Best Ongoing Game 2024: Stardew Valley
PC Gamer's Best Ongoing Game award celebrates an older game that had a great 2024 thanks to ongoing support from its developer. This year, we're paying homage to Stardew Valley, the labour-of-love farming sim that's still receiving major updates eight years after its release. For more awards, check out our Game of the Year 2024 hub.
Kara Phillips, Evergreen Writer: At this point, Stardew Valley feels like the gift that keeps on giving. When you first play it feels like you've got a whole world at your fingertips—everything feels so new and exciting. But the best part of Stardew is no matter how long you've been playing, this feeling doesn't go away—even when you've decided to speedrun to Ginger Island, restore the community centre in your first year, and fill the library with everything you find.
With a lot of farming simulators, it's pretty easy to get bored of completing the same tasks every single day—cultivating your crops and tending to your animals—but so much time has been put into making Pelican Town lively enough that even winter is an exciting season. It's basically impossible to get bored.
We've been treated this year to the biggest content update the game has ever received, too, so even for someone like me who has been playing for the better part of six years now it feels like I've just picked it up for the first time. Which is very impressive for a game that initially revolves around such a simple day-to-day routine. Plus, there's now a family of raccoons to help out and that's an instant win in my books.
Elie Gould, News Writer: Stardew Valley 1.6 was one of the most exciting releases this year, not just because it added a whole new farm and festivals but because it managed to reignite my love for this little life sim.
I had previously stormed my way through Stardew Valley's story, maxing out my farm and ticking off every single achievement that came my way. But it wasn't until I was forced to slow down with a new player by my side in a co-op farm that I realised that the best part of this game is that you don't really have to do anything at all.
You get out of Stardew what you put into it. It's just as acceptable to slowly work on your farm—fishing on days when you don't want to pick up a watering can or planning out your next home extension—than it is to go feral in the mines, digging your way down to level 120.
I've now taken to appreciating the slower things in life, like tending to our two chickens, Cheese and Onion, as well as just tidying up the garden when and where I see fit. Doing pretty much the same thing every day may not sound very interesting, but it's remarkable how soothing that is. You can be your genuine self here, no matter what form that may take or how many times it may change, and I can't believe it took me this long to figure that out.
Jody Macgregor, Weekend/AU Editor: Growing crops was never my thing. All the hassle of remembering what to plant in what season, the bleakness of winter, it's too much like actual work. The meadowlands farm added in 1.6 is my jam because it's more animal-focused. Instead of a bunch of useless parsnip seeds you start with a coop and two chickens, so you can get on that mayonnaise gravy train early and then have a steady source of income that basically looks after itself.
That's not what got me back into Stardew this year, though. It was the renewed conversation around it from so many other people either going back or discovering it for the first time. Arguing about who the best townsfolk are and asking important questions like: why can't we marry Krobus?
Phil Savage, Global Editor-in-Chief: It feels fitting that it's Stardew Valley picking up this award—given both what a uniquely remarkable thing it is, and what a weird year it's been for the traditional live-service model. With a few exceptions, it feels like live-service players are feeling more fatigued than ever with the endless churn of battle passes and expansions—especially as companies struggle to provide constant, rolling updates to an often dwindling playerbase. Here, instead, our favourite game to return to was one that has never asked for more money: No FOMO, no DLC, not even a microtransaction in sight. It's just a wildly popular game that keeps getting bigger and better.