So now I'm a virtual farmer? I'm in big trouble already

So, I haven’t owned a video game since FROGGER, but now that I’m retired I want to become a “gamer” and relive an adolescence I never had. So I go to Game Stop and I tell the clerk I’m looking for a Role-Playing Game (RPG) that I can learn on; something wholesome and fun, that’s suitable for a beginner, meaning me (In case he gets the wrong impression that I’m buying this for my grandchild or something). He hands me “Stardew Valley”. Sure, I knew I wasn’t ready for Skyrim (which everybody says is amazing and beautiful) but maybe I wasn’t clear that I wasn’t shopping for a 10 year-old. The packaging looked like a game for little children, but the man said he still loves playing Stardew Valley and folks of all ages get addicted to it, So I bought it because it was about time I got addicted to something fun and especially because it was marked down half price. Yay!

First thing I do when I get home is I go to YouTube and search “Stardew Valley beginner’s guide”. I watch several videos. They all start the same way: “I LOVE SDV! It’s one of my favorite games of all time, and I was thinking after 1000 hours how when I first started playing, there was so much stuff that I didn’t know, so I decided to make this video for you beginners”. YES! Exactly what I want. After three of these guides with occasional contradictory advice (plant the free seeds/No, sell the free seeds and buy potatoes), I feel ready to plunge in.

My first task is to choose my avatar. Only two sexes available (Thank God) and all sorts of skin tone options, hair styles and colors (including blue), clothing options, etc. I name her Twyla (after one of my characters in the novel I’m writing) and her farm Starryknoll (because that’s the name of the vineyard Twyla owns). The SDV back story goes like this; I’m an anonymous office worker in a nondescript cubicle among other anonymous worker bees in a row of identical nondescript cubicles working for the corporate giant Joja Corp. My grandfather dies and leaves me his rundown old farm. So I quit my soulless corporate job and take a bus to Stardew Valley, where I discover I have a lot of work to do to restore this pastoral weed-fest and tiny one-room house to something profitable.

Day One: I try to clear out weeds and trees from my front yard in order to start planting those free seeds. Takes me a while to learn how to use a tool or how to switch tools. I realize this is not a simple game. There’s so much to keep track of. (I miss my Frogger!) There are people you need to get to know (the NPC’s, and some of them have real attitude problems), crop options, options everywhere. Plus none of these beginner videos ever explained what the bloody Switch controllers do! One said the controls are pretty simple (So simple he just skipped over that part), as if it should be obvious (I wish I knew a 10-year old I could hire to show me what to do)

Nevertheless, a positive attitude and perseverance is essential to good virtual farming. So I start pushing buttons at random to see what happens. That ends up creating some problems. One of these problems is that once I get my inventory box open, I don’t know how to close it again, except by accident. I have a lot of those. I collect enough wood to make the storage chest that all my YouTube influencers say I must have, and I end up accidently throwing away all the wood I had collected in the trash. I somehow manage to pick up a stick of wood accidently and can’t figure how to put down the darn thing. I end up walking through the village trying to drop the stick, and I meet an NPC who says to me, “I don’t want that!” (Neither do I. Drop it. Drop it! Drop it! Drop it! Eventually I do drop it without know how).

Day two I go to the beach. Willy gives me a fishing pole, which I accidently throw away in the trash can while trying to get out of the lousy inventory box before I can even learn how to use the pole. I try exiting the game and going back, thinking it will resent. Nope! I’m still in the inventory box. UGGH! I hate this game! Finally, after 4 “days” in the game, I think to google what the Switch controllers do in Star Dew Valley and start a notebook with diagrams and lots of arrows.

I’m still having trouble moving about and hitting what I’m aiming at. The last game I tried to play long ago, when my son was still living at home, was Super Mario Cart, which was fun, although I spent most of my time running off roads, running off cliffs, running into cows, banana peels, and coming in last place. So I learned on the one-player mode how to slow down and get more control, which saved me a lot of running off track or into stuff. I still didn’t win often, but at least I was no longer coming in last place. It became a lot more fun. This game is just as frustrating, but if I stop worrying about doing everything perfect right off the bat and learn to do it my way, I think I can someday turn that dilapidated old farm into a vineyard, and then maybe I’ll figure out how to make friends with the villagers, plying them with wine instead of waving sticks at them. Game on.