Creating Stardew Valley: A Board Game

Hello! Can you tell us who you are and what you do?

Hello. I’m Cole Medeiros, the creator of Stardew Valley: The Board Game. I’m a game designer by trade, but I also do business functions like my current role at ConcernedApe LLC. Stardew Valley: The Board Game is one of my newer works, which I designed alongside ConcernedApe himself, but I’ve also released two successful board games; Web of Spies and GUBS: A Game of Wit and Luck.

Stardew Valley: The Board Game is a co-op game where players work together to restore the Valley and prevent Joja Corp from hatching their corporate plans and spoiling everything. You and your friends can accomplish this by growing crops, raising animals, expanding their farm and collecting resources from across the Valley. 

If you played the game but want to play something familiar yet refreshing, then I really urge you to try out our board game!

What’s your favorite game to play?

Well… I usually have trouble answering that question because I'm racking my brain and trying to think of my favorite game. So I tend to focus on just what is the game that I'm playing at the moment and really thinking a lot about.

And currently, it's a board game called League of Dungeoneers. It's like a giant box filled with cards and it's sort of inspired by Warhammer Quest. It's like a dungeon crawler, you can play cooperatively, you can play by yourself. And it fills up your table with random dungeons and fun stuff like that. 

So, that's the game I'm always thinking like, “Oh I want to play a little bit more of that when I find it.”

Your interest in games and board games, where did it all start?

I remember we had a closet with some board games in there and I always saw my parents playing games like Risk with their friends or things like that. And I remember when I was very young, I saw a copy of HeroQuest and I was like, what is this? I could bring it to my table and there are little adventures and there's like furniture… I didn't know it at the time, but I was infatuated with games. I still am today.

Because I think of them as story machines, like, they create an experience. That experience is something I share with other people, and then those people I share it with remember the same experience of fighting a robot or dungeon crawling or something. It all becomes a meaningful part of your history, I guess.

And so as a very little kid I was drawing these figures, I called them “gubs” and they kind of built out this world, just sketching and doodling and having fun with it. And then I remember sitting down and thinking, “You know, I could cut up some index cards and draw some pictures and figure out how these things interact and kind of make this little story that you're trying to play through.”

And just through massive amounts of iteration and playing this with people while saying, “Hey, look at this cool thing we made.” And they would add to it over time till it became this thing that was really precious to us. 

Could you tell us more about GUBS and Web of Spies?

I made GUBS around the early 2000s, it was self-published and I think I was still in college or just freshly graduated. I did do some stuff between GUBS and my next board game at the time, Web of Spies, but nothing was officially published. There are always a lot of prototypes cooking in my mind, as I like to design and make stuff.

But like, when you do something a lot to the point you’re experienced and familiar, you’d be like “Hmm, this is not quite there yet.” or there was a game or two that I thought up and people told me, “Hey, this is ready to go, you should do this!” But I felt that they were not exactly where I wanted them to be yet. And so yeah, I’m still working on some of the ideas I have, but those are the only two official ones that I did on my own.

I just always had this concept of this very simple spy experience. I just thought of how cool would it be to be a spy. I remember thinking about flying around the world, picking up these assets and the stories that the premise could generate. And so I put a prototype together just really quickly. And I tried it with my wife and then with a friend of mine, and we just went, wow, this kind of works just right out of the gate. And my friend got really excited. He actually was a big helper along the process of, “Hey, you gotta do this! So let's play it again!”

So at that time, I wanted to try Kickstarter. It's funny, about a year or so before that, I made a space game, and I was all excited to make this space game. And then Xia: Legends of a Drift System, dropped on Kickstarter, and everybody went nuts. And I felt that the space game kind of stole my thunder a little bit.

But the game's cool, so I'm happy it went well! Though I kind of changed, and I had the spy idea, and then I also realized that the idea of secret agents and spies really resonates with a lot of people. And that taught me that there are certain concepts that you just tell to people, and they’d be all starry-eyed.

Starting small

I remember I borrowed a little bit of money from my parents to fund the originals, and I think we printed a thousand decks and then we were just selling them ourselves. I was going around to game stores they would say, “Oh, okay, we'll do an assignment maybe. You know. you're a local and all.”

And then they would call me a week later and say, “Hey, I don't know why, but we sold them all and we'd like some more.” And that kind of started picking up steam. And then we sold out after about a year or so, maybe a little bit longer, just kind of selling them myself. My parents were literally shipping some of these out of their garage.

And then it was like, “Well, are we going to do a reprint?” And I was like, “Well, I don't know. That was a lot of work.” And of course, I wanted to. But around that time, Game Rant reached out and said, “Hey, we came across your game. It looks like a good fit. What do you think?” And that took a couple of years and then the game was published by them and did pretty well with them for a while.

Advice on marketing and the importance of word of mouth

We really popped off with word of mouth. Marketing is a really challenging thing. I don't really know the secret to it other than I think its importance is underestimated because you can have a great product and nobody hears about it and then it doesn't go anywhere. On the other hand, you can have a mediocre game that just has the right marketing, and everybody knows about it so it ends up being successful. It's really tricky.

I think one thing that worked in my favor with the Kickstarter I did was really trying to make it clear to people. I don't know if this is still something that would work on Kickstarter, but I was like, “Hey, it's just me. I'm just an individual.” And I tried my best to communicate what was I doing. Why I was doing it. So guys, here's the production. Here's the ongoing stuff. I just think it really resonates with folks that you're some dude in your living room, chopping up stuff and mailing it out.

People are like, “Wow, that's really kind of neat. That's not a big company. But I'm kind of on board with that story!” Just one person or a small group of people, doing something because they're very passionate about it. And, you know, I think there's some overlap there too with my current work with ConcernedApe and Stardew Valley, where, as the story goes, you know, he just kind of sat down and made the game. And then he continued to work on it himself. It's very small and there's a lot of heart that goes into it. 

So I think that takes time to communicate, but I think that's a very authentic, genuine story that if you walk down that path as you're designing and you're trying to promote whatever it is, if you can share why you love it, then other people may also see that and also love it.

Promoting Web of Spies

When I did the video for Web of Spies, I actually had trouble recording that initially because I was just all stuffy and trying to explain the whole thing. I just wasn’t good at it at the time. And then my friend said, “Hey, come on down. I do a lot of video stuff. We're going to do this.” And then he's like, “Forget about the camera. I'm going to set up over here. I'm just going to talk to you. And I want you just to tell me why you’re excited about this. What is it?” And we just talked.

And what he got out of me was the authentic excitement I had about this project. And it wasn't like, “Here's why you should back it…” or “Here's why the game…” It wasn't really about the game so much. The game itself is cool, don’t get me wrong, but the project is… it's me. So if you want to help me make this thing, I’d definitely appreciate it.

I don't know, there might be something to being genuine. Like, if you're enlisting help then show who you really are and what it is you want to do, I’m fairly certain some people will say, “Oh, that seems kind of neat. I'd like to help.”

What makes a great board game, in your opinion?

It's such a difficult question to answer because it's like the same question as "Is a game good or not?" I think so much of that has to do with the intention and the audience for the game. You know, certain games that I love, other people say they involve too much luck. And games they love, I'm like, “Oh, it's too stagnant, you know?” So I feel like so much of it has to do with things like does it meet expectations and stuff like that. And I can pretty clearly point to where some games that I've played start to fall down.

Of course, nothing pops to mind, but when I’m playing the game, I can think of things like, “Oh, this is the place where it’s a little bit too clunky for what it's trying to do, or the fun is blocked by these other elements that are kind of dragging it down.” So I really think that a great board game, sort of like a great movie or story, makes you feel or think “Hey, there's nothing here that doesn't need to be here. Everything here has a purpose and a reason and really complements whatever that sensation I’m currently feeling is.”

Knowing what to chase or conceive

You know, I chat with a couple of my friends who are also working on a lot of different projects including games, and we often feel like the idea phase is really easy. We're bursting with all these things that we're interested in or excited about.

And then you have to, at some point, latch on to something and say, “I want to spend the next couple of years working on this thing, and it's that exciting to me.” And that’s the part that’s hard to do because it's like you're signing up for this commitment. But I feel that the best games, or probably the best artistic projects in general, come from when you can't stop thinking about it, and your heart just keeps coming back to it. You're like, “Ooh, I want this kind of an experience, and I can't find it out there, so how do I build that?”

You just get a little bit obsessed. That's the way I would describe it.

What’s the difference between testing the design of a board game and a video game?

With the board and card game stuff, usually, it feels a lot slower to me because it's analog. You have to get people to the table with some digital things like a Tabletop Simulator. You can do this remotely, but it's always better—when you're talking about a physical product—to see people holding the cards, moving the stuff around and just seeing how they play and make mistakes.

Because with the analog experience, people have to kind of run the game. They have to process the rules and then make it work versus a video game, where it's doing a whole bunch of stuff for you. And so I feel like with a video game, it's hard to know if people getting the right feedback. They need to be aware of exactly how their choices are changing the status of things.

In a board game, it's more like, “Oh, well, I did this thing and now I have to move that pawn.” So the input and feedback, as long as they're following the rules, you know, they've gotten that part directly and you’re able to gauge everything.

Live user testing

I mostly do live testing. I feel like I need to be there, see and observe, depending on where it is in development. A lot of times towards the end of that process, I don't really answer any questions that people are like, “Hey, how does this work?” I'm like, “Hmm, they don't know how that works. I gotta write it down.”

For me, I don't want the mechanics of the game to get in between the player and the experience. So if they're forgetting something, or getting stuck on something or not quite understanding how something works, even after they've been playing a few turns, I feel like that's a good indicator that something could be made more elegant and polished.

Which is harder, designing games for adults or kids?

I thought about this a lot because I feel… sort of like I end up as the board or card game DJ.

Like I'm the one saying, “Okay, I'm going to this game group. Which games am I bringing for this particular group? What's going to resonate?” And I actually want to have fun with these people. So what are they going to like? And I've seen it happen before where you bring a game that you really enjoy, but with this group, it just doesn't land with them because there’s too much complexity or maybe not enough choice.

And I've been thinking about that more as I have a couple of little kids, and my oldest is six. And so I'm like, “Ooh, I want to share these games with her!” but making sure it's not too much or too complicated and really appeals to these very simple things that are actually a lot of fun. That’s that, and there are the heavier, chunkier games that I like to play with my advanced gaming friends who just have a library to work from in their minds and they can just take on these really complicated mechanics, so it's very different.

I had an experience where I took a game, I think it was a recent Kickstarter, and it was a really beautiful game about collecting flowers and set in a Victorian era-like theme, and I was showing it to my daughter. The rules of the game are beyond her at this point, like it's a little bit too complicated, you know, all the card play, but I said, "Hey, what if we just take out these flowers, and we're just traveling around the world trying to collect the flowers?"

And so I sort of simplified it, and she had so much fun just moving her pawn around. We weren't even really counting spaces. Sometimes for children, things that we have already rolled past in terms of challenge, kids, in contrast, are so excited to just draw a card and read it and and try to find it on the board. And so I think it's all about finding the level at which anybody is playing, where it's a little bit of a challenge but still accessible to them.

Can you tell us your backstory with ConcernedApe and Stardew Valley?

It was interesting because we had a mutual friend who was talking to ConcernedApe and he was like, “Hey, would you ever maybe think of making a board game for Stardew Valley?” And I think ConcernedApe said, “Oh, that sounds kind of interesting, but I don't know how to proceed with that. I'm very busy.” Throughout that exchange, my friend was thinking about me.

He knew I was doing a lot of board games and card games. So he introduced us during a multiplayer game of Stardew Valley, which I remember being really nervous about. I was familiar with the game, of course, but I was like, now I'm going to be playing it with the creator while I'm trying to talk to him about this thing I had in mind.

Talking with ConcernedApe

He's very mellow. He's a great guy but you know, I think I wasn't the first person to approach him with this idea. He gets a lot of pitches for really interesting things, but you know, because it's really just him and a very small team, we have to be very careful with what he takes on. He tries not to stretch himself too thin or get too distracted from the development of the video game.

And so I said, “Well, let me kick around some ideas, we'll talk again in a month. If I have something that becomes interesting, we'll do it, and if not, you know, no harm.” And, so we just kind of began a conversation that took about a year of making progress, kind of presenting it to him. A couple of months in, I have some things that were sort of playable.

And we did it all over Tabletop Simulator, by the way. The whole development was through there because he was up in Seattle, and so we were testing the game there. And about a year in, he said, “Wow, this feels like Stardew Valley to me. I think this is it.” And, so he said, “Okay, what are we going to do now?” And so we had a lot of art we needed to create, a lot of manufacturing and production we needed to figure out.

And so I just kind of said, “Okay, let me try it out, I know some of it.” But I needed to learn a lot to figure it all out. Took about another year and then we just announced it, which was fun just to surprise everybody. We were like, “Hey, there's a board game and it's available right now!”

Income and impact of the project on personal life

I wasn't being paid. I thought of it as just a really spectacular opportunity. And so, you know, I was working at the time and then I would just come home and work on it in the evenings, or I would spend time on the weekends. My daughter had just been born at the time, so it was kind of a very busy time.

It was a lot to do, but it was a lot of fun too because I think because he's such a great artist and he knows the technical side of things, he knows the visual side, the audio side, kind of the whole experience of how he built Stardew Valley.

It was so easy to talk to him about what was working or not. Like he’d know reflexively if something was good or if there was something not quite right, and I would be kind of thinking the same thing. And so it was, the whole development process I think that's smooth and as iterative as it possibly could have been.

Confidence in making choices during production

If you're having trouble finding motivation to stick to something, it might be a good indicator that you're sticking to the wrong thing or that you're missing some components. Some missing pieces about this are holding you down. And I find like the things that I get really excited about, I try to clarify what I'm excited about in that thing. That's it. 

If I know what it is, that's my goal. That's what I'm doing. That's why this is so neat to me. And I almost envision it at the end. I kept imagining when I was working on Stardew, how cool it would be to hold the box in my hand and be like, “Wow, there it is!” And every time I did that, I was like, I would get kind of butterflies. It would feel a lot better to have mentally against other projects that pop up and seem kind of neat, but then like sort of fade away. For those ones, maybe the time just isn't right for those things, or maybe they're not that exciting.

So it's like, you know, you've got to follow your gut. What is it that you really like to do? What are you really excited about? Because that's going to be a true barometer to finding that magic.

Can you tell us about your creative process?

My process always tends to start with an emotion or a sensation that I want. Like for example, I've been trying to make a game for a long time that makes you feel like you're sitting in the captain's chair of a Star Trek ship and going on adventures. And so I think, well, what is it about that that I like so much?

What's the feeling that I want? And it's this feeling of discovery, camaraderie and different challenges. Not just conflict, but like exploration and diplomacy and these kinds of things. And so I find the core of the idea of that experience, and then I start thinking of the format and mechanics that support it best.

Is this more of an RPG thing where you're writing stuff down on paper? Is it cards? Is it board? Is it digital? And that's kind of like the starting point of that idea, then it's the mechanics, and then it very quickly goes into the rest of the process. I like to sketch it and take a piece of paper, then sort of draw some of the components out. Like here's going to be a board, there's going to be dice, and then I can start to visualize what it looks like on the table, how many decks of cards are there, etcetera. 

Then I try to build it as quickly as possible, but that's the process where I usually get caught because I'll build a bunch of it. And then, you know, it's a bit of a slog, even to get that initial prototype together, which can be challenging.

Do you think VR has a future being implemented into board game dynamics?

You know, it's interesting. I do have an Oculus headset. It's a lot of fun to get in there and jump into these virtual worlds, especially when I'm playing with my friends. But I've downloaded a couple that are sort of more board game-ish experiences, and I find them neat and fascinating, but I don't know whether I would equate it as the same experience as a board game.

Personally, for me, there's something that I think I treasure about stepping away from the electronics and screens. And the fact that I'm holding the physical card and putting it down on the table and rolling dice and moving pieces… I just can't get that same feeling any other way than doing it physically.

And that's kind of the magic you’re looking for. When you find a game that works for you and your group, it's not really about the game. The game is just a facilitator. Having the conversation, interacting, sitting around talking about something and it's unfolding in front of you based on your inputs…

There's just nothing like it. 

If there’s anything you could change in your career, what would it be?

I think the one thing I always think of, I wish I had studied a bit more math, like probability and economy design, things like that. Why? Just because there are a lot of elements in game design that function around numbers. The chances for something to happen, and just having like a really sharp understanding of that, or how to build an economy, stuff like that, you know?

I consider myself more on the narrative side of design, and I know how to make a good mechanic, but I worked with some really good economy designers, and I went, “Wow, this is a whole science of inputs, outputs and frequency!” And really, if you want to make something complicated, you really do need to have ability with numbers, and my mathematical background is a little bit lacking than what I’d like it to be.

Do you have any resources for people who want to learn how to be like you?

I tinkered around in GameMaker Studio for video game design. And I thought that was a lot of fun. Also, I feel like Unity has a lot of really good stuff. I remember tutorials that I was walking through in the past. Board game-wise… I'm blanking on all the resources that I've used. I feel like the best thing to do if you want to make games is really just to start extremely small and start making games.

For me, the hands-on process of it and the fact that with a deck of index cards and some pawns and dice, I can make all kinds of crazy stuff. And then you build it, and if it's small, you should be able to build it quickly, and then you test it, and then you see that feedback right away, whether people would like it or not.

Are they making choices that they find interesting? For me, that was always the best teacher because I just was constantly doing that. Seeing a lot of my ideas fail, but then you're like, oh, now I understand why that doesn't work. It seems cool in my head, but it doesn't actually work that well.

I really like talking about game design. You know, I never got formal teaching, but I know there are courses now. I went to UC Santa Cruz and some folks say there's a game design program or class there.

What do you do now, occupation-wise?

I now work full-time with ConcernedApe and am an employee of his. My job is mostly business and logistics, so I answer all the emails, read all the contracts and pay all the bills. So my role is heavily on support, making sure that ConcernedApe is free to just focus on game development and won’t have to worry about running the business side of things.

But he still drives the ship. I meet with him once a week and say, “Hey, here’s all the things that came through. Are you interested in any of these things?” And so we have a pretty tight working relationship. He can focus on doing the magic thing where he goes and works on the game or thinks about his next project and I can worry about all the less exciting things.

What’s next for you?

So probably the big one on the horizon is I want to bring GUBS back into print. It went out of print maybe a year or two ago, maybe even a little bit longer than that. And so I have somebody working on brand new artwork, there's potentially an expansion that I'm excited about and just want to bring that back and say, “Hey, like an anniversary edition or some kind of new version available.”

But it’s still being developed, though it’s artistically finished up. It’s now being made ready for print, and I’m hoping that it will launch sometime around the middle of next year or near the end of the year.

Where should we go to learn more about you and your work?

Let's see… in general, I do have a Twitter/X account, but if they Google me, I have a website and they can contact me through the contact page. And yeah, I'm happy to get any emails about gamemaking or any of the games that I've worked on. I love, I love talking to people about it.