Speaking with Zach “UnsurpassableZ” Hartman on Twitch at the end of the first official Stardew Valley Cup, Eric “ConcernedApe” Barone answered a handful of questions from the community, one of which was about mods that let the player marry the non-marriageable people in the smash hit farming game. Barone replied to explain why having almost everyone in the game be marriageable would be “just a tonne of work”. “That’s the main reason why I haven’t added more people,” he said. “To have someone become a marriage candidate, that means I have to add a lot of dialogue and at least two more events, and those events take a lot of time. It may seem like it’s not that big of a deal, but they take a huge amount of time. There’s a lot of other stuff - you have to make the spouse room. There’s just a lot to it. So that’s the reason why I haven’t just added more marriage candidates. But there’s no reason why I’m opposed to having more. I think it would be fun.” Barone then revealed he has two existing NPCs in mind for who would be a good marriage candidate, before clarifying that this isn’t something in active development - no doubt in a bid to prevent the Stardew Valley community from getting too excited. “I’m not saying there’s going to be another Stardew Valley update,” Barone said. “I don’t even know at this point. Right now I am focused on my next game. So, we’ll see.” Stardew Valley’s 1.5 update released late last year and was the game’s biggest yet, adding the Ginger Island location and the Beach Farm layout. Since then, players have wondered whether a 1.6 update was in the works, but it sounds like Barone is done with Stardew Valley for the time being, which is understandable considering he’s been working on it for a decade. So, what’s this new game then? He touched on it briefly during the Q&A to say he may announce it soon. “I may announce it fairly soon, what it is - no-one knows at this point,” he said. “What I will say is it’s another pixel art game, a top-down perspective similar to Stardew Valley. And in some ways it is kind of similar to Stardew Valley, but it’s not a farming game. It’s something different.”
