Portal 2 is contending for the crown of the highest-rated game on Steam – and the throne-stealer is an indie game from 2016.
Which game is being referred to? It is Stardew Valley: A pixel-style game that a single developer has been perfecting for years. In it, you build your own farm, raise animals, and make friends with the residents of the nearby town – or even start a family.
Stardew Valley was released in February 2016 and can be played solo or in co-op, the latter both online and locally on the same screen. Meanwhile, the game has almost 770,000 reviews, with a strong 98% being positive.
You can see a trailer for Stardew Valley here:
The platformer Portal 2 developed by Valve also has 98% positive reviews on Steam, but only from around 363,000 reviews.
- During the Summer Sale on Steam, you can currently get Stardew Valley for half price, only €6.99. However, the offer only lasts until July 10 at 7 PM.
This is the new development: According to the website Steam250, Portal 2 has been overtaken by Stardew Valley after 14 years at the top, albeit narrowly. The website awards Stardew Valley a score of 8.87 and Portal 2 a score of 8.85. This score is calculated using a mathematical algorithm that considers the total number of votes as well as the percentage of positive reviews.
On websites like SteamDB, where only the percentage of positive votes determines the ranking, Portal 2 still holds the first place. But even here, the gap is minimal: Portal 2 gets a rating of 97.71%, while Stardew Valley “only” has 97.66%.
More than just a simple farming simulator
What makes the game so special? Stardew Valley offers more than one might suspect at first glance. Loaofanxiety writes in their review on Steam:
“I would never trust anyone who gives this game a bad review. It’s that good. I’m not even kidding. […]I downloaded it thinking it’d be a cute little farming game, and now I’ve got spreadsheets for crop profits, strong opinions on which villagers are shady, and a weird emotional attachment to my chickens.”
For Steam user Ryan Schmitt, Stardew Valley is more than just a game he has played: “it’s a place I lived in for a while. A place I came back to when life felt overwhelming, when I needed a break, or when I just wanted to remember that slow, quiet progress still counts.” (Source: Steam)
For peccavis, it took a while to be truly convinced. Eventually, however, it clicked: “The first time I tried to play Stardew it didn’t catch me at all and there were many things bugging me. […] But I was wrong!” (Source: Steam)
Overall, Stardew Valley manages to convince almost every player who has tested the farming game for a few hours.
Stardew Valley is a passion project of solo developer Eric “ConcernedApe” Barone, who developed the game entirely by himself. A fan had the opportunity to show him their save file and received special praise. You can read more about it in this article: “I’ve never seen this before”: Fan invests over 400 hours into their favorite game, nervously showing the developer their save file
