If you’re a fan of cozy games, then Stardew Valley needs no introduction. This adorable farming sim made waves when it launched in February 2016, loading us onto a bus headed to Pelican Town to assume control of a dilapidated farm begging for a touch of love. As your work begins to pay off and the farm flourishes and grows, you’ll also spend your days obtaining resources, making money, and getting to know the charming townsfolk who call this place home.
Like most simulation titles of its ilk, Stardew Valley sees you fostering relationships with the residents in your new tiny town. The game launched a decade ago with ten bachelors and bachelorettes, with plenty of fans spending the first several months falling in love with all the hot new singles in their area. Since then, like all other parts of Stardew Valley, the pool of eligible singles has continued to expand.
The Fan Focus Of Stardew Valley Marriage Candidates
Eight months after launch, creator Eric “ConcernedApe” Barone released Stardew Valley version 1.1 which added, among other things, two new marriage candidates: blue-haired bartender Emily and disgruntled JojaMart employee Shane.
My Partner Underestimated Stardew Valley Bootcamp
Babe, this is a cozy game, I swear!
Both characters were in the game at launch but only as potential friends, not lovers you could marry or shack up with, and their implementation was decided from polls ConcernedApe ran on Twitter. Four male and four female options for new singles were offered, and the game duly implemented the two winners. There were almost 30,000 votes cast between the two, and both polls were landslides.
Shane earned 48.2 percent of the votes cast in the poll for bachelors, while Emily’s margin for victory in the bachelorette poll was even larger at 59.1 percent. But even after the race was called, there were still six characters left in the lurch, and fans have not yet moved on from the idea that they could one day woo them, too. Desert shop owner Sandy was an easy silver medalist, with older rancher Marnie all but spoken for in her affair with Mayor Lewis, and town drunk Pam generally low on the list of fan favorites.
The Junimo-speaking Wizard, outcast Linus, and blacksmith Clint appeared on the male poll as well, and while the split was more generous to everyone, the result was still clear. The Wizard took a decisive second with 29.7 percent of the vote, Linus and his 15.7 percent earned third, and Clint was dead last with a pitiful 6.4 percent.
This means that, out of over 14,300 people, not even a full thousand of them wanted to marry Clint.
ConcernedApe teased that something was coming a few weeks before the tenth anniversary stream that took place earlier this week, and eyebrows around Pelican Town raised all at once hoping for new romance options. Fans have used the time since this announcement of an announcement, so to speak, to speculate wildly on whose hearts we’ll be claiming next.
The aforementioned polls were voted on in the earliest days of Stardew Valley’s life, decided by day-one fans. Now, a decade on, it was announced that the long-teased additional marriage candidates would rather predictably be Sandy for the bachelorette choice, and… Clint, the bachelor almost nobody has been asking for.
Can Clint’s Romance Make Me Like Him, After Ten Years?
Pelican Town’s blacksmith has been in the game since long before it was even released, always sweating over his forge to help keep your tools in tip-top shape or crack open a geode or two. As a vendor, his shop is incredibly useful and one I visit often, but I’ve had other problems with Clint for a very long time.
My beef lies in his hyperfixation with Emily; that man has never once missed an opportunity to be unbelievably, unrepentantly creepy about his crush on her. I get that not everyone is charismatic enough to chat effortlessly with the person they like, but as someone who grew up having dealt with a Clint type or two herself, I absolutely don’t find his weirdness around Emily to be charming.
He’s weird if you romance Emily yourself – he congratulates you in a way that feels wholly insincere – and he’s weird if you don’t – hiding in the bushes outside her house during one of his heart events. His heart does not seem yours to win, and he gives you little reason to want his to, either.
If I find the creepy letter in his house after we get married we are going to have words. Hell, he better at least crack my geodes for free, if you know what I’m saying…
Emily does accept an invitation from him later in his sequence of heart events if you’re not wooing her yourself, so maybe she’s not entirely opposed to the idea. And each of the romance options in Pelican Town has someone who’s considered to be their canon opposite, another eligible single they spend time with and may occasionally seem to have feelings for in some way.
But typically, this has been Emily and Shane, who entered the romantic fray together in version 1.1. It’s no surprise we’ve seen them paired up since then, while Clint has seemed to deserve his outcast status more and more with each conversation. Will the game change to now put Emily with Clint as Clint’s romantic arc is developed?
ConcernedApe will at least need to update the scenes at the Saloon if you get caught dating all the women or all the men in town at once, so while he’s poking around in the files, what else will he update? Barone was purposefully vague about the version 1.7 update in the anniversary stream, confirming only that the update is in the works and includes the option to date Sandy and/or Clint, so only time will tell. Will Clint move over to the barstools at the Saloon? Will Emily visit the blacksmith’s shop? Will they pair up for the Flower Dance?
While I will end up begrudgingly dating Clint just for the plot (literally), I’m not entirely excited about it. Besides, with feelings as deep as Clint’s, how am I ever going to feel like anything but a consolation prize when we end up together? I know the jukebox at the Stardrop Saloon lets you change the music at the bar for the night, but I wonder if it will let me play Dolly Parton’s “Jolene”…
- Released
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February 26, 2016
- ESRB
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E for Everyone (Fantasy Violence, Mild Blood, Mild Language, Simulated Gambling, Use of Alcohol and Tobacco)
- Developer(s)
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ConcernedApe
- Publisher(s)
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ConcernedApe
- Engine
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Proprietary
- Multiplayer
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Local Multiplayer, Online Multiplayer
- Cross-Platform Play
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Stardew Valley does not currently support crossplay between different consoles and PC
