Starting Three Steps Behind

via Universal Gaming

I'm fortunate to have a job where my coworkers feel like family. It's a benefit of working for a small, independent business, I suppose.

The downside of having such a tight-knit work fam, however, is when someone is called to greener pastures.

Thankfully, goodbye isn't a forever thing. Former employees still come to game nights if they can make it or just drop in to say hi if they're in the area.

And not long ago, a now-former coworker made darn sure we'd be keeping in touch.

Stardew Valley is one of his favorite games, so he insisted start a co-op campaign.

I was aware of Stardew Valley—even more so thanks in part to this one coworker bringing it up a fair bit—but hadn't played it prior. I kind of burned myself out in terms of village restoration committees with Animal Crossing: New Horizons during and after the Covid lockdown. When I'd thought about getting started with Stardew Valley sometime later, there was a free trial for Cult of the Lamb that captured all of my cozy management game attention.

(And I know what you're thinking, but there are indeed cozy elements to Cult of the Lamb.)

So when this coworker's "final wish" was creating a multiplayer Stardew Valley campaign with us, I knew it was finally time.

There was a bit of a learning curve. I'm not a PC gamer, so I picked up a controller that took a smidge to get connected. Adapting my setup to what I'm used to seemed like a good call, except for those times a coworker was trying to explain the controls and things like "click the right mouse button" didn't translate.

Stardew Valley is actually a little more involved than I expected, in part because I was missing some context. I didn't see the opening cutscene because we just spawned onto the farm. The importance of being in bed by 2:00 AM or else became quickly apparent. The crew is running through town, three quests ahead, while I didn't even know there were quests to begin with.

And then all of a sudden, we have a cat and two chickens I didn't know needed to be pet daily, and there's a wizard I need to find and "get drugged" by. Our Discord voice chat definitely sounded like that one Bo Burnham TikTok audio more than once.

In truth, the only thing I knew how to do right off the bat was fishing once I managed to get the pole because it's a very similar mechanic to that of Cult of the Lamb.

That, and who I was romancing because, "Oh, by the way, Avril, we already decided that you're marrying Elliott because a writer and he looks like Fabio."

via Stardew Valley Wiki

I mean, they're not wrong... Just look at him!

On the one hand, playing with someone who knows the game inside and out and others who are moderately familiar has allowed us to progress quickly. For example, by the time I got into the mine for the first time, I already had access to Level 40 because the way had already been cleared.

Sometimes, though, it was frustrating for me because I felt like I wasn't contributing in the same capacity and just stumbling behind the rest. But that's far from the first time.

After the first Stardew sesh, I was feeling like I was back in the Piano I class I took as an elective in college. Apart from one or two chords in a high school music theory class, I'd never had the chance to learn the piano prior. Which, considering it was an introductory class I'd enrolled in, seemed fine. That was, until, one of my peers mentioned she'd been playing since she was four and played like six other instruments that I knew of. And for a lot of the semester, I was admittedly a little annoyed, primarily with myself for not being able to just play the piano. That my fingers couldn't find the chords intuitively. My classmates, who'd have varied levels of past experience, seemed to be grasping it all more quickly. I was just kind of there.

During finals week, we were to perform something we were working on for the class. The one gal whipped out the Legend of Zelda theme as if it were "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star." I, of course, ended up going after her and barely got through my selection of "Jet Black Heart" by 5 Seconds of Summer (because you know I was gonna do something by 5SOS and in retrospect should have just gone with a slowed-down version of "Pizza" or something...), and that was with a couple of mistakes because of the nerves.

It also happens to me sometimes in writing. As I've mentioned a handful of times, I've been writing romance since I was a teen but didn't have the opportunity to take any writing classes until I got to college. Workshops in that Intro to Creative Writing course were a harsh awakening. Although my peers said there were plenty of things that worked well, there were also plenty of critiques—a fair few were basics. Minor, in retrospect, nothing really story-breaking issues, but things that I theoretically should have already known.

It wasn't necessarily that I was a bad writer for not knowing these things. I simply hadn't learned them. Just as I hadn't had the chance to take piano lessons as a child or hadn't done my research or started a solo campaign to grasp the farming basics of Stardew Valley.

I spent a chunk of my next day off playing Stardew Valley on my own, allowing myself to get the recap of the intro cutscene I'd missed out on and play more efficiently because I did know about the journal this time around and why Emily hated the can of Joja Cola I gave her.

It also made me appreciate having my friends to lead the way early on all the more. Realizing how many levels I had to traverse in the mine was one of those ohh... moments for me TBH.

There are still plenty of things I'm learning as I go. That's how writing typically is, too. We're always exploring and evolving, as long as we give ourselves the grace and room to grow. As chaotic as our farming endeavors can get, Stardew Valley co-op has been a gentle reminder of that.

My Tuesdays have become significantly busier this year. It was already when my biweekly writing group meets. And now, I have "Stardew with the work crew" to look forward to.

And, yes, I am romancing Elliott in our co-op campaign. We actually just upgraded our coop and will have ducks soon, largely because duck feathers are one of his loved gifts and we're on a mission.