Stardew Valley creator confirms size of new game, RIP our free time

Stardew Valley fans might as well say goodbye to ever touching grass again, as a rough size of the next game by the same creator has been revealed.

Stardew Valley creator Eric “ConcernedApe” Barone confirmed his next title, Haunted Chocolatier, was in development in 2021.

It’ll be a management simulation game where you run a confectionery store, and make chocolate confections while also befriending the various townspeople and ghosts that live in the local area.

Yeah, that sounds like a ConcernedApe game, alright.

Although there’s still no release date confirmed yet, Barone has drip-fed small nuggets of information to us over the years.

Now, we have a rough idea of how big Haunted Chocolatier will be, in case you were thinking of jumping over after finishing your hundredth Stardew Valley playthrough.

Over on X (formerly Twitter), Barone posted: “The world of Haunted Chocolatier is larger than Stardew Valley”.

Considering Stardew Valley was already a sort-of “forever game”, depending on how much you enjoy playing it, take this almost like a threat to your free time.

It’s also pretty wild that Barone will go for months or years without dropping any new information, and then share something like this which reveals a major detail about the game.

He hasn’t revealed yet when Haunted Chocolatier will be released. The game has been in development since 2020, but was briefly paused last year so Barone could work on the 1.6 update for Stardew Valley.

It’ll also be coming to PC first, but knowing Barone, he’ll likely want to get it on as many platforms as possible, so I wouldn’t rule out a release on mobile, PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and Nintendo Switch 2.

Whether this news means a bigger world, more NPCs, or more activities to do, I’m sure we’ll all be happy to wait until Barone is ready to release it.