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Stardew Valley creator Eric 'ConcernedApe' Barone has shared a single, completely normal screenshot of Haunted Chocolatier, and his fans are absolutely wigging out.
It's a testament to the immense popularity of Stardew Valley that such an ordinary screen can illicit such a crazed reaction from its community.
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haunted chocolatier screenshot pic.twitter.com/aHe22PgxpSAugust 2, 2022
The still image simply shows a character standing in the middle of a room made up of brick walls and wood flooring, with a pair of carved owls perched atop pillars. There's a bookcase and some barrels laying around, but otherwise there isn't much to note here. Barone himself captioned the image aptly and in all lowercase: "haunted chocolatier screenshot."
Despite this relatively tame offering, Stardew Valley fans are losing it, with Barone's tweeting racking up thousands of engagements in mere minutes. @ludollama is "flailing and squeaking at a frequency only dolphins can hear," while @aprilhendon asks that "everyone say thank you to Eric for blessing us on this Tuesday," as if Barone is a divine entity. @weary_bones says "every bone in my body is rattling in anticipation of this game," and scanning the replies to Barone's tweet reveals many, many reactions with similar energy.
Barone revealed Haunted Chocolatier back in October to much fanfare. The Stardew Valley follow-up whisks players off to another cozy-looking town with resources to collect and people to meet, except this time, as you might expect, you're in charge of running a chocolate shop. Oh, and there are ghosts. Cute ghosts.
"Don’t think for a moment that, because this game features ghosts in a haunted castle, it is an evil or negative game," Barone said at the time of the reveal. "On the contrary, I intend for this game to be positive, uplifting and life-affirming. However, if Stardew Valley mostly channeled the energy of the sun, Haunted Chocolatier channels the energy of the moon."
Haunted Chocolatier doesn't have a release date yet, so hopefully Barone will tide us over with plenty more screenshots and, eventually, another trailer.
In the meantime, check out these great games like Stardew Valley to get lost in.
