These days, it's hard to imagine a world without Stardew Valley. Eric "ConcernedApe" Barone's pixel perfect village escape is the modern standard bearer by which all other cozy and retro-styled games are measured against. Explicitly inspired by the early Harvest Moon games, Stardew Valley has ballooned in popularity beyond anyone's expectations since its release in 2016, taking on its own identity and inspiring countless other indie games of the cute and cuddly variety. None of this would be true, however, if Barone hadn't been able to salvage the game data from a computer crash that happened about a year into development.
PC Gamer recently republished a 2016 interview with Barone in which the solo developer brushed with the idea that his ragtag Harvest Moon-like could become a phenomenon. Barone couldn't have had any idea just how revolutionary Stardew Valley would one day become, but he had the foresight to know he was very lucky to recover from a PC crash that almost put Stardew Valley in a pixelated grave before it was ever born.
Barone told PC Gamer that the project was almost canceled when the PC he was using to develop the game unexpectedly crashed. Since he had no backups, Barone thought it was over for Stardew Valley, but was ultimately able to restore the project from the old hard drive and build a new rig.
"In retrospect, it feels crazy that it all worked out," he said. "The whole development was so sloppy. It was the most indie development you could imagine: no professional style at all, figuring it all out as I go, and just the scrappiest code you could imagine. I'm almost embarrassed to have other people look at my code!"
Barone's next game, Haunted Chocolatier, very much seems to be being built using the foundation laid down by Stardew Valley, and with Barone having all of that experience under his belt, not to mention a small team helping him put everything together, fans can expect a much smoother development process while they wait for the darker, sweeter follow-up.
