Stardew Valley, the farming sim/social RPG released in 2016, has become for many, a comfort game. This is no wonder when everything Stardew Valley does promotes the idea of honest work and good community. It’s curious then, how often a game that is viewed as so wholesome, gets surprisingly dark.
Solo developed by ConcernedApe, Stardew Valley was a huge success. The game was heavily inspired by, and acted as a throwback to, the Harvest Moon games on the SNES, the high point of that series in many fans’ eyes. Stardew Valley’s success led to it being released on all major home consoles and ConcernedApe developing a series of free updates for the game, including a co-op multiplayer mode.
The latest update for Stardew Valley, the 1.5 Update, added various endgame content to the game, the crowning jewel of which was Ginger Island, a whole new area for players to explore. The game rewarded curious players’ exploration with golden walnuts, which could be spent unlocking new areas and features of the Island. Of course, the Stardew Valley community foraged every inch of the island, and it was believed at all the secrets had been uncovered. That is until Reddit user u/kotschi1993 uncovered a creepy unseen easter egg with the use of mods.
In their search for the island's golden walnuts this player used a data layers mod, showing where the map boundaries were for the player character and revealing any hidden paths. Surprisingly this also revealed an image of a skull, drawn by Concerned Ape using these invisible player boundaries. The drawing is unreachable by the player, so the easter egg would have likely remained hidden if not for a mod that could visualize these boundaries.
Stardew Valley is a game that really leans into the retro-game sensibility of “playground myths” and difficult to find secrets that makes it such a rich game for the community to explore and theorize over. The game is full of surprisingly dark elements that offset its cheerful exterior and really add to the game’s depth for players that dive in. In everything from the strange noises late at night, to the looming threat of a corporation in a wholesome small-town farm sim. Concerned Ape threw in so many little things for players to notice that really an invisible skull painted over the mysterious forest doesn’t seem out of style.
It is also possible that Concerned Ape predicted mods would be used by players to find all the illusive golden walnuts on Ginger Island and drew the skull in the hopes of spooking these specific players in an appropriately jungle-adventure style.
Stardew Valley is available now on mobile, PC, PS4, Switch, and legacy platforms.
