Stardew Valley free Christmas expansion guaranteed to make your game more merry

Winter in Stardew Valley is an odd season for a farmer. When you’re in your first year and that first day of winter hits, there’s a real sort of, “What the hell do I do now?”, vibe to it all.

As soon as you wake up, all your crops are dead and your animals are suddenly freezing their cute little butts off. Suddenly the entire main draw of the game, maintaining a farm, isn’t really a thing anymore.

It all feels awfully bleak, especially because you’re meant to use all of the extra time you would have spent watering the crops on tussling with monsters in the dark, damp mines instead.

Thankfully, someone over on NexusMods has decided to inject a little bit of extra Christmas cheer into Stardew Valley with the release of an extra festive mod.

“More Festive Stardew Valley” is a holiday-appropriate mod from user Maleficent84, that aims to transform the landscape of the game into something a little more cheery.

Mod author Maleficent84 describes the mod as a “slight re-design” that aims to transform the “vanilla farm buildings, town maps, outdoor tilesheets and a few other sprites” so that Stardew Valley can “look and feel more festive all year long.”

If you're a cosy gamer who hasn't tried Stardew Valley, what are you doing?

They also added that “the main menu screen, billboard, Help Quest screens and some of the Junimo notes have been altered to have a more festive look as well,” and that the mod will give things a “festive look” during special events such as “Spring: Egg Festival (Easter), Summer: Luau, Fall: Spirit's Eve (Halloween),” and, of course, the “Winter: Feast of the Winter Star (Christmas)”.

Would be nice if it updated some of the potential Christmas gifts you can receive too.

Last Christmas, Jas gave me a lump of clay at the Feast of the Winter Star. Just for that, I’m gonna get the JojoMart ending so your godfather Shane rots in there for the rest of his life you little twerp.