Highlights
- Haunted Chocolatier will focus more on combat, and the game having its own version of Stardew Valley's Skull Cavern for exploration and challenges would be beneficial.
- Skull Cavern in Haunted Chocolatier could be early game content to help players learn combat mechanics and find the best weapons.
- The game's version of Skull Cavern could impact gameplay by offering ingredients through combat, saving time and adding a risk/reward system.
ConcernedApe’s Haunted Chocolatier will have a heavier focus on combat than his previous hit, Stardew Valley. With that in mind, Haunted Chocolatier can’t be without its own version of Stardew Valley’s Skull Cavern.
Skull Cavern is an area in Stardew Valley’s Desert section that players can unlock by finding the Skull Key. The area is best described as an endless dungeon, allowing players even more exploration and combat opportunities than the mines of Pelican Town. Though more challenging than the mines, Skull Cavern also offers greater rewards and discoveries for the player to find. With the endless number of floors and random layout each entry, Skull Cavern gives players who prefer combat to farming an area to return to for new challenges each day. As combat-focused as the cavern is, not including a version of it in the combat-heavy Haunted Chocolatier would be a huge mistake.
Haunted Chocolatier Desperately Needs One Stardew Valley 1.6 Feature at Launch
Out of everything added to Stardew Valley in its 1.6 update, one key feature should be carried over and included in Haunted Chocolatier at launch.
Haunted Chocolatier’s Skull Cavern Should be Early Game Content
Much about Haunted Chocolatier remains a mystery, despite fans looking forward to more information, but one certainty is the heavy amount of combat that the game will have. The different areas for combat, and how they fit into the game world, could take many forms, but this game's version of Skull Cavern would be indispensable for players learning the ropes. While Stardew Valley uses Skull Cavern as a reward for players who have reached deep areas of the mines, Haunted Chocolatier should place the area much earlier in the game. With Stardew Valley’s focus on farming, it makes sense to push the dungeon areas to the background, but the opposite is true of Haunted Chocolatier's combat-focused gameplay.
An endless dungeon appearing early on in the game’s story could act as a tutorial section to allow players to learn new combat mechanics. Rather than having to venture into far-off forests or caves to train, an endless area of foes to vanquish close to town would let players jump right into gaining experience as a fighter. A heavier combat focus also means weapons better than Stardew Valley's, which the player would need to experiment with to find the one that suits them best. The easy to defeat enemies of the early dungeon floors would make excellent target practice when testing out newly unlocked combat mechanics.
How Haunted Chocolatier’s Skull Cavern Can Impact Gameplay
Haunted Chocolatier’s gameplay loop seems to involve collecting materials through combat to use later in the chocolate making process. As such, the game will need plenty of different recipes, ingredients, and ways to collect them. Some important ingredients, like cocoa powder or sugar, will need to be easy to collect in large quantities, so if enemies in the game’s version of Skull Cavern drop these ingredients, it would be an easy way for players to collect mass amounts of them. This would cut down on the amount of time players would spend moving from location to location for the basic necessities of their job. In the early moments of the game, time will be precious, so any way to manage it better would provide players with a more engaging experience.
What’s great about endless dungeons, though, is that they offer endless amounts of challenge. While enemies start off simple, the deeper the player ventures, the tougher the enemies get, so they will naturally drop better ingredients. In Stardew Valley, the deepest levels of Skull Cavern offer challenging enemies and sometimes reward the player with floors full of rare materials. A similar reward system in Haunted Chocolatier would ensure that players always have a reason to return to the dungeon. Some of these rare ingredients could also be used in recipes with ones from other locations, encouraging the player to explore more and find the remaining ingredients. If used both as a tutorial and a risk/reward system, a Skull Cavern in Haunted Chocolatier could become a game-defining location.
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.
