While I take issue with devs who remake an existing game, add extra features to it and call it being "inspired" by said title, the fact remains that Stardew Valley – the best-selling 2016 farming RPG – is a fun enough proposition (I mean, if Yasuhiro Wada isn't going to complain, who am I to judge).

In the game, you play a cubicle-bound office drone who escapes the daily grind to work on a Pelican Town farm left to them by their grandfather. Little more than a rundown cottage on an overgrown piece of land, the farm needs a lot of work to become profitable, which the player accomplishes one day at a time.

A Stardew day lasts from six to two the following morning (when, regardless of your stamina, your character will collapse); and is limited by a stamina bar that depletes every time the player performs a task. Whether you are tilling a field, watering crops, breaking rocks with a pickaxe or fishing, each activity takes a certain amount of time and drops your stamina by a fixed amount.

This makes planning and situational awareness key to a successful day on the farm as forgetting to factor something into your schedule (like an item you needed that you have to double back for) may mean you miss an activity altogether.

Speaking of which, there are a lot of things you can get up to in Pelican Town.

There are seasonal crops to be planted (each season lasts 28 in-game days); fish to be yanked out of rivers, lakes and the ocean, animals to be raised (such as chickens, rabbits, sheep, pigs or dinosaurs); mines to be explored for minerals and arifacts, trees to be tapped for tar or syrup, errands to run for other Pelican Town inhabitants, relationships (which can lead to dating, marriage and offspring); spontaneous events (such as festivals or eerie green rain); renovating the community center (or building the Amazon-analog warehouse); and many more.

The main appeal of Stardew Valley is that there's a lot to do but no real pressure to do it. The gameplay can be as constructive or relaxed as you want and the only real drawback to missing out on a recurring activity is having to wait a year for another go.

Where positives are concerned, the game's graphics – while amateurish – are consistently cute, the music is playful and soothing and the "anything goes" world-building lends itself to fun scenarios that don't need justification (while it looks ordinary enough, the valley is home to dwarves, shadow people, slimes, dinosaurs, wizards, purple fez-wearing pigs and at least one hat-selling mouse).

Stardew Valley is a prime example of progressive development done right: starting out with a simple idea (farming) and then expanding the gameplay through successive addons. I wish more devs could take a page from Eric Barone and invest in their games rather than making them and moving on to the Next Thing.

In terms of drawbacks, the core gameplay (ironically enough for a game about running away from drudgery) can be repetitive, extremely grindy and a bit of a chore. And while, admittedly, it's up to the player to structure their in-game days in a way they will find most appealing, there's no getting around the fact that fishing is the same mini-game every single time, finding artifacts means slogging through random mine levels time and time again and there is simply no shortcut to killing 1,000 slimes other than grinding the mines day after day.

Ideally, I would have liked to see the sort of detailed difficulty menu Rogue Trader has on offer or, at the very least, Starbound's tiered settings in Stardew Valley so the player could tailor the game to their preference without having to put up with unwanted elements. As it stands, no matter what aspect of the game appeals most to you, you will have to wade through a lot of stuff that doesn't whether you like it or not.

Questionable originality aside, Stardew Valley is a fun, expansive game that will keep you farming for anywhere from 100 to a purported 167 (!) hours with no set ending in sight. With myriad activities, a vast game world and even LAN coop, the game has a lot to offer. Just keep in mind that some of it will feel like actual work.