content. I feel like at some point it might be too much actually. So I am very cautious about that. There's so many systems in the game now. I don't want to keep adding systems, but I do feel like all the things that exist could always be expanded upon more. Stardew Valley, as a game, you progress through these years in the game. Eventually things start looping.

So it's like there could always be a third year of festival variants, a fourth year of festival variants. There could be more dialogue. I could go deeper on all the characters. That's one of the things ... It's like why I'm not really too into adding new characters to the world because I feel like all the existing characters could use so much more depth and I could keep going deeper and deeper adding the third year of dialogue to everyone and adding more character cutscenes and all these things that open up as you keep playing the game.

Is there anything you've ever wanted to add to or change about Stardew Valley that for whatever reason you couldn't?

Barone: Well, I feel like some of the things are so established that it would be weird to change it now. There are some things that maybe I slightly regret. One thing I mentioned before was the spiral level in the mines. That level's awful.

It kinda sucks, yeah.

Barone: Yes, that level sucks. And I could maybe adjust it to make it suck a little bit less. I don't know about just taking it out completely because some of these things are part of- I guess I fear that if I retroactively change things in the game, it'll lose that classic Stardew Valley feel. Sometimes I wonder if some of these things that are slightly annoying do actually add to the game experience as a whole, because not everything in life is easy. There's got to be some things that are even annoying, I think sometimes, so that the things that are not annoying and are more comfy feel even comfier in comparison. I'm not sure about some of those things.

Well, one thing that I also, I wouldn't say regret, it was just that my skill level and understanding at the time was all the- For example, the New Desert Festival and the Winter Night Market, which are the two most recent festivals, they operate in a totally different way. They're not like an instance, where you're stuck on this map. You can come and go and it's very ambient. I really like that approach so much better, which I feel like is an evolution of the original idea I had with the festival.

I think it would be great maybe to retroactively turn all the festivals into that style, but that would be a huge change for the game. It might be controversial even because maybe some people like the instance festivals, I don't know. So I do sometimes struggle with like, "Should I change something and make it not classic Stardew Valley anymore, even if I think it's better or not?" So I struggle with that sometimes.

It is interesting because now this game is a decade old. There is a mystical "classic" Stardew Valley that people can remember that had much less and also had friction points that you maybe could have solved. You think back at the original Harvest Moon and it has that quality of, some things in that game were really frustrating, but that's what I remember fondly about them. So you might have reached that age.

Barone: True, true. I mean, maybe someday there'll be a Stardew Valley Classic.

Would you ever do it?

Barone: Maybe, maybe, but it'd be difficult because I feel like most of the updates have added meaningfully good things to the game. I think the game is better today than it was in 1.0. There was one thing I remember that I did change that was funny. When the game originally came out, when Grandpa came and evaluated your farm after two years, he was super harsh. It was really difficult and he was almost rude about it. He was like, "I should have bequeathed the farm to my other grandchild."

Oh, gosh.

Barone: And I don't think you could reevaluate either. So it was like, a lot of people were upset because they felt like it was contrary to the comfortable atmosphere of Stardew Valley. So I did adjust that. I made Grandpa a lot less harsh and I made it so that you could re-summon him at any time to reevaluate the farm. And I don't regret that. I think it was the right move. I don't know what I was thinking.

Has Stardew Valley ever surprised you?

Barone: I think so because, well, there's certain things that- It is a bit of a sandbox game a little bit. And so there's certain things that just happen that I didn't necessarily intend. One example is if you breed slimes in town, they'll speak to the villagers because the game treats- a slime and an NPC are both the same base entity in the game. They're just different offshoots of this base entity. And it was in that base entity in the code that I had this stuff where if one of these entities came close to a different one, they might have a chance of greeting them and saying something, which I put in because I thought it'd be fun if NPCs cross paths and they say hello to each other. But I never thought about the fact that slimes would talk.

That's one example. I thought that was funny, so it's still in the game. I didn't change that or anything. It added, I guess, a lore that I wouldn't have necessarily intended, which is that the slimes can talk, which is weird. There's some things like that in Stardew Valley where it's like, I almost view it as like, is this lore or is it just a funny, silly little thing?

It's like the Abigail eating amethysts thing.

Barone: Exactly. Yeah. That's another example of something that I didn't intend, but I left it in the game because these are the things where I would say it has an indie quirkiness to it where it's not exactly- If it was a totally professional operation, there would be QA testers that would've caught that and then they would've probably gotten rid of it because it's not intended behavior. But with Stardew Valley, it's like, "Eh, whatever. Just leave it in. It's fine." And there's a lot of stuff like that actually in the game.

Would you ever consider doing a Stardew Valley 2 instead of just continuing to update?

Barone: Yeah, I would. In fact, I would love to because it would just be fun to work on a whole new set of characters, a whole new world, maybe capture some of that original energy that I had back in 2012, when I started working with Stardew Valley. There's something fun about the number of possibilities in a whole new world, which I think would be fun for me. It'd be fun for my team. We'd be really excited about it. It's a bit difficult because people are so attached to Pelican Town and to the villagers in Pelican Town. I do fear a little bit that if it's a whole new cast of characters, people might feel put off by that.

I guess another approach to Stardew Valley 2 could be to use the existing cast, but it's like a new adventure in the world, but then I'm still stuck with the same thing. I'd have to think about that one. Yeah. There was a time where I was starting to work on a Stardew Valley 2, but, I don't know. For various reasons, I moved over to Haunted Chocolatier instead. Haunted Chocolatier you could say is like the Stardew Valley 2, but it's a bit different of a game, so we'll see.

A while back, you took a really uncommon step. You got a publisher and then later you removed that publisher and now you're publishing all the versions of Stardew Valley yourself. Are you happy with the results of that decision?

Barone: Yeah, I'm happy with that.

Yeah?

Barone: I'll just say that it's nice to be fully in charge of my own game. A lot of indie developers, well, I guess it begs the question of what is an indie developer? Was I an indie developer when I had a publisher? And that's obviously debatable, but I think an amateur developer, you might say, who created an IP would ultimately like to be fully in charge of their own IP. I mean, Stardew Valley always belonged to me as a intellectual property. It's just nice to be able to- It's all my decision now. If I want to do this or that or enter this market or make a port of the game, it's up to me. So I don't know. I just like doing that. I appreciate the help that I got from my publisher when they were helping me out.

So I have a question written in here that you've already kind of answered, which is, do you have any plans for the 10th anniversary? But I just want to ask that very directly. Is there anything else that I should mention here?

Barone: I don't think you need to mention anything, but I mean, I have some plans. I was thinking of maybe doing my own little retrospective video or something where I just have a message for the players and maybe go back through the timeline of all the different things that have happened during the last 15 years. Just to basically remind everyone of what all has transpired.

Some people are brand new to Stardew Valley. It's still selling a lot of copies every day. So those people may be brand new players. They might not know about the whole history of the game. I feel like it'd just be a good way to think back about everything that's happened. Just this whole grand adventure of Stardew Valley, the past 15 years.

Have you ever been approached to do a movie or a TV show for Stardew Valley?

Barone: Many times.

Why didn't it happen?

Barone: I think the main reason is that I would be worried that I wouldn't be happy with the final result. Stardew Valley is very much about the characters and the world and the tone of the game. So to take those characters, which, they don't have voices in the game. You have to use your imagination a bit to fill in the gaps, which I think makes the game more personal to every player. They're filling in the gaps. If it becomes a movie or a TV show, suddenly those gaps are all filled for you.

One example I'll use is Harry Potter. When I read the books, I had my own idea of what Harry looked like, what Ron looked like and everything. Then you see the movies. I can't remember what my own idea was anymore. It's all just now what the movies are. Same with Lord of the Rings or any of these IPs. With Stardew Valley, I'm a little bit wary of taking that step because I feel like it might- I care about Stardew Valley so much that I don't- Even though it would be cool to see Stardew Valley on the silver screen and drive by a movie theater and see Stardew Valley on the marquee, that would be cool, but it's like, "Is it really the best for Stardew Valley?" I guess that's my worry.

And I could potentially imagine it being cool. That's why I said once, that if David Lynch had wanted to make a Stardew Valley movie in the style of Twin Peaks or something, I would've been like, "Yeah, great. You can do whatever you want, Mr. Lynch." Honestly, I would've let him just do whatever. I think it would've been great. Especially if it's like this mainstream Hollywood Stardew Valley. It's like, "Is this really the heart and soul of what Stardew Valley is about?" And I'm sure someone could do a great job, but it feels like it's a bit of a roll of the dice.

You've said many times, including this interview, that you've had trouble balancing, doing updates to Stardew Valley with working on Haunted Chocolatier. Has that changed more recently? What's the balance in your life right now?

Barone: Well, part of the reason why I've expanded my team a little bit is so that hopefully I can spend more time working on Haunted Chocolatier. And it's worked out pretty well so far, I would say. On 1.7, the approach we're taking is that I am like, you might say the creative director and I'm involved with like, "Okay, here's what we're going to do. Here's some of the ideas." Then I let the team work on that. And then meanwhile, I'm working on Haunted Chocolatier.

At some point in 1.7's cycle, I will get heavily involved, because I feel like my hand needs to touch every part of the game, every aspect of the update. I need to go over it and adjust it or at least approve everything. So it will require a lot of my time anyway, but I think the balance has been a little bit more shifted, so that I can spend more time focused on Haunted Chocolatier. And I think it's been working out pretty good. That's been a big change from the 1.3 update or 1.1 or something where it's completely me. I had no time to work on a new game. So that has changed.

It is difficult because it's hard to shift gears, I guess. If I'm thinking about Haunted Chocolatier, it's difficult to be like, "Okay, I'm going to one day of the week or two days of the week work on Stardew Valley." That's not how my brain works. I'm all in one thing or the other. So I've been trying to work on that. I feel like it requires a lot of discipline, which I'm always working to improve on.

Any update on Haunted Chocolatier you want to share?

Barone: I would say it's coming along. The progress isn't as fast as I would like. Nothing is ever as fast as I would like. The main important thing about Haunted Chocolatier is I'm not going to release anything that I'm not happy with. If I don't think it's a great game, I'm not going to release it. So even if that takes years and years, so be it. That's just what I want to do. Fortunately, I don't feel like there's any real pressure. I haven't received funding from anyone or crowdfunding. There's not going to be any pre-orders.

I don't actually owe anyone the game. It's like when I want to do it and when I want to release it, it'll get done. I mean, it's true that I've announced the game, that does create a lot of pressure on me because I do feel like I don't want to disappoint the fans by taking too long, but there's no real physical obligation with it. It's more just mental constructs, you might say.

As far as pressure goes, I guess how do you perceive Haunted Chocolatier in relation to Stardew Valley? Because Stardew Valley was such a hit, does that make it harder to decide that Haunted Chocolatier is ready?

Barone: Absolutely. Yeah. It's been a huge struggle for me actually. See, what I want to do is just not care and just make the game however, just whatever, not worry about it. But it's basically impossible because I can't help but think about how this will be received. And I know that there's going to be a lot of people playing this game who are expecting it to be a Stardew Valley 2. And are they going to like it or not? And it's like, yes, I want to just make the game I want to make, but I also don't want a bunch of people to not like the game because they were expecting a certain thing. That's not going to feel good. I know that.

So that's been a constant struggle is like, "Do I just do whatever I want and not think about the existing player base or do I try to please the existing player base?" And I feel like there's just going to have to be a little bit of a balance between those things. It's been difficult. And also just the- I mean, I pretty much know that Haunted Chocolatier won't be as popular as Stardew Valley. I just feel like that's an extremely tall order. I mean, Stardew Valley was a once in a generation type of phenomenon. And part of that might've just been it was the right game at the right time. People were ready for this game.

As you mentioned before, there's been a whole cozy game burst. So it's like the market is saturated with cozy games. Maybe people are tired of cozy games by the time Haunted Chocolatier comes out, which is fine. I mean, I wouldn't even call Haunted Chocolatier a cozy game, but I'm just saying these games that are more focused on one town. Maybe people want to go on epic adventures again and they don't want to play Haunted Chocolatier. That's fine, but I got to still make the game I want to make.

Earlier, you mentioned that if you weren't working on Stardew Valley or Haunted Chocolatier, you'd just be making a new game every month. Do you have other things you want to make? Is there anything particular that you're yearning to get out there?

Barone: I mean, I would love to make small games and not worry about it. This goes back to me feeling like I have this rare opportunity. I've been granted a one in a billion opportunity to be in this position. It would almost feel like a waste of that to just make whatever I felt like doing. I feel like I need to do something big because I've been granted this opportunity. That being said, whenever I have an urge to make a small game, I might just do it and then make it as an arcade game in the cafe of Haunted Chocolatier. With Stardew Valley, I made Journey of the Prairie King and that could have been a little game on its own, but instead I made it an arcade game, so I integrated it into the world. So there's ways that I feel like anytime I feel like doing something, I can integrate it into the big game that I'm working on.

I tweeted a while ago about how, sometimes I start writing these stupid philosophical rant things. It's like, "Okay, instead of posting this online, I can just put this in a text document and then eventually put it in a book in the library of Haunted Chocolatier to add to the lore and just to the immersion." I feel like pretty much anything is like that. If I want to make music, which that's another thing, I've always been someone who likes to just make random music. It's like I can maybe take some of that and just put it into the game.

Even the most popular song in Stardew Valley, The Dance of the Moonlight Jellies was not a song that I made for Stardew Valley. I made that for just some random album on my secret Bandcamp. That just happened to be on some random album I made. And then I listened to it and I was like, "Hey, I like this song. I can take this and put this into Stardew Valley." And then that became the most popular song on Stardew Valley, according to Spotify. I think it's best if I, to some degree, follow my artistic whims and not force anything.

So Stardew Valley's still wildly popular after 10 years. That's really rare nowadays. Everybody's chasing that and nobody can have it except a couple of massive AAA live service games. I know you've been asked this a million times, but as you are now, what do you think it is about Stardew that keeps people coming back?

Barone: I think it's a few things. I think maybe most importantly is that Stardew and I guess myself, it's never been about trying to be as popular as possible and as widely played as possible, which I think people appreciate. It's almost like if you are chasing the money, then you don't get it because, people, that's not what they're looking for. They're looking for something authentic and real. And Stardew Valley I think has always remained like that because it's never turned into a big business. It's never been a business. It's always been about the game and about the players and about just making Stardew Valley the best it can be. And I think people can feel that in the game. And that's one of the reasons why they like it. It sticks out because a lot of stuff is corporate.

And I'm not saying anything bad about those games. I like a lot of AAA, corporate games myself, but at the end of the day, those games, they have investors. The companies have investors, they have to make money, they have to make profit. And so that I think, can cloud the- It can mar the pure love and passion that a true indie game can capture. I think that's part of what makes Stardew Valley stick out. And as a game itself, it feels very scrappy, I think still. Which is more relatable to people. It feels personal.

Everyone who plays Stardew Valley, it feels like their own personal game. So that's heartwarming to people, I think. I think another aspect to it is the multiplayer has been huge because it just brings people together. It's a fun and unique way to spend time with other people. And I'm saying this, trying to be as objective as possible as a gamer. I feel like there's not enough games that you can play cooperatively with your friends and it doesn't require a graphics card. Anyone can play it on their laptop.

I have a group of friends, they're not gamers per se. They don't have high-end graphics cards. We can't go and play 3D games really together and have it run well. Stardew Valley though, it's like it runs on anyone's potato and we can all play together. So I think that is big. And there's actually not a lot of games like that, to be honest. There's Terraria, which is great, and Minecraft works on most people's computers, but I think that makes it unique. And just the fact that it's chill, you don't have to lock in too hard. You can just play and chat and hang out, but you're still doing a fun activity together, which can be very rewarding.

It all goes back to human nature and what we're meant to do as humans. We were naturally meant to live in small communities and work together to gather resources, hunter-gatherers, forage roots and berries and all that stuff. That's what Stardew Valley is in a way. And in this modern world, we don't really get to do that anymore. And so Stardew Valley gives us a way to live, I think, our natural lives together. And I feel like that's why it feels so meaningful and good to people.

Last one. What does Stardew Valley look like in 10 years?

Barone: Whoa, that's crazy. In 10 years there'll be a few more updates, which just make the game even more what it's supposed to be. I feel like with every update, I'm trying to make Stardew Valley its ultimate form, fully self-actualized. So hopefully in 10 years, Stardew Valley is fully self-actualized. Maybe there's new things added to the game to make it even more future-proof, in terms of creative content or things that players can be almost a part of the process.

One idea that we were toying with for 1.7, I don't know if this will happen or not, but was adding a farm map editor for the public. So you could basically make your own. Because with every update, it's traditional to add a new farm type. When the game first came out, there was just standard farm, that was it. And then 1.1, I added four different farms or something. And then with every update, there's been one added. What if we opened this up to the community and it was like now you could press an extra button, go into a browser and look at everyone's farm creation? That now adds almost infinite replayability to Stardew Valley. So I'm interested in ways to make the game more just infinitely replayable without the use of AI. That's never going to happen.

Yeah, in 10 years, who knows? That's crazy. Hopefully Haunted Chocolatier will be out and maybe by then there'll be some new Stardew Valley IP stuff going on too. Stardew Valley is such a gold mine, I think, of potential things you could do with Stardew Valley. I have plenty of ideas. It's just a matter of basically bandwidth because in order for it to maintain what I feel like is Stardew Valley's soul. Well, I feel like I need to be heavily involved in it. And I'm not saying that to throw any shade on anyone else. My team is great. I love them. They're great, but I still feel like I need to be heavily involved or else it's not going to feel like Stardew Valley.

It's your baby.

Barone: Exactly. So if there's going to be a Stardew Valley 2 or a spinoff game or some related thing with Stardew Valley, then that's going to require my full attention. So maybe this would be after Haunted Chocolatier comes out, which will hopefully- In 10 years, Haunted Chocolatier will be out. Maybe there'll be some new Stardew Valley project that's out even in 10 years.

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.

This month, we're celebrating Stardew Valley ahead of its 10th anniversary, and have a ton of Stardew-related pieces as a part of that. But when we spoke to creator Eric Barone (ConcernedApe) ahead of that celebration, we couldn't help but also ask about his other game that's still in-development and mysterious: Haunted Chocolatier.

Barone has been candid in the past that he's had trouble balancing work on both Stardew Valley's ongoing updates (with Patch 1.7 currently in progress) and Haunted Chocolatier. We started by asking him if that balance has changed recently and if he's had more Chocolatier-time in his schedule. The answer from Barone is, yes, sort of.

"Well, part of the reason why I've expanded my team a little bit is so that hopefully I can spend more time working on Haunted Chocolatier," he says. "And it's worked out pretty well so far, I would say. On 1.7, the approach we're taking is that I am like, you might say the creative director and I'm involved with like, 'Okay, here's what we're going to do. Here's some of the ideas.' Then I let the team work on that. And then meanwhile, I'm working on Haunted Chocolatier.

"At some point in 1.7's cycle, I will get heavily involved, because I feel like my hand needs to touch every part of the game, every aspect of the update. I need to go over it and adjust it or at least approve everything. So it will require a lot of my time anyway, but I think the balance has been a little bit more shifted, so that I can spend more time focused on Haunted Chocolatier. And I think it's been working out pretty good. That's been a big change from the 1.3 update or 1.1 or something where it's completely me. I had no time to work on a new game. So that has changed.

"It is difficult because it's hard to shift gears, I guess. If I'm thinking about Haunted Chocolatier, it's difficult to be like, 'Okay, I'm going to one day of the week or two days of the week work on Stardew Valley.' That's not how my brain works. I'm all in one thing or the other. So I've been trying to work on that. I feel like it requires a lot of discipline, which I'm always working to improve on."

Understandable, and there's even more context on the work he's done to balance Haunted Chocolatier and Stardew Valley at multiple other points in our full Q&A. But we couldn't let the subject drop without just straight-up asking him how Haunted Chocolatier is going. Sadly, no concrete updates today. But Barone replies that it's "coming along." But it sounds like the wait will be worth it.

"The progress isn't as fast as I would like. Nothing is ever as fast as I would like. The main important thing about Haunted Chocolatier is I'm not going to release anything that I'm not happy with. If I don't think it's a great game, I'm not going to release it. So even if that takes years and years, so be it. That's just what I want to do. Fortunately, I don't feel like there's any real pressure. I haven't received funding from anyone or crowdfunding. There's not going to be any pre-orders.

"I don't actually owe anyone the game. It's like when I want to do it and when I want to release it, it'll get done. I mean, it's true that I've announced the game, that does create a lot of pressure on me because I do feel like I don't want to disappoint the fans by taking too long, but there's no real physical obligation with it. It's more just mental constructs, you might say."

It makes sense that Haunted Chocolatier is taking a while, as Barone has previously said its world is "larger" than Stardew Valley's. He also took a bit of a hiatus on the game back in 2024 due to struggles getting Stardew Valley 1.6's console ports working. But it sounds like a bigger team is helping alleviate some of those struggles going forward. We'll just have to keep being patient (and keep enjoying Stardew) while we wait for Barone's next work, whenever it comes.

We're celebrating Stardew's 10th birthday this month with a bumper crop of stories. We interviewed ConcernedApe and chatted about topics such as the addition of two new marriage candidates with 1.7, the one secret players still haven't found yet, and why there isn't a Stardew Valley TV show yet. We also chatted with the Stardew Valley community about what the game has meant to them over the years.

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.

Fortnite fans are on the edge of their seats as rumors and leaks seem to suggest a potential Chappell Roan crossover coming to Fortnite in February.

The Femininomenon of the pop music world has been the talk of the Fortnite community since cosmetics related to some of her most iconic songs supposedly leaked late last month. Developer Epic Games hasn’t confirmed whether Chappell Roan or her famous pink pony mascot will actually show up in-game, but fans are still expecting an announcement as soon as this week.

CHAPPEL ROAN POTENTIALLY NEXT FESTIVAL ARTIST #Fortnite pic.twitter.com/Ut2jTrm6Ok

— Leaky (@itsmeleaky) January 22, 2026

X/Twitter user @itsmeleaky seems to have been the first to kick off rumors that the Midwest Princess was next to join Epic’s roster of Festival stars, sharing images of some very Chappell Roan-looking music cosmetics and what appears to be a llama sidekick dressed up as a pink, cowboy hat-wearing pony. Players were then able to find these same items in a special room in-game, with some other familiar visuals, including flashy pink stars and some knight armor, adding to the pile of alleged evidence.

All three items would certainly fit the occasion, especially the potential sidekick, which looks a lot like a reference to the star’s mega-hit song, Pink Pony Club. The knight armor, meanwhile, has been taken as a sign that at least one of what could be a few skins could pull from Chappell Roan’s medieval-themed Video Music Awards performance of Good Luck, Babe!. She’s known for her many, many memorable looks, though, so music fans are still guessing which direction Epic could take her cosmetics should she have a substantial presence in Fortnite this month.

👀| Fortnite appears to have begun teasing a possible collaboration with Chappell Roan pic.twitter.com/zUMRqjXlxx

— Chappell Roan Now (@ChappellRoanNow) January 23, 2026

Meanwhile, the studio confirmed plans to launch Fortnite version 39.40 this week on January 30, leaving fans to look out for new content in the days ahead. Again, Epic hasn’t confirmed whether the star will show up at all, but for some, it’s not a question of if, but when and how.

Chappell Roan’s status as a Grammy award-winning artist with millions of listeners has many expecting her to headline an upcoming Festival update as its new icon. It would mean potentially multiple skins to accompany the inclusion of more of her music, though how the star’s career could be represented is unclear. It’s possible she could have a more muted presence, but with the previous icon, Lisa, set to rotate out in just a few days, fans believe it could be the perfect time for Chappell to make her proper Fortnite debut.

FORTNITE VALENTINE'S DAY EVENT TEASER pic.twitter.com/ew7rxBrrzg

— Shiina (@ShiinaBR) February 1, 2026

As Chappell Roan rumors for Fortnite heat up without official confirmation, players are still looking forward to other updates for February. The game’s official account recently put out what appears to be a tease, saying, “In February, Fortnite wears pink.” It could be more evidence that Chappell Roan is on the way, but it’s also likely referencing its upcoming Valentine’s Day plans. Another post from today has music and movie fans looking forward to more KPop Demon Hunters content.

Fortnite leapt into Chapter 7 with an Avengers: Endgame-style event late last year. The months since have, of course, been filled with more crossover content, including a collaboration that brought South Park items into the fold and a few skins from The Office.

Photo by Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic.

Michael Cripe is a freelance writer with IGN. He's best known for his work at sites like The Pitch, The Escapist, and OnlySP. Be sure to give him a follow on Bluesky (@mikecripe.bsky.social) and Twitter (@MikeCripe).

The ninth entry in the mainline Resident Evil series is fast approaching, but if you’re thinking that it could be the ideal point to jump in for the first time, you’ll almost certainly be left wondering what the hell is going on as you play through its opening hours. Resident Evil Requiem builds atop a three-decade legacy of survival horror, so you’re going to have to do some homework before you get started.

To help you out, we’ve put together a (very condensed) synopsis of the main Resident Evil story and everything you need to know leading into Resident Evil Requiem, presented in chronological order. As I’m sure you’ve already worked out, the following contains spoilers – lots and lots of spoilers – for the entire Resident Evil series prior to Requiem.

Resident Evil Zero
July 23, 1998

It’s July 23, 1998. The Bravo Team of Raccoon City Police’s elite S.T.A.R.S division is dispatched to investigate a number of murders in the Arklay region. The team believe evidence can be found in the area’s mountains, but their helicopter crashes before they can reach their landing zone. Survivor Rebecca Chambers makes her way towards a nearby spooky-looking mansion in an attempt to find the rest of Bravo Team.

Before she makes it to the house, Rebecca, along with her newly acquired convict companion Billy Coen, come across an abandoned training facility where they discover that its former director, Dr James Marcus, along with former partner, Oswell E. Spencer, were responsible for a new biological weapon dubbed the T-Virus: a deadly infection that turns humans into zombies and other monstrosities.

Resident Evil
July 24, 1998

The S.T.A.R.S. Alpha team is dispatched to find out what happened to the missing Bravo team. Their search leads Jill Valentine, Chris Redfield, Barry Burton, and team leader Albert Wesker to the aforementioned grand estate, the Spencer Mansion.

The gang splits up and discovers the horrible fates of the missing S.T.A.R.S. members, who have been decimated by the monstrous results of the T-virus. As he explores the mansion’s many rooms and hidden chambers, Chris finds Bravo team member Rebecca Chambers still alive.

Jill and Chris eventually discover that the Umbrella Corporation, a pharmaceutical company with shady business practices, is behind the illegal experiments that led to undead horrors (and the odd oversized animal) roaming the mansion’s halls.

Eventually, once they reach a sinister laboratory hidden beneath the house, the duo discover that Wesker is not actually a loyal S.T.A.R.S. operative, but a traitor who works for Umbrella. Wesker infects himself with a strain of the T-virus as part of an elaborate plan that also involves releasing a new biological super weapon, the “Tyrant”, from containment. Unfortunately for him, the creature swiftly kills him. After managing to defeat the Tyrant, the remaining S.T.A.R.S. team members escape the lab (relatively) unscathed.

Our heroic survivors return to Raccoon City, only to learn that the corruption runs deep. They decide to go rogue, leaving the RPD to investigate the grand corporate conspiracy. Chris heads off to Europe solo, while Jill stays in the city to learn more about Umbrella.

Resident Evil 3
September 28, 1998

It’s September 1998, just a few months after the Spencer Mansion incident, and Raccoon City is overrun with zombies. Umbrella sees the outbreak as an opportunity to test its latest bioweapon, the experimental Nemesis; a hulking beast armed with a rocket launcher, tasked only with the destruction of all remaining S.T.A.R.S. members.

While Jill desperately tries to escape the outbreak with the relentless Nemesis hot on her heels, rookie R.P.D. officer Leon S. Kennedy and Chris Redfield’s younger sister, Claire, both arrive in Raccoon City at the worst possible time.

Resident Evil 2
September 29, 1998

After being separated following a car accident, Leon and Claire agree to meet up at the nearby police station. Unfortunately for both of them, the building is already infested by the undead.

As she navigates the station’s dangerous hallways in search of information about her brother’s whereabouts, Claire runs into Sherry Birkin, a young girl pursued by a monstrous weirdo who not only turns out to be her Dad, but also Umbrella's leading scientist, William Birkin.

Turns out Billy B had planned to betray his corporate masters and sell his newly developed G-virus, but he was gunned down by Umbrella before he had the chance. As he bled out, William managed to infect himself with the G-Virus. His monstrous form massacred Umbrella’s troops and proceeded to dump both the G- and T-virus formulas into Raccoon City’s water supply, creating the enormous mess all our characters now have to deal with. Nice one, Willy.

Meanwhile, Leon runs into Ada Wong, an FBI agent seeking the G-Virus for her own investigation into Umbrella’s corruption. The two decide to form an alliance, for now…

Leon and Ada run into Birkin’s wife, Annette, who is not a big fan of the pair. They follow Annette deep underground to a secret Umbrella facility called NEST in hope of securing the G-virus sample.

Pretty much simultaneously, Claire also arrives at NEST, in search of a vaccine for the now-infected Sherry. Leon manages to obtain the G-Virus sample but runs into the hideously deformed William, who mortally wounds his wife. As she struggles to hold on, Annette reveals to Leon that Ada is not what she seems: she’s actually a mercenary looking to sell the G-Virus to the highest bidder. Ada arrives on the scene and demands the G-Virus, but before Leon can hand it over, Annette manages to shoot her, sending both Ada and the virus sample falling into the lab’s seemingly bottomless chasm.

Meanwhile, Claire finds a vaccine for Sherry. As Annette administers it to her daughter, Claire tangles with an out-of-control William. Sherry is cured, but Annette eventually dies of her injuries. The facility is set to self-destruct, and Claire, Sherry, and Leon board a train to escape.

With NEST destroyed, the crew finally manage to escape the nightmare and, on the outskirts of Racoon City, vow to continue their fight against Umbrella.

Resident Evil Outbreak
September 23 - October 1, 1998

While Jill, Leon, and Claire are dealing with their own issues amidst a zombie outbreak, eight other Raccoon City residents are also in a desperate fight for survival. Among them is a local journalist, Alyssa Ashcroft, who is trying to shine a spotlight on Umbrella’s evil ways. Remember her name, as it’ll come in handy when you start playing Resident Evil Requiem.

Alyssa manages to escape Raccoon City before the government annihilates the entire area with an evidence-destroying thermobaric missile strike, carrying information that could expose Umbrella once and for all.

Resident Evil 3 (continued)
October 1, 1998

Elsewhere in Racoon City, in the hours before the missile strike, Jill Valentine is infected with the T-Virus. Fortunately for her, Carlos Oliveria – an uncharacteristically friendly Umbrella mercenary – arrives on the scene to not only cure Jill, but also help her find the important vaccine that could save the city. Unfortunately, the government has a different “cure”; our heroes discover the plans to wipe out Raccoon City, which is publicly explained away as the only sure method to eradicate the zombie outbreak.

Carlos and Jill head to another underground lab, this time creatively called “NEST 2”. Unfortunately, the Nemesis is still alive and very much still in pursuit. Jill and Carlos manage to take out the abomination once and for all, and with the vaccine sample in hand, manage to escape the city before the missile hits. Unfortunately, Nicholai, Carlos’s former colleague/secret operative, is waiting for them and manages to destroy the vaccine vial. Jill and Carlos take down Nicholai, leaving him for dead, and escape just before government-approved thermobaric hellfire arrives to completely demolish Raccoon City for good.

And as is tradition, our hero vows to take down Umbrella before the credits roll…

Resident Evil: Code Veronica
December 27-28, 1998

Three months after escaping from Racoon City, Claire Redfield, still in search of her brother, attempts to raid a European Umbrella facility. Things go south and she’s captured, taken to an island prison ruled over by Alfred Ashford, the governor of Rockfort Island.

As is mandatory for a Resident Evil game, an outbreak occurs, and amidst the chaos Claire is freed, allowing her to get to work looking for Chris and escaping the island. Unfortunately, Mr. Redfield is nowhere to be found, so after much trouble, Claire tries to escape in a plane. Ashford, who is revealed to have a split personality disorder and often believes himself to be his twin sister, Alexia, remotely takes control of the plane and crashes it into another Umbrella facility, this time in Antarctica. Knocked unconscious, Claire has a dream that turns out to be the plot of Resident Evil Survivor 2. Weird.

Ashford, believing Claire to be a spy, pursues her in a quest for revenge. But after he’s fatally wounded, he frees the real version of his sister, Alexia, who has been cryogenically frozen this entire time, her body riddled with a new virus called T-Veronica.

Meanwhile, back on Rockford Island, none other than Chris Redfield shows up, looking for Claire. But rather than finding his sister, he runs into his old pal/mortal enemy, Albert Wesker, who’s alive, super strong, and on a mission to find the T-Veronica sample. Turns out he had actually planned to be killed by the Tyrant back in the Spencer Mansion, as that would ensure he could reach the full potential of some experimental virus he was infected with… or something.

The pair make their way to Antarctica, where Chris hopes to be finally reunited with Claire, and Wesker hopes to secure the T-Veronica sample. A restored, very powerful Alexia becomes the final boss of Chris’ latest adventure, and everyone escapes the facility before – you guessed it – it self-destructs.

Wesker claims a virus-infected corpse to experiment on. Chris and Claire vow to take down Umbrella… are you seeing a pattern here?

Resident Evil 4
Autumn, 2004

Six years have passed, and the Umbrella Corporation is now long gone due to a government suspension and stock value crash. Is this the lamest way possible for a big bad to go out? It’s certainly up there.

Leon S. Kennedy, former rookie RPD officer, is now a government agent with full permission to roundhouse kick anyone who stands in his way. He’s sent on a mission to rural Spain, where the president's daughter, Ashley, is being held by kidnappers. As he explores the area, he discovers that not only are the kidnappers part of a cult called Los Illuminados, but they’re also all infected by a brand new mind-controlling parasite: Las Plagas.

As Leon hunts for Ashley, he unexpectedly bumps into someone he thought long dead, Ada Wong, who is very much alive and is once again on the hunt for virus samples.

After rescuing Ashley, Leon confronts the cult’s leader, Saddler, and, with the help of Ada, defeats him, bringing down the parasite and all the hordes it infected. Once again showing her true colours, Ada takes a sample of Las Plagas and escapes by helicopter, but not before – you guessed it – setting the base to self-destruct.

Leon and Ashley manage to dramatically escape on a jet ski, which they appear to ride all the way from Spain back to the US. I mean, they probably just went back to the mainland and took more traditional routes, but imagining they jet-ski’d across the Atlantic is funnier, so let’s just say they did that.

Resident Evil: Revelations
2005

Shortly after the events of Resident Evil 4, our original protagonists, Chris Redfield and Jill Valentine, become involved in a new investigation into biological organic weapons. They discover a new strain of the T-Virus called T-Abyss, developed by evil organisation Il Veltro, which plans to use its new weapon to infect a fifth of the world’s oceans.

A lot of evil plots and betrayals unfold, involving names and organisations that mostly don’t feature in the wider series except for one: the Bioterrorism Security Assessment Alliance, or BSAA. Chris and Jill are founding members, and this new organisation’s motives become the driving force for these characters going forward.

Naturally, Chris and Jill survive the events of Revelations, taking us directly into the next chapter of Resident Evil.

Resident Evil 5 - Lost in Nightmares DLC
August, 2006

Two years after Resident Evil 4, our original big bad, Wesker, is still on the loose. Chris and Jill, now operating under the banner of the BSAA, follow a thread that should lead them to Umbrella’s founder, Oswald E. Spencer. Instead, they run into Albert Wesker, who has killed Spencer.

Wesker, seemingly even more powerful than before and now dodging bullets for fun, is more than a match for Chris and Jill. To save a wounded Chris, Jill sacrifices herself, sending both her and Wesker to their deaths. Chris, understandably, is a bit sad.

Resident Evil 5
March 4-6, 2009

Almost three years after Jill’s death, Chris is tasked with apprehending terrorist Ricardo Irving, who is selling bio-organic weapons in Africa. Along with his new partner, Sheva, Chris discovers that the locals are infected by a modified Las Plagas parasite. The duo set out to solve the crisis, but Chris has another thing on his mind: the BSAA believes Jill could still be alive.

After defeating a mutated Irving, Chris and Sheva learn that Tricell, the company that funds the BSAA, has taken over Umbrella’s seedy work in conjunction with – shock, horror – Albert Wesker, who is very much still alive and has been conducting human experiments. Unfortunately, one of his victims is Jill, who is also still alive and now under Wesker’s control.

Chris and Sheva manage to subdue Jill and remove Wesker’s mind-control device before it’s too late. Wesker tries to flee on a plane, which crash-lands in a volcano. After some boulder punching, Chris and Sheva finally kill Wesker once and for all, and all is well in the world… for now.

Resident Evil: Revelations 2
January, 2011

Claire Redfield is now a member of TerraSave, an anti-bioterrorism taskforce, and once again finds herself trapped in an island prison, this time with her new partner, Moria Burton, daughter of Barry Burton. Remember him from the Spencer Mansion incident? He’s the “Jill Sandwich” guy…

Jill and Moira are directed around the prison’s labyrinth-like halls by someone known only as the Overseer, all while being stalked by mysterious monsters. After the entire playbook of typical Resident Evil hijinks involving other survivors, shady corporations, and betrayal unfold, it’s revealed that the Overseer is a woman named Alex Wesker. Although she shares the surname, she’s not actually a relative of the series’ infamous villain, but rather a child who was kidnapped for her “talents” and inducted into “The Wesker Project”, a sinister plot developed by Umbrella founder Oswell E. Spencer to try and develop a race of superior beings. Alex has been doing her own experiments on the prison island, creating a fresh batch of monstrosities.

Eventually, Claire and Moria corner Alex, and with nowhere left to run, Alex commits suicide. But not before, of course, setting the base to self-destruct. Claire manages to escape, but unfortunately, Moira is trapped under the rubble. Enter big daddy Barry.

Six months pass before Barry reaches the island, who has been desperately chasing Moria’s SOS signal. But before finding his daughter, he comes face-to-face with Alex, who’s now heavily mutated into her disgusting final form, complete with orange glowing weak points. Fortunately, both a still-alive Moria and a returning Claire armed with a rocket launcher arrive to swing the odds in Barry’s favour.

In the epilogue, Claire receives a message about Chris and his jaunt to China, where he’s off to handle another bioterror threat…

Resident Evil 6
December 2012 - June 2013

Next up is Resident Evil 6, which features three interwoven campaigns, and it all gets really, really messy. So strap yourself in….

In 2012, a new virus is developed by a company dubbed Neo-Umbrella, led by someone who appears to be Ada Wong. Mercenary Jake Muller is immune to the virus, on account of being the child of Albert Wesker (who has… let’s say “unique” DNA after all those experiments), and so is believed to be the key to creating a vaccine.

In 2013, the American president decides enough is enough with all these bioterrorism incidents, and that it’s time to reveal what really happened in Raccoon City. However, before he can spill the beans, there’s another viral attack. The president, now a zombie, must be taken down by his loyal agent, Leon Kennedy.

Ada Wong arrives on the scene to tell Leon that National Security Advisor Derek Simmons is affiliated with Neo-Umbrella, and is behind the terror attack that zombified the president. Leon heads to China in pursuit of Simmons. Chris Redfield, now wracked by post-traumatic stress and a thirst for revenge after his team was slaughtered by Ada, also heads to China. As does Jake, because, you know, plot.

It’s no secret that Resident Evil 6 is the most convoluted game in the series, so let’s just get through this quickly:

• Chris finds out Jake’s true identity, and despite an awkward moment where Chris tells Jake he killed his dad, they mostly work it out.
• Simmons dies.
• Chris’s buddy, Piers, is wounded, then grows a new arm thanks to the C-Virus, and saves Chris.
• Jake kills his boss, who’s not worth talking about.
• We discover that there are two Adas, with one being an imposter called Carla.
• Finally, all the good guys win and go their separate ways.

Basically, a lot is going on, and it’s not very good. Maybe just ignore this bit – I highly doubt anything that happens here will have any implications for the future of Resident Evil.

Resident Evil 7 Biohazard
July 19-20, 2017

In 2017, Ethan Winters is looking for his missing wife, Mia. His search eventually leads him deep into Louisiana, where he finds her imprisoned by the Bakers, a very odd and very disgusting family.

Ethan is captured by the family’s patriarch, Jack Baker, and forced to join a vomit-inducing dinner with Jack’s wife, Marguerite, son Lucas, and a mysterious elderly woman. It turns out the entire family is infected by something called “mold”, a sort of parasitic, fungal virus that has the added benefit of increasing your resilience, but the downside of making you just a bit gross.

Side note: you can find a newspaper clipping written by Alyssa Ashcroft in the Baker’s house. Remember her from Resident Evil Outbreak? Turns out she’s still a journalist, now investigating the disappearances in Louisiana.

After escaping and managing to kill hideous forms of both Jack and Marguerite, Ethan reunites with his wife and develops a serum to help shake off her apparent mold infection. The couple attempt to flee on a boat, but the vessel is capsized by a mysterious creature that turns out to be a “girl” named Eveline. This child is actually a bio-weapon that Mia, who’s actually a secret agent, was tasked with escorting. Eveline is responsible for the Baker family’s mind-altering infection because she was desperate to create her own family. You know, like all bioweapons are. Classic stuff.

Ethan injects Eveline with a toxin, which causes her to revert to her true form: the mysterious old woman from the Baker’s disgusting dinner. It turns out she’s been rapidly aging. Of course, a senior is hardly an ideal final boss, so Eveline mutates into a giant blob like all classic Resident Evil big bads do, and after a climatic confrontation with Ethan (who gets a little help from a recently arrived military squad), she’s finally destroyed.

In a final twist, the leader of the military squad is revealed to be none other than Chris Redfield, who emerges from a helicopter branded with the Umbrella logo. Man, things have really changed around here.

Resident Evil 7 - Not a Hero DLC
July 20, 2017

Chris and his team pursue Lucas Baker, who had avoided Eveline’s mind control thanks to a serum provided to him by a new shadowy organisation called The Connections.

They were the ones behind Eveline’s creation, and Lucas had been gathering data on her for them. Naturally, he planned to betray his masters, because Lucas is a Resident Evil villain, and that’s apparently part of the contract.

After working his way through a series of traps, Chris manages to kill a mutated Lucas. He then returns to base to take an urgent phone call…

Resident Evil Village
February 8-10, 2021

Over three years later, Ethan and Mia have settled in Eastern Europe, but their new-found family bliss is violently interrupted by Chris Redfield, who shockingly and mercilessly guns down Mia and kidnaps Ethan and his child, Rose.

Ethan wakes to find himself in a rural village that has been besieged by a horde of marauding lycans. On a desperate quest to find Rose, Ethan works his way through the abandoned village and into a nearby castle inhabited by vampires, most notably an enormous goth mommy called Lady Dimiterscu.

Lady D, along with a wider group of oddities including a fish man and a cowboy Magneto, all belong to cult that worships Mother Miranda; a god-like, mold-infected matriarch who, in a quest to resurrect her dead daughter, Eva, became consumed by the infection and spread it to her four elevated lords and houses. Ethan discovers a crest for these four lords that looks eerily similar to Umbrella’s logo.

Ethan’s journey to rescue Rose and take down Miranda’s lords eventually leads him back to Chris Redfield, who explains that the Mia he gunned down wasn’t actually Mia at all, but rather a shape-shifting Mother Miranda. Miranda believes Ethan and Mia’s daughter, Rose, is the successor of bioweapon, Eveline, based on the fact that both her parents were infected by the mold. After Miranda finally confronts Ethan in her true form, she explains that the mold will help rebirth Rose as her own daughter. Without hesitation, Miranda rips out Ethan’s heart.

Chris and his squad launch a full assault against Mother Miranda, battling through her waves of monsters and destroying a large mold barrier that protects her. Once inside, Chris and the team discover a large mold root called the Megamycete; the source of the mold that plagued both the village and the Baker family. Turns out the Megamycete not only infects its victims, but it also absorbs their DNA and memories.

Chris plants a bomb, but before destroying the mold once and for all, he passes through Miranda’s lab for one last lore dump. He discovers the entirety of her plan to find a suitable vessel for her daughter’s consciousness to be reborn into. Miranda was also responsible for the creation of Eveline, working with The Connections.

That’s not the most shocking revelation, though: Chris discovers that Oswell E. Spencer, founder of Umbrella, was actually a student of Miranda's and began his work on the progenitor virus based on her teachings. To honour this, he designed Umbrella’s logo after Miranda’s four lords’ symbol. So not only is Miranda responsible for everything in Resident Evil 7 and Village, but she’s the inspiration that started this entire 30-year, virus-riddled affair!

After Chris exits the exposition-packed hallway, he encounters the true version of Mia, who’s very much alive and reveals that Ethan isn’t quite dead, either. It turns out that Miranda didn’t kill Ethan after all – Jack Baker did, way back at the start of Resident Evil 7. Ethan was infected by the Mold, which had kept him moving and “alive” this entire time, and explained how he could regularly reattach body parts with just a bit of healing juice.

Despite his mold infection, Ethan is falling apart, only able to muster just enough energy for one last stand against Mother Miranda. Upon defeating the big bad once and for all, he hands his daughter over to Chris and agrees to stay behind with the detonation device that will activate the bomb planted on the Megamycete, destroying the village, the mold, and himself once and for all. Ethan triggers the explosion as Chris, Mia, and Rose escape.

Resident Evil Requiem
October 2026

The upcomming adventures of Leon Kennedy and Grace Ashcroft take place in 2026. If the trailers are to be believed, the story will take us to the bombed out remains of Raccoon City, as well as the Rhodes Hill Chronic Care Center, which we explored in our hands-on preview. But until we play the full game, we don't know what this chapter will mean for the Resident Evil timeline.

Resident Evil Village - Shadows of Rose DLC
2037

In 2037, a teenage Rose learns about her abilities, one of which is the power to connect with a surviving piece of the mold root recovered from the incident 16 years prior. After jacking in, Rose enters a new realm filled with the memories of the Megamycete’s victims. She takes a jaunt through a version of the village her father was once trapped in, guided by the spirit “Michael”, who is actually Ethan’s remaining consciousness. As she explores, Rose is taunted by the trapped consciousness of Mother Miranda, who is desperate to escape this realm of memories. With the help of Ethan and her newfound abilities, Rose manages to defeat Mother Miranda and share one last moment with her father before she returns to the real world. In the aftermath, she visits Ethan’s grave while shadowed by a mysterious agent who calls her Eveline. After threatening him, Rose reveals she has abilities that even Chris doesn’t know about.

And there we go. That’s the entire plot of Resident Evil – well, all the stuff that actually matters. Yes, we skipped over some bits here or there, but there’s a lot to cover in the wacky world of Resident Evil, and that should be everything you need to know before diving into Resident Evil Requiem. Now, excuse me while I set my base to self-destruct and vow to get my revenge.

Dale Driver is an Associate Director of Video Programming at IGN. Be thoroughly bored by following him on Bluesky at @daledriver.bsky.social

Just one day after the announcement of Genie, Google's generative AI-powered virtual world creator, a number of major video game companies are seeing their stock prices tumble, seemingly because some investors think you can just generate an entire video game with AI now.

Of course, that's not what Genie is. Genie essentially lets you create a virtual "world" by offering prompts to describe the environment, a main character, and first or third-person view. Once it's created, you can control the described character and wander around the world you've made.

And that's...kind of it? While you can walk around these virtual spaces with your keyboard, critically, there's nothing else you can really do. There are no game mechanics, there's no one to talk to, no goals, no scores or meaningful interactions. Additionally, each generation is limited to just 60 seconds. And while you could maybe argue that this is just the first step on a road to eventually getting AI to generate playable 3D video games, there's no real evidence yet that such a thing is possible, or that the games would be good or even coherent. The Verge, for instance, tried to basically copy Breath of the Wild using Genie, and while they got something that essentially looks identical, that's just it. It's not playable, the "Link" looks kind of frightening actually, and Genie had to copy something that already existed to make this. It didn't come up with this on its own.

But that hasn't really stopped a lot of investors from suddenly jumping off the video game train, a conclusion first posed by Investing.com and shared by others, including Bloomberg journalist Jason Schreier. Perhaps the most notable decline is Take-Two Interactive, which reached a six-month low this morning and, while it rallied somewhat by the closing bell, still ended down 8%. Engine maker Unity is in a similar spot, dropping 24% today also to a six-month low. Roblox stock also cratered today by 13% by close today, though notably Roblox has been on a downward trend since November. Still, it's a six-month low for Roblox, too.

Not every gaming company is seeing a massive nosedive. Ubisoft is technically down 7% today, but with its stock down to just $1/share, any small movement in either direction will seem significant. The company has been in pretty dire straits for months, even years now, and its announcement of more layoffs, closures, and cancelations earlier this month already had stock even further in a downward spiral. EA stock hasn't changed much today at all, but that's understandable, given EA announced last fall that it was preparing to sell to an investor group headed up by the Saudi Arabian government and will soon exit the public trading market. Meanwhile, Nintendo stock, down just under 5% today at the time this piece was written, has been all over the place all month, following a steady downward trend since November.

The pattern I'm seeing here between Take-Two, Roblox, and Unity is a sudden distrust not in games as an idea, but rather concerns about "platforms". Unity is a game engine. People use it to make games. If Genie can also make games, who needs Unity? In Roblox's case, Roblox is a pure user-generated content (UGC) factory - something that would likely become obsolete quickly if Genie took over. And for Take-Two, the publisher is about to release Grand Theft Auto VI later this year (we hope), which would very likely be accompanied at launch or not long after with some new version of GTA Online. While the current GTA Online doesn't rely on UGC, there have been recent suspicions this new version might. Again, the thinking here is seemingly that if people can just make their own little games in Genie, why would they bother doing it in Roblox or GTA or Minecraft or Fortnite or Unreal or anywhere else (Microsoft, for its part is too big to see any stock impact from Genie today and Epic Games is not publicly traded).

Is selling shares of major game publishers going to pay off for these investors? I'm not a stock expert, but if nothing else, it doesn't seem to be like a good idea to bet against GTA 6 right now (though Take-Two's earnings are next week, so we'll see I guess). And while Genie doesn't seem up to the task of making a whole video game out of nothing, plenty of other studios are coming out on one side of the fence or the other on using generative AI of any kind in their work. It seems that one way or another, the folks betting big money on generative AI will reap whatever harvest of that investment there is sooner rather than later.

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.

When you say the words “creature collector,” you already have my attention. I’ve been both curious and wary in equal measures since Aniimo was first announced. I’m far from the only person hungering for a worthy competitor in the creature-collection, monster-taming space, and I’ve dabbled in quite a few. Aniimo looks particularly vibrant, vast, and cutesy to boot. It’s the addition of gacha elements that has had me a little on the fence. If you’ve ever sunk hours into a gacha, you understand the trepidation. Will this be the sort of gacha experience that has me gleefully forking over my credit card info, or resenting every microtransaction?

After about four hours with Aniimo, I’d say I’m still cautiously optimistic. It has all the ingredients of my favorite games: open-world exploration set in a fantastical alien world, lots of critters to collect, challenges to complete, and… farming? Okay, there might be a few too many ingredients added to this pot, but I’m willing to let Aniimo cook.

Big Butts, Tiny Waist

We leap straight into creating our Aniimo character. I can easily sink hours into a good character creator, so I was pumped to give Aniimo’s a try. From the get-go, the character creator feels super in-depth. I was given six default presets for both a “male” and “female” avatar (not great for all my non-binary pals). You can combine up to three different face presets to get something a little different, or you could just dive head first into the face customization options.

Aniimo’s character creation allows you to adjust the position, prominence, and size of pretty much every facial feature, from your nasal wings to your eyelids. However, it didn’t take me long before I noticed one glaring oversight: skin tone. After searching for a bit, I finally found the options for skin tone buried under all the other menus for “makeup”. Don’t let the three default options take you aback - like it did me - Aniimo won a bunch of points in my book by including a color wheel for unlimited skin tone options.

However, the character customization lost me again in two areas: one, hair options are extremely limited. I can only assume - based on the “fashion” vouchers I saw redeemable later on in my playthrough - that you unlock more hairstyles through in-game currency or progression. Having appearance and cosmetics locked behind gacha mechanics might be expected. The fact that there is only one natural curly hair option - if you can even call it that - available from the start, however, is frankly disheartening.

And second, I was similarly disappointed in the body customization. While I had so much control over fine-tuning the shape of my face, the sliders for body proportions were lacking to say the least. I never expect much in terms of body diversity when it comes to this genre of game, but having to choose between being eerily thin or skinny with a nice butt and boobs was disconcerting.

Which Aniimo Are You?

With character customization out of the way, I got my first look at my in-game self - and the adorable Aniimo! - in a cutscene reminiscent of a Twitch “IRL” livestream. The livestream overlay, complete with “real-time” chat bubbles from fictional viewers, threw me off a little bit, but luckily, we didn’t linger in the social media influencer realm for long. I found myself in the alien world of “Idyll”, an aptly named "idyllic" planet teeming with lush greenery and charming wildlife with unique powers, called Aniimo.

Our first Aniimo crosses our path - an adorable little fire-type Emberpup - smoothly introducing catch mechanics I’m already plenty familiar with. With an Emberpup at my side, my friend Nico laid down the basics of commanding Aniimo to use their abilities to remove obstacles or solve puzzles in the world. After catching a few more Aniimo and commanding my new pals to charge into deadly combat, the story began in earnest.

BINI, our little robo companion, is abruptly hijacked by a mysterious glowing D20 die, which pulls me and Nico into some sort of pocket dimension. In these strange ruins, I encountered murals on the wall depicting Aniimo I’ve yet to encounter. Each mural poses a cryptic question, ala a Buzzfeed personality quiz. The reason for this soul-searching became clear once I reached the glowing mural at the end of the path. The depictions of a yellow lion and blue fox in this mural materialized into two tiny Aniimo who can… talk? I was recommended to choose between Helion or Lunara, based on how I answered the murals’ questions earlier.

I really liked being offered a “sorting quiz” to guide me towards which “starter” Aniimo I should choose. After all, the “starter” you choose clearly says so much about you. Only having two options to choose from was a little unsatisfying, though it appears to tie into some sort of “sun and moon” mythology which could be central to Aniimo’s story. I went for Helion, personally, not only because he was recommended, but because of his sassy little personality. With Helion by my side, I was thrown into combat with my first big foe: a giant armored dragon Aniimo.

The combat was fun enough for my tastes, if a little button-mashy. I can imagine that timing your dodges and managing your cooldowns might take some deeper consideration as you progress. What really impressed me was the Twining mechanic. Yup, in Aniimo, you actually get to be the creatures. Playing as Helion - rather than just sitting back as a trainer - made for some engaging, brawly combat.

Getting Schooled

Just as quickly as I was transformed into Helion and defeated the dragon-type Aniimo, I was thrust into a whole new region. I found myself transported to the Polaris Institute, a futuristic academy devoted to studying Aniimo, located on my home planet of Astra. At this stage of the tutorial, things became a little bogged down in dialogue and instructional demos. To continue my adventure, I needed to become an official student at the Polaris Institute, instead of just a particularly precocious livestreamer, or whatever I was doing before.

To qualify to be a student, I was strong-armed into a combat simulation, which broke down the bare bones of accumulating “EP” and how to choose Aniimo that are elemental counters. Next up, I received my first free outfit - a school uniform - and sat through a quick Character menu breakdown. When I was finally teleported back down to Idyll with this hot anime guy and his hot wolf Aniimo - don’t judge me, you know that’s exactly what they were going for here - I hunkered down for another round of tutorials. After using the Report Terminal and building my Aniimo loadout, I finally had my first taste of exploration.

The Creatures

This is where I could start to see myself becoming hooked on Aniimo. There’s something so intrinsically appealing about running around a beautiful countryside and stopping to look at every shiny thing on the ground. There are fast travel spots to discover, new areas of the map to unveil, treasure chests to find, and most importantly, Aniimo to catch!

It quickly became clear that catching Aniimo has a bigger role to play than simply filling out your Aniilog or battling other Aniimo. Depending on their elemental type or other abilities, I relied on my Aniimo to help me solve environmental puzzles, like excavating buried treasure chests or floating on geysers of air. Getting to transform or “twine” with my Aniimo had me squealing with joy. Who doesn’t want to be a tiny little rock crab, walking through a field of flowers?

I quickly discovered how foundational the first Aniimo I caught were, as I swam across streams as Skippy, burned thorny obstacles with Emberpup, or glided around as Celestis. This gave me plenty of motivation to constantly be swapping around my “team” of Aniimo for a reason other than battle prowess. As I discovered later, even keeping starter evolutions - or “Lumin” stage - Aniimo is integral to completing some of the challenges and puzzles scattered around Idyll.

I spent a lot of time wandering around the map, catching new Aniimo, and collecting Lumin Amber to upgrade the Branch, a giant dandelion which improves the capture chance in that region, and completing miscellaneous milestone tasks, called “Elite Training”. These tasks felt a bit like chores: open “x” amount of chests, hatch “y” eggs, and so on, but completing them did fast track my level quickly while giving me a solid understanding of the core mechanics of Aniimo.

All of the Aniimo I caught while exploring were super cute, if a little… bland. I love some whimsy in my creature-collectors, a healthy mixture of adorable critters with some cursed-looking monstrosities. What’s neat about Aniimo, however, is that there seems to be a bunch of variations in each type. Most Aniimo have branching options for their second or final “stage” of evolution, and on top of the rare “Prismana” Aniimo which can be caught, I found a few fun “alternative” versions with different appearances based around the region I found them in.

#VanLife Influencer Era

A few hours into my playtime with Aniimo, I stumbled upon another of its key features: the RV. After discovering this NPC in the middle of a field, I abruptly found myself the proud owner of my own interdimensional RV. After a quick customization, I was prompted to teleport to the nearest “RV Park”. This vibrant campsite seems to be some sort of meeting place where you can get together with other Aniimo players and show off your own little outdoor deck.

As an aside, it wasn’t until I found the RV Park that I discovered that while - no, you cannot pet your Aniimo (boo) - you can pick up the Aniimo. Huh. That revelation made, I stepped through the interdimensional door in the back of my new RV and entered the “Homeland Space.” I assumed that this would be some sort of home-building mechanic, perhaps allowing me to decorate my own little space or interact with my Aniimo. Instead, I found myself on a small patch of barren farmland.

The Homeland tutorial had me clearing up the farm’s clutter and sowing my first seeds. Once grown, I was able to harvest my crops to sell. As reward, I received “Home Coins,” a currency I can only assume is unique to the Homeland section of Aniimo. With only this brief experience to go off of, I’m guessing that the Homeland farming is meant to be a sort of supplemental gameplay element which will let me idly generate currency every day. In exchange for my Home Coins, it appears that I can trade for other important in-game items, such as Eggs, or purchase “RV Welcome Packages”, which I’m hoping offer plenty of RV furniture and customization.

Honestly, the RV and Homeland feel a little discordant with the rest of my Aniimo experience. I love a good farming sim, but I cannot see myself motivated to spend time planting and selling crops every day if my only reward is just a slow grind to purchasing rare materials. Completing order requests just for extra Home Coins and coupons for RV furniture feels like it would quickly become a slog.

That said, I was pleasantly surprised during my time playing Aniimo. This is exactly the type of game I can see myself sinking hours into exploration and creature-collecting. The Aniimo were super adorable, and getting to play as the creatures you’re collecting is novel enough in itself to keep me interested. In some other areas, including the main story, Aniimo does feel admittedly empty or bland. I don’t imagine I’ll be filling out my entire Aniilog or progressing far enough to reach late-game mechanics. I’m still hyped to download Aniimo on my PC - maybe even on my mobile or Xbox Series X|S - when it releases, so I can run around as a little Nimbi once again.

Video game adaptation company Story Kitchen is cooking up a movie based on the popular Roblox experience, Steal a Brainrot.

As reported by Deadline, the movie studio has announced that it is officially in early development on a feature-length film based on the meme-collecting experience that launched just last May. It’s not exactly Sonic the Hedgehog, Tomb Raider, or any of the other games the studio is known for getting involved in, but it’s still something it’s (mostly) serious about.

“We’re thrilled to bring STEAL A BRAINROT to the big screen,” Story Kitchen co-founders Dmitri M. Johnson and Michael Lawrence Goldberg said in a statement. “Noobini Pizzanini 6-7.”

Deadline says the Steal a Brainrot movie will blend all of the “chaos, comedy, and competitive mischief” that has attracted the 56.6 billion visits the Roblox experience has achieved. Fans have turned up every day since May to buy "Brainrots," which are essentially meme versions of collectible monsters not unlike Pokémon. Some Brainrots are rarer than others, with players able to generate money, sell Brainrots, and, of course, steal them from other players.

Around 400,000 users are active in Steal a Brainrot as of this piece’s publication, with the all-time peak it reached in October being a whopping 25.8 million concurrent players. Even if you’ve never played Roblox, there’s a decent chance you’ve heard about this particular experience, as multi-instrumentalist and Uptown Funk mastermind Bruno Mars helped put together an exclusive concert for Steal a Brainrot earlier this month.

Story Kitchen is bringing Steal a Brainrot to moviegoers at an unspecified point in the future. The project is in development alongside Do Big Studios and Spyder Games, and it’s led by Johnson, Goldberg, Timothy I. Stevenson, and Elena Sandoval. Think Influence, which represents the creators of the experience, is also involved in the production.

The company has shown interest in the Roblox community before, announcing in November 2025 that it had started putting the pieces together for a movie based on Grow a Garden. Other projects in the works at Story Kitchen include the live-action Tomb Raider show, a Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 movie, a Life is Strange show, an It Takes Two movie, and more.

While we wait for updates on how Steal a Brainrot will bring memes to the movies, you can read about why experiences like Grow a Garden are bringing in millions of players. You can also see where Roblox ranked on the list of the most-played console games of 2025 (and 2024).

If you're jumping into Steal a Brainrot to see what all the fuss is about, check out our Steal a Brainrot guide. While you won't need help getting common Brainrots like Noobini Pizzanini, we do have pages to help you get secret Brainrots such as Las Tralaeritas, the money-making hellhound Cerberus, and of course, 67. For everything else, you can find our list of Roblox guides and code pages here.

Michael Cripe is a freelance writer with IGN. He's best known for his work at sites like The Pitch, The Escapist, and OnlySP. Be sure to give him a follow on Bluesky (@mikecripe.bsky.social) and Twitter (@MikeCripe).

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is 22 years old, which as you can imagine means that people have cracked that game wide open with weird glitches, skips, and tricks. Over the years, speedrunners have found ways to break San Andreas that got an any% speedrun of it down to a little under three hours, but recently an absolutely buckwild bug was found that cut that time down even further, to under an hour. Buckle up, folks, because this is one heck of a wacky speedrun.

First, some context. San Andreas has been broken and rebroken many times over the years across its multiple versions, and there's one specific "trick" that's upended the speedrunning landscape multiple times. It actually originated in GTA: Vice City, where a trick known as Script Stack Underflow (SSU) was found that chopped an any% run down to around eight minutes. Way back in 2019, San Andreas runners found something similar that they called "Arbitrary Jump in Script", or AJS, specifically in the Window Store remaster of the game. This overly-complex trick essentially let speedrunners jump straight to the end of the game by doing a long series of very specific things such as killing a drug dealer, parking a bike in a very specific place, answering the phone at very specific times, and diligently avoiding vending machines at all costs.

While involved, it demonstrably worked, with the end result being the game executing a "JUMP" command to the start of End of the Line Part 3, the final mission. Ever since then the speedrunning community has had to split the category into any% and any% no AJS, because watching a run with AJS is fun exactly once and then you really just want to watch a proper, action-packed, multi-hour San Andreas speedrun. For a long time, this skip was limited to the Windows Store version of the game, though it was later found in the Definitive Edition remaster with some significant setup differences.

Well now, speedrunners have figured out how to do AJS in the original PC version of San Andreas. It is also completely different in how it's set up, and is somehow even wackier than any of the versions that have come before. u/Vitosi4ek on Reddit has a really nice breakdown of all the steps involved (though some runners have already found ways to smooth out certain bits of it). These include: winning $10,000 on horse betting, making a clone of yourself, doing stunt jumps on a superbike, betting in the casino with negative money, changing your clothes, doing a dance minigame, running two Mission at the exact same time, and a lot more. All of this will hopefully, if the game doesn't crash, send you to the start of End of the Line Part 3, and let you finish the game right there.

This glitch was literally just discovered, and in that time the world record run for an any% of GTA: San Andreas has dropped down to 53 minutes and 46 seconds by creezyful. It's very likely that this time will get even more shaved off in the coming days and weeks as speedrunners continue to optimize. This has also resulted in the community splitting any% off from any% no AJS, so audiences can still enjoy a roughly three-hour run of San Andreas and all the hyjinks involved in that.

It's wildly impressive to me that people are still managing to crack games this old open even more than they've already been, and make their guts do ridiculous things. Just this past AGDQ, I watched someone run arbitrary code execution in The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, something I'm pretty sure they didn't know how to do the last time the game was at the show. Video games, man!

Unfortunately, that does mean it'll probably be a long time before we get a run of GTA 6 that goes that fast. And that's if we can even make it to launch day this November.

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.

Most of us know playing the best board games with friends and family can be a great way to spend your free time. But what about turning to board games when you find yourself alone and looking for something to pass the time? It's not as strange as it may sound, because many board games these days are designed to be played solo, or at least have a fun single-plyaer mode. From strategy games to roll-and-write board games and everything in between, there are many options available for solo play. Below, we'll take a look at some of the best board games that can be played alone, giving you a chance to relax and unwind while still engaging your mind.

TL;DR: These are the Best Solo Board Games

Vantage

Creature Caravan

A Wild Venture

War Story: Occupied France

Invincible: The Hero-Building Game

Legacy of Yu

Final Girl

Dune Imperium

Hadrian's Wall

Imperium: Horizons

Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective

Robinson Crusoe: Adventures on the Cursed Island

Dinosaur Island: Rawr ‘n Write

Cascadia

Terraforming Mars

Spirit Island

Stardew Valley creator Eric "ConcernedApe" Barone has assured fans that he is "not going to abandon Haunted Chocolatier," saying: "it's taking a while to finish the game," and "that's okay."

In a new blog posted to the official Haunted Chocolatier website, Barone dispelled a number of myths and rumors that have popped up about him and his work on the upcoming game, admitting: "I know, I know, I shouldn't have announced the game so early. But I had my reasons." He added that Haunted Chocolatier will release "when it's done."

Responding to reports that the game will be abandoned entirely and possibly folded into Stardew Valley, Barone shut that down completely, writing: "No. First, I am not going to abandon Haunted Chocolatier. But even if I did, I am not going to add it to Stardew Valley. Stardew Valley and Haunted Chocolatier are separate games. It doesn’t even make sense from a technical perspective, as Haunted Chocolatier is written from scratch, it’s not the same 'engine' as Stardew Valley. You can’t just copy and paste Haunted Chocolatier into Stardew Valley."

Last summer, Barone admitted that he "didn't want to just be the Stardew Valley guy," explaining that was why he's currently working on Haunted Chocolatier. He's been clear that we shouldn't expect a release date anytime soon, though — there's "still a lot to be done," particularly as he feels it's "got to be better" than Stardew Valley. But that doesn't mean he's using Stardew to test ideas for Haunted Chocolatier, or vice-versa.

"When working on Stardew Valley, I’m not thinking about Haunted Chocolatier, and vice versa. I wouldn’t 'test something out' in Stardew Valley because that would be unfair to Stardew Valley, and also I don’t want to spoil ideas for Haunted Chocolatier by adding them first to Stardew Valley. Also, Stardew Valley is a different game, so you can’t really 'test something' for Haunted Chocolatier in it in an accurate way."

Barone also insisted that at no point did he intimate that the new game wouldn't be out until 2030, writing: "I was asked in 2025 if it would come out within the next five years, and I said 'I hope so.' This is very different than saying 'it’s coming out in 2030.' The bottom line is, I don’t want to give a release date. The game will come out when it’s done. Anyway, the only thing that really matters is that I keep making progress on the game and release it. So I’m gonna get back to doing that now.

"TLDR: I’m alive, the game is still in development, and it will come out when it’s ready. Thank you for your patience."

Talking of Stardew Valley: as fans continue to wait patiently for the previously announced 1.7 update, Barone dropped a couple of small, vague, yet exciting hints just before the holidays about what said mysterious update might entail, including a new farm type, and "more character/social stuff."

As for why Barone's working on a Stardew Valley update at the same time as Haunted Chocolatier? "I’m working on a new Stardew update because it’s a very popular game with a large, ever-growing playerbase, and I still have additional ideas for how to improve it."

Vikki Blake is a reporter for IGN, as well as a critic, columnist, and consultant with 15+ years experience working with some of the world's biggest gaming sites and publications. She's also a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her at BlueSky.