Highlights
- Haunted Chocolatier looks promising, inspired by Stardew Valley and featuring a unique premise and charming art design, offering confidence despite limited information.
- It shares similarities with Stardew Valley in terms of gameplay, business management, progression, and slice-of-life aspects, potentially enhancing customization elements.
- Haunted Chocolatier has the opportunity to improve upon Stardew Valley's character customization with more freedom, distinct visuality, and supernatural options, as well as expand on home customization for more creativity and originality.
Haunted Chocolatier, a spiritual successor to the excellent Stardew Valley, is already looking incredibly promising. The game's unique premise and charming art design, alongside developer ConcernedApe's sterling reputation thanks to the success of Stardew Valley, have helped inspire confidence in Haunted Chocolatier, despite very little being actually known about the project. Ideally, ConcernedApe will use Haunted Chocolatier to expand and polish some of Stardew's fundamentals, including customization.
It looks like Haunted Chocolatier will share some Stardew Valley DNA, even if the two aren't directly connected. Aside from the general tone and pixelated art style, the gameplay pillars of business management, continual progression, and integrated dungeon-crawling are present in both titles. On top of this, it looks like Haunted Chocolatier is taking a similar approach to its narrative and slice-of-life aspects, with the player-character choosing a simpler life in a small town after becoming tired of living in a city. Assuming the building blocks of Stardew Valley are the same ones that comprise Haunted Chocolatier, the latter could take steps to enhance the various elements of customization found in the former.
Haunted Chocolatier Has to Go Big or Go Home on One Holiday
Of all the holidays that might feature in Haunted Chocolatier, there is one in particular that the game absolutely shouldn't skimp on.
Haunted Chocolatier Should Take Stardew Valley's Customization to the Next Level
Stardew Valley lets players start a family, expand their household, and operate a multifaceted, independent business. In short, the game serves as a chance to create a miniature virtual world, and personalization naturally plays a major role in this overall structure. Stardew provides players with a great deal of freedom when it comes to decorating their homes, dressing their avatar, and organizing their farm layout, but Haunted Chocolatier could still kick things up a notch.
How Haunted Chocolatier Can Improve Stardew Valley's Character Customization
Home and farm customization may be impressive and robust in Stardew Valley, but character customization options are somewhat lacking by comparison. Details such as body type and height can't be altered, and there aren't many options for more distinct hairstyles or physical features, either. Of course, much of this can be attributed to the simple, retro art style of Stardew Valley, which limits how much detail can be displayed by the game's sprites, but that doesn't mean that there isn't room for improvement.
Haunted Chocolatier could allow for more freedom when it comes to the size and shape of the player character, helping the protagonist of the game appear more visually distinct from the NPCs. In the same vein, the game should open the door to out-there character designs, leaning into the fantastical elements of its premise through more bizarre and dramatic character creation options. Haunted Chocolatier's supernatural emphasis could perhaps even allow players to make non-human avatars.
Haunted Chocolatier Should Build Up Stardew Valley's Home Customization
More robust character creation tools would no doubt be a welcome addition, but further fleshing out the already extensive home personalization mechanics of Stardew Valley is arguably more important. Stardew Valley players could enhance their houses with some extra rooms, paint jobs, and wallpapers, but this progression can feel a bit linear with not much room for creative expression. To remedy this, Haunted Chocolatier could take some notes from crafting or survival games like Minecraft by letting players add rooms, annexes, or other components to their homes and shops manually, leading to home customization similar to Stardew Valley's while setting the stage for more creative and truly original house designs.
It can be hard to imagine how the already fantastic personalization options of Stardew Valley could be improved upon, but Haunted Chocolatier could certainly do it. With the addition of features like the storefront and the apparent focus on the supernatural, ConcernedApe has the chance to make Haunted Chocolatier a game that offers the same charm and satisfying, low-stakes gameplay loop of Stardew Valley, while offering even more freedom to players.
Haunted Chocolatier
Haunted Chocolatier is an upcoming adventure game from Stardew Valley creator ConcernedApe (Eric Barone). The game is currently set to feature a lush explorable world, chocolate making and cooking, a spooky theme, and more. There is currently no release date or time period for the game.
