If you spent your Stardew Valley years ignoring the crops and diving straight into the mines with a sword, Eric Barone has a message for you. His next game is basically for you. (Sorry, that’s a banned word. Let’s say it’s aimed squarely at you.)
“It’s for the people in Stardew Valley that go into the mines,” Barone, the solo developer known as ConcernedApe, said in a new interview about Haunted Chocolatier. “That’s what I do, honestly.”
That’s a bigger shift than most fans probably expected. Barone announced Haunted Chocolatier back in 2021, and plenty of people have assumed since then that it would be Stardew with a chocolate shop bolted on. It’s turning out to be something else.
Swords first, chocolate second
“It is still what I call a town game,” Barone said, “But it’s more of an action RPG.”
He went on to describe where the weight of the game sits: “the main focus is more about adventuring, finding equipment and getting more powerful. There are monsters, there are boss fights.”
The setting is changing too. Barone described it as a more “metaphysical” place than Pelican Town, which is a vague word that tells you just enough to make you want more.
And more is exactly what he isn’t giving out yet. That’s on purpose.
Why he won’t show you the game
Barone has kept Haunted Chocolatier mostly hidden, and he explained why in plain terms. “Partly, it feels like I’m serving a half-baked bread. I would rather serve a fully baked bread,” he said.
He also worries about promising things that won’t survive development. “Also, I know that many parts of the game will likely evolve and change before release, so if I reveal them early, I risk disappointing players if the final product does not match their expectation,” Barone said. “Fortunately, I’m in a position where I don’t need to market the game, so I can take my preferred approach.”
That last line is a flex, sure. But it’s earned. Not many developers can go years without a trailer cycle and still have people hanging on every update.
Those updates have been a little repetitive, which Barone admitted himself in June. “Feels kinda dumb posting this same thing over and over, but that’s the reality,” he said at the time.
The recipe book that ate a developer
If you want to know why this is taking so long, look at how Barone talks about a menu.
Also in June, he said the parts of the game you touch constantly have to be “perfect,” and that they need to be “clear, intuitive, satisfying, aesthetic.” His example was the recipe book you’ll use to make chocolates.
“To me, it’s not a simple task, as I torture myself over every last detail,” he said. “This is a UI you will be using fairly often, so it has to be perfect. You need to be able to accomplish your goal with the minimal number of clicks.”
He kept going, with the intensity of someone who has redrawn the same screen a dozen times. “If the data is all clustered together, it will be disgusting to look at,” Barone said. “And this is just the bare minimum, that players will likely take for granted. If all of that is accomplished then the player is now comfortable while perusing the recipe book. But I want more than just comfort. I want to delight the player. All of this typically requires me to iterate on something several times before I’m satisfied with it.”
A recipe book. That’s the level of care going into every menu, so plan your patience accordingly.
Stardew isn’t done with him either
Haunted Chocolatier has no release date. Neither does Stardew Valley’s 1.7 update, which Barone isn’t building directly.
He has grown his team partly to free himself up. “Well, part of the reason why I’ve expanded my team a little bit is so that hopefully I can spend more time working on Haunted Chocolatier,” Barone said in an interview in February. “And it’s worked out pretty well so far, I would say.”
On 1.7, he called himself something like the creative director, handing ideas to the team and then going back to his own project. That won’t last the whole cycle.
“At some point in 1.7’s cycle, I will get heavily involved, because I feel like my hand needs to touch every part of the game, every aspect of the update,” he said. “That’s been a big change from the 1.3 update or 1.1 or something where it’s completely me. I had no time to work on a new game. So that has changed.”
The hard part is his own head. “If I’m thinking about Haunted Chocolatier, it’s difficult to be like, ‘Okay, I’m going to one day of the week or two days of the week work on Stardew Valley.’ That’s not how my brain works,” Barone said. “I’m all in one thing or the other. So I’ve been trying to work on that. I feel like it requires a lot of discipline, which I’m always working to improve on.”
