Stardew Valley developer ConcernedApe (Eric Barone) is hard at work on his next big game, Haunted Chocolatier. Although it’s still a ways from release, a new interview with Game Informer (thanks, Kotaku) indicates that it’s going to be quite a step up from Stardew in terms of raw content.
Barone confirmed in the interview that he’s currently working 7 days a week, 5 of which are devoted to Haunted Chocolatier, and the remaining 2 working on the upcoming 1.7 update for Stardew.
Here’s what he said about Haunted Chocolatier:
“It’s way bigger than Stardew Valley, at least in terms of the amount of maps, the amount of monsters, the depth to the whole item system, and all the equipment slots and all the stuff like this. Everything is cranked up.”
In a blog post earlier this year, Barone conceded that he probably shouldn’t have announced Haunted Chocolatier so early, but it at least sounds like he’s putting a great deal of effort into making it a reality. He stressed that he won’t abandon the game and integrate the content into Stardew:
“No. First, I am not going to abandon Haunted Chocolatier. But even if I did, I am not going to add it to Stardew Valley. Stardew Valley and Haunted Chocolatier are separate games. It doesn’t even make sense from a technical perspective, as Haunted Chocolatier is written from scratch, it’s not the same “engine” as Stardew Valley. You can’t just copy and paste Haunted Chocolatier into Stardew Valley.”
Meanwhile, the 1.7 update for Stardew is said to bring new marriage candidates, improvements to the game’s children, and the ability to actually edit your own farm layout rather than rely on one of the presets.
Are you excited to see more from Haunted Chocolatier? How about Stardew’s upcoming update? Let us know with a comment.