I have nearly 300 hours clocked into Stardew Valley. I’m sure that number will continue to rise, but in the meantime, I like exploring other games and seeing what’s out there in the world.
Over the years, many relaxing, adorable farming and life simulator games have emerged to help casual players chill, and I’m here with ten of the best you can play right now, regardless of your platform. There’s something for everyone here, from larger PC and console games to small mobile games, with several branching beyond typical farming games.
The top 10 best games to play that are like Stardew Valley
Stardew Valley is known for many things, from its relaxing gameplay and pleasant art style to its diverse character cast, side content that drives you away from the beaten path, and replayability with different map types and self-made challenges. From my time playing dozens of farming, life sim, and generally casual games, the ones below are some that I’ve found perfectly encapsulate many of Stardew Valley’s best qualities while adding interesting mechanics to change things up.
Here are some of the best games you can play right now after wrapping up your latest Stardew Valley playthrough.
10. Sun Haven
- Price: $24.99
- Platforms: PC
How do you feel about Stardew Valley with magic? While Stardew has mechanics such as warp totems, Sun Haven raises the bar by allowing you to use various magic spells to make combat, navigation, and farming easier. Combined with a complex crafting system and multiplayer functionality, this makes for interesting twists on typical farming sims, especially as you explore beyond the game’s starting area.
Like Stardew Valley, Sun Haven has your usual romance plots, farming, and community-like collecting systems in the museum, providing some familiarity outside its new features. Sun Haven is a solid choice if you want a game similar to Stardew Valley but with a different art style, combat system, and environment.
9. Littlewood
- Price: $14.99
- Platforms: PC, Nintendo Switch
Littlewood is right up your alley if you prefer the simplicity of farming, foraging, and fishing in games. As a character who recently saved the world from an evil wizard, you’re now dealing with the situation’s aftermath, helping your village rebuild and grow while living a peaceful life.
Rather than relying on complicated or over-the-top features, you’ll find a simplistic yet adorable game. Although it has some repetition with resource grinding, Littlewood is still very reminiscent of Stardew Valley, among other games in the genre.
8. Palia
- Price: Free
- Platforms: PC, Nintendo Switch
I didn’t think a relaxing MMO would work this well in practice, but here we are. Palia, rather than focusing solely on farming, encourages exploration as you discover different regions, hunt for resources, and constantly expand your home base alongside other players. Its questlines also go more in-depth than those you see in other games on this list, with some requiring you to solve riddles, interact with specific NPCs, or craft various items before setting off on your next objective.
Although Palia is a multiplayer game, you can get through most of it by yourself without relying on others. Much like Stardew Valley, you can quickly make massive gardens, create a large home, or focus on finding more crafting recipes, depending on which skills and quests you prioritize. As a bonus, it’s free-to-play, meaning you don’t have to invest real money into it if you don’t want to.
7. My Time at Portia
- Price: $29.99
- Platforms: PC, Nintendo Switch, Android, iOS, Xbox One
My Time at Portia and its sequel, My Time at Sandrock, are farming sim games that focus more on the mining, crafting, and building aspects of games like Stardew Valley rather than farming. Although farming and animal caregiving are both important, your main goal is to improve your workshop, discover new resources, and build new machines to help your production.
In both games, you play as a new and aspiring builder who takes on commissions to make money while also befriending and completing quests for townspeople. Like Stardew, you can get married, have children, and care for animals who give you essential resources. If you’re looking for a relaxing game focusing on cave exploration, worldbuilding, and base building, My Time at Portia and My Time at Sandrock are worth checking out.
6. Coral Island
- Price: $29.99
- Platforms: PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S
If you’re looking for a game that makes you feel like you’re playing another iteration of Stardew Valley without feeling like a complete copy, Coral Island is one of the main examples on this list. In almost every way, Coral Island is very similar to Stardew Valley, with its primary features being farming, animal caregiving, museum bundles, and more.
At the same time, it has multiple unique features, mainly its diverse map, characters, and in-game events, to help differentiate it from others on this list. Overall, the quality is there, and if you enjoy most aspects of Stardew, you’ll get a lot out of Coral Island, too.
5. Disney Dreamlight Valley
- Price: $39.99
- Platforms: PC, Nintendo Switch, iOS, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S
Disney Dreamlight Valley is also a magic-filled farming adventure with farming, animal care, and befriending villagers, much like others on this list. However, aside from its main selling feature of having Disney characters in its roster, another primary focus is its questlines. You may run into a standard fetch quest, followed by a complex and challenging mission filled with cave exploration and riddles. If you want to steer away from farming and fishing and prefer developing friendships or questing, Disney Dreamlight Valley is the way to go.
4. Spiritfarer
- Price: $29.99
- Platforms: PC, Nintendo Switch
Spiritfarer’s similarities to Stardew Valley are, admittedly, far and few. Nonetheless, I promise it’s worthwhile if you like a relaxing game with a deep storyline that tugs at your heartstrings. When you’re not tending to your farms and gathering crafting materials, you’ll find and befriend spirit friends, all with unique personalities and backstories that tie into the main story.
Like Stardew Valley, a good chunk of your Spiritfarer playthrough will be farming for resources, particularly crops and building materials. Beyond this, world exploration and character relationship building is also significant to the story. If you want a relaxing game that makes you shed a tear, Spiritfarer is a great option.
3. Kynseed
- Price: $24.99
- Platforms: PC
Kynseed is another example of a game that, although similar to Stardew Valley, expands on typical farming sim features through its business management features, character aging, and challenges. Full of fascinating characters, regions, and hundreds of crafting items, Kynseed feels like an upgrade in many ways, giving you opportunities for challenge while still having the same feel-good atmosphere of Stardew. If you want a game with many of Stardew Valley’s features and more, Kynseed is one of the best options out there.
2. Graveyard Keeper
- Price: $19.99
- Platforms: PC, Nintendo Switch, Android, iOS, Xbox One
Let’s introduce a dark twist here, shall we? Graveyard Keeper is a graveyard management game in which you use features such as mining, farming, and harvesting corpses to obtain resources and expand your business. While it and Stardew Valley have multiple similarities, many aspects differ greatly, with corpse harvesting being Graveyard Keeper’s core feature. You’ll find yourself farming some carrots one moment and extracting a body’s brain the next.
Graveyard Keeper’s questline and interactions also make for an entertaining experience, especially as you dive deeper into the various characters’ motives and relations with one another. Although the environment and tone differ significantly from Stardew Valley, it’s one that you can easily invest in if you’re comfortable with a darker story.
1. Slime Rancher
- Price: $19.99
- Platforms: PC, Nintendo Switch, Android, iOS, Xbox One, PlayStation 4
Taking the number one post on this list is one of my favorite games series, Slime Rancher and its sequel, Slime Rancher 2. Playing as Beatrix LeBeau, you’ll explore the Far, Far Range, meet adorable slimes, and practice careful ranch management. Between making money through selling slime plorts, you’ll discover interesting slime-filled regions, read lore documents to learn more about the world, and meet characters who aren’t romanceable but quickly become long-time friends as you progress through the story. Plus, well, look at the slimes’ cute little faces.
Slime Rancher and Slime Rancher 2 use farming and “animal” caregiving features to help you grow your slime ranch while also having other features related to your character and tool upgrades to differentiate it from other games. In this way, it is similar to Stardew Valley but feels different enough not to be an immediate comparison. Nonetheless, it’s easy to enjoy Slime Rancher’s features, especially if you like adorable creatures and spend most of your time hearing the slimes hop around and play with toys.
That’s the end of the top 10 games you should play after you finish your Stardew Valley playthrough. While series like Harvest Moon, Rune Factory, and Animal Crossing paved the way for the rise of farming and life sim genre growth and are also worthwhile to play, these games mix elements like magic, mystery, and worldbuilding to differentiate themselves from typical farming games.
