New Cozy Game Took 10 Minutes to Prove Stardew Valley Doesn't Define the Genre

Over 10 years ago, Stardew Valley was released, designed and marketed as a love letter to classic farm life sims like Harvest Moon, and it effortlessly took the gaming industry by storm. To this day, it remains the definitive cozy experience—apart from franchises like Animal Crossing—and it has had such an impact on the indie gaming scene that countless developers, whether solo or part of a team, have been inspired by it to make their own, similar games. As a result, it's exceedingly easy to find Stardew Valley-likes, due to the sheer number that are out there, as well as the fact that typing "games like Stardew Valley" into Google takes two seconds and can offer up a plethora of worthwhile results. However, after playing the demo for the upcoming cozy game Farming Camp by Innerfire Studios, I'm convinced that, sometimes, being compared to Stardew Valley can actually be a bad thing, if the immediate interpretation is far different from what the game has to offer.