Rani's Favorite Games: That farming life

Hi guys, and welcome back to Too Many Books to Count! I’m so glad you stopped by again, for the next portion in our series about my favorite things. As you’ll know if you’ve been hanging out with us this month, the month of July has been devoted to some of my favorite things, and the ways in which they’ve molded me as a person and as a writer. It’s something that I hadn’t really thought about talking about in this way, but I think it’s been a great growing lesson for me, to look at my life and flesh out how the things I love have affected the way I write. If you haven’t started doing so for yourself, I highly recommend it—I’ve learned a great deal about myself, along the way.

This week, I wanted to talk about something I don’t generally talk about at all: games. I like games. I like games a lot. I used to like games a lot more, but a few friends of mine are getting me back into it, slowly but surely. And the game I’m going to talk about today… it’s a bit of a gateway, for really getting back into gaming.

Rani’s Favorite Games: Stardew Valley

I’m sure some of you saw that one coming. I mean really, who doesn’t love Stardew Valley? It’s just so much fun, it’s relaxing, and it’s really fun to play at the end of the day when your brain doesn’t want to do anything else.

Which is what I use it for, in a way.

Just like Terraforming Mars is a game I play to get my brain thinking in a different way, a logical way, Stardew Valley is a game I play to keep myself creative, but keep myself thinking along the way. There’s something about Stardew, about having a farm all your own and arranging it just the way you want, something about calculating how much money you have each season for how many crops, about saving certain crops so you can give them to certain people… it’s a little bit like an extremely simple version of life, and for me, that makes it a lot of fun.

It’s the game I like to play after I’m done writing for the day, because it’s just creative enough that it keeps those juices flowing in the hours before I go to sleep, and it’s relaxing enough that I won’t be kept up thinking about it.

For me, playing Stardew Valley is a little bit like a reward for getting my writing done for the day, for a hard day’s work of editing, or even a pick-me-up after an especially trying or difficult day. And that’s something we all need. It’s the game I go to if I have to kill off a character and I just don’t want to do it, the place I can get a little relief and release some tension if I’ve had to write in the POV of the villain most of the day, and for that, it’ll probably always be one of my favorites.

And yeah, it’s a bit of a gateway. I’m getting a gaming computer so I’ll be able to play some others. I’ll let you know what they are!

For the record, I thought about basing today’s post off Halcyon 6, but though that game was a lot of fun and really did help me keep my thoughts straight while I was writing, it also kept me up at night… and so Stardew won the competition. ;-)

Be sure to stop back in next week for the emotional end to my series of favorites!

[love]

{Rani Divine}