Games Like Stardew Valley: 10 Farm and Village Games to Play Next

Which part of Stardew Valley hooked you?

Stardew Valley is really three games layered on top of each other: a planning game (what to plant before the season ends), a social game (who to visit, what to gift) and a light dungeon crawler (how deep you dare to go in the mine). Most games "like Stardew" lean hard into one of those layers, so the quickest way to find a good follow-up is to decide which layer you missed most.

If it was the calendar and the crops, the Story of Seasons games are the obvious home. If it was the people, Spiritfarer and Dinkum put relationships front and centre. If you kept going back into the mine, Rune Factory 5 and My Time at Sandrock have far more combat. Our full game finder lets you filter by session length and players if you want to cast the net wider.

Farm calendars versus workshop commissions

Not every game in this list is about crops. My Time at Sandrock replaces the field with a workshop: instead of waiting for parsnips, you wait for a furnace or an assembly station to finish. The rhythm feels similar, because you still plan around a daily clock, but the satisfaction comes from fulfilling commissions for townsfolk rather than shipping produce.

Graveyard Keeper takes the same idea in a stranger direction. You are still optimising a small business, crafting items and running errands for villagers, but the business is a graveyard and the humour is dark. PEGI rates it 16 because drinking alcohol gives the player stat boosts, which makes it a very different proposition from Stardew's PEGI 12.

Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life keeps the crops but slows everything down. Time moves in chapters, and the story follows your household over the years, which some players find more relaxing and others find too slow.

How the ratings compare with Stardew's PEGI 12

Stardew Valley carries a PEGI 12 rating with a Gambling descriptor in the PEGI database, because, as PEGI's consumer advice explains, the player can visit a casino and bet in-game tokens on games such as blackjack and slots. That surprises many parents who think of it as a gentle farming game.

Several picks here sit lower. Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life is PEGI 3, and My Time at Sandrock, Dinkum, Fae Farm and Moonstone Island are PEGI 7 for mild violence. Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town is PEGI 12 too, also with a Gambling descriptor, which PEGI links to betting in-game money on horse races. At the other end, Rune Factory 5 is PEGI 12 with violence, bad language and sex descriptors, and Graveyard Keeper is PEGI 16.

Ratings can differ between versions of the same game, so it is worth checking the exact edition on pegi.info before buying. Our guide on how to choose your next game explains what the descriptors mean.

Playing together: co-op farms and shared towns

Stardew's co-op mode lets friends share one farm, splitting chores and money. If that was the main draw, look for games built with co-op from the start rather than added later.

• Fae Farm supports up to four players, online or locally, with shared progress.
• Dinkum lets friends join your island and build alongside you.
• Spiritfarer has a local two-player mode where the second player controls a cat companion, which works well for a parent and child.

Most of the others are single-player. If you mainly play with someone on the same sofa, our couch co-op picks are a better starting point.

Short evenings or long weekends?

A single in-game day in Stardew passes in a matter of real-world minutes, so it naturally breaks into short sessions, even though a full in-game year adds up to many hours. Games built on the same day-by-day structure, such as Fae Farm and Story of Seasons, keep that "one more day" feel.

Rune Factory 5 and My Time at Sandrock have longer quest chains and bigger maps, which tend to pull you into longer sittings. Spiritfarer sits in the middle: each passenger's story arc gives you natural stopping points. If you have limited time on weeknights, the short sessions mood page collects games that respect a tight evening.

Stardew alternatives by platform and play style

Stardew Valley is on almost everything, so the main question is usually which follow-up runs on the machine you already own. Most picks below are on PC through Steam, and Nintendo Switch owners have the widest choice overall. If you play on a handheld, games built around short in-game days, such as Fae Farm and Story of Seasons, fit naturally into a commute or lunch break.

• PC: My Time at Sandrock, Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life, Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town, Rune Factory 5, Dinkum, Spiritfarer, Graveyard Keeper, Fae Farm, Moonstone Island.
• PlayStation: My Time at Sandrock, Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life, Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town, Spiritfarer, Graveyard Keeper.
• Xbox: My Time at Sandrock, Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life, Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town, Spiritfarer, Graveyard Keeper.
• Nintendo Switch / Switch 2: My Time at Sandrock, Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life, Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town, Rune Factory 5, Dinkum, Spiritfarer, Graveyard Keeper, Fae Farm, Moonstone Island.