Stardew Valley Developer Shares Good News About Haunted Chocolatier

Last month, one-man developer Eric Barone, best known as the creator of Stardew Valley, revealed Haunted Chocolatier, his next game. Unfortunately, salient details on the game are scarce, but Barone did accompany the reveal with a debut trailer, which revealed a game that looks very much like Stardew Valley. However, according to Barone, while the games look similar, it's not a 'copy and paste' job. In fact, according to the developer, everything for the game has been made from scratch, including the combat. 

"Haunted Chocolatier has a greater focus on combat, so it needs to be very fun, satisfying, and engaging, while also appropriately fitting into the big picture," said Barone. "You can rest assured that I'm not 'copying and pasting' Stardew's combat. On the contrary, almost everything in Haunted Chocolatier, including the combat, is completely coded (and drawn) from scratch."

Obviously, everything being built from the ground up is good news for fans of Barone looking forward to the game, but it's especially good news for those that didn't like the combat of Stardew Valley, which was the most commonly criticized component of the breakout hit. Whether the combat will be any good in Haunted Chocolatier, remains to be seen, but given that there's far more emphasis on it than in Stardew Valley, fans are relieved to hear it won't just be more of Stardew Valley's combat 

"The bottom line, is that I won't rest, or release this game, until I am personally satisfied that it's very fun and compelling, in every aspect," added Barone. "If it never gets there, I'll just never release it. But don't worry, I have 100% faith that I'll get it there. Everything is on the right track so far, I have the complete vision for the game in my head, and it's just a matter of 'grinding it out.' which is what I'm doing every day!"

Haunted Chocolatier is in active development. At the moment of publishing, there's been no word of platforms beyond PC and there's currently also no word of a release date or even a release window.