Stardew Valley‘s multiplayer update has been revealed, with the farm simulator introducing support for up to four players to co-operate with one another, toil on the farm and even marry each other.
The news was revealed today by publisher Chucklefish, who have been working with Stardew Valley‘s lone developer Eric Barone in order to get multiplayer support up and running. In a blog post Chucklefish revealed that its multiplayer mode will allow players to build up to 3 cabins on their farm, which each housing a different farmhand that will be controlled by one of the player’s friends.
Farmhands will have the ability to do almost everything the player can do, save for making certain decisions such as when to go to sleep and whether to start or finish a festival, with them able to farm, mine, fight, fish, forage, marry NPCs and do a bunch of other things in the game world. Each player will also have their own inventory, with the items in this inventory stored in a chest in their cabin when they are offline.
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The most interesting ability featured in this multiplayer update is player-to-player marriage, which will effectively allow players to marry their friends. Chucklefish noted that rather than make use of the mermaid pendant, they are instead looking to introduce an alternative method “that requires a similar amount of effort to wooing an NPC,” though they are “still working out what that will be.”
Friends can join your game session by way of an invite through Steam, with it not requiring you to set up a server in order to begin playing alongside them. Local multiplayer, split-screen and PVP options are not planned by Chucklefish at this point.
“We currently expect to be able to start a beta test at the end of the year for Steam users to help us test the game,” Chucklefish said of the update. “Mod authors will be encouraged to update their mods during this beta period. Then, in early 2018 we will release it as the 1.3 patch on Windows, Mac and Linux.”
Additionally, the multiplayer patch will also make its way to console, with the Switch version of Stardew Valley being the first to receive it. There’s no time frame for when the PS4 and Xbox One versions of the patch will be released, though Chucklefish notes that it will “take a while to roll out to each platform.”
Fans of the 2016 sleeper hit have been looking forward to a multiplayer update for quite some time now, so it’s good to know that it’s taking shape. Hopefully it doesn’t experience any delays from here until early 2018, and we’ll be able to tie the knot with our buddies ASAP.
