Vincent and Jas were the last major characters to be introduced, and were added because ConcernedApe felt that the town needed to have small children to make it feel more alive. This change gave Penny (who was originally intended as a loner homebody) a completely new lease on life as their tutor. This also explains why Jas, in particular, seems very superfluous to the lives of the rest of her family, though the 1.1 update made a point of including Jas in most of Shane's newly added cutscenes.
The pattern on Shane's shirt (barely visible in his character portrait) is the number 2, as the shirt itself is a collared soccer jersey. Earlier versions of the character wore the shirt (with the number plainly visible on his sprite) without the hoodie over it, and had long-ish brown hair rather than the short-cropped dark purple do he ended up with. His sprite being completely overhauled to account for these changes happened fairly late in development, and was an exception to many other character sprites remaining largely the same over the years, even as character portraits evolved. Check out this development screenshot from December 2013◊ for his original look (he's in the upper left-hand corner), and notice how everyone else looks much the same.
Yasuhiro Wada, the creator of Harvest Moon, enjoys Stardew Valley since he thinks it captures the spirit of his old games more than Harvest Moon's later installments.
ConcernedApe enjoys the memes about Grandpa's bed, even reacting to some of them in a video with UnsurpassableZ.
ConcernedApe has also gone on record on his approval and encouragement for modders to add their own content and stories to the game with their mods. He has declined to answer which is his favorite one, saying that he doesn't want to be partial to any of them. He even made a point of making game's version 1.6 more mod-friendly as one of his objectives.
A whole slew of weapons—some the preferred weapons of bachelor(ette)s—were in the game's code since the 1.1 update. It was not possible to obtain them until an event added in update 1.6.
The original character sprites from the beta are still in the game files. Haley's shows up during part of her 8 heart event, but the rest cannot be accessed without hacks or mods.
A glitchy unused mountain summit area can be found north of the railroad if you use an out-of-bounds glitch. Early screenshots showed part of the intended path there from the railroad. Once you get there, you're stuck, so be sure to bring along a warp totem or return scepter. Version 1.5 has added the summit as a proper area, but it's only unlocked after achieving 100% completion.
Files exist for an item called the "Jukebox Ring"; the description indicates that it would play a random assortment of music from the game when you equipped it.
Unused sprites for Linus show him as a young man in a suit. These could have been from a cut heart event flashback showing his old life and why he left it behind.
Data files show references to unimplemented improvements for the farm, like being able to pay for extra space or improving the sand from the Beach Farm to be able to use sprinklers on them.
The movie theater has a special condition for Penny that causes her to love any movie you take her to if Pam is present in the audience, including a unique line upon this happening. However, Pam is set to never spawn if you do so, making this condition and line unseeable. note This is still possible in multiplayer by having another player invite Pam.
3 different colored fireworks that can't be obtained naturally exist among the game's item list. While they can be placed, they have no functionality. 1.6 made them obtainable and functional.
Meaningful Release Date: Possibly a happy coincidence, but the Switch version of the game was released on the Harvest Moon of 2017.
Promoted Fanboy: The game mod creators Pathoschild and FlashShifter, the former who created SMAPI and Content Patcher (respectively, the basic modding API and the most-used framework tool for modding the game), and the latter who's the author of the popular unofficial expansion mod Stardew Valley Expanded, were both hired by ConcernedApe and officially worked on update 1.6.
Schedule Slip: Initial plans were for the game to be released before the end of 2013. The release date for part of the game (the single-player mode only) was February 26, 2016, and the much-vaunted co-op mode followed almost two-and-a-half years later, on August 1, 2018.
Troubled Production: The game faced a lot of obstacles during development. On more than one occasion, the game was said to be close to finished, only for silence to follow.
On September 16, 2015, Chucklefish (the publishers and closed beta-testers for the game) released a stream with about an hour of gameplay footage—the first live gameplay footage made available in two years. Chucklefish had previously hosted a stream of an earlier build of the game, but it was deleted after Twitch instituted its policy of purging non-highlight archive videos. In his dev post linking the stream, ConcernedApe claimed that the single-player game was "99% complete" and that the game would "certainly" be released in 2015.
However, less than two months later, on November 7, ConcernedApe announced that, due to delays in finishing the game's multiplayer (he would later reveal that multiplayer development had effectively been dormant while he'd been working on single-player), he would not be able to release the game in 2015 after all. He announced plans to launch a Steam page for the game, though this ultimately took several weeks, and began posting daily development updates to his Twitter feed. From this point forward, images and video of the game began to appear on the Twitter feeds of Chucklefish staff members, and then subsequently on the streams of several popular Twitch users, indicating that the closed beta had expanded its tester base. Because the single-player game was essentially done and had been for some time, but the co-op mode would take several more months to complete, on December 18, 2015, ConcernedApe officially announced that the single-player version of Stardew Valley would be released to Steam (for a "very affordable" price) sometime in the new year, with the co-op mode to follow in an update later on.
The game originally had a slightly different introduction that allowed the player character to be controlled while on the bus to Stardew Valley; there were several Non Player Characters on the bus that could be interacted with, including an early appearance of Haley. This was also where you met Dobson, a Joja Mart employee who was originally going to be the game's villain. ConcernedApe eventually decided that Dobson didn't fit the feel he wanted for the game; Morris would end up inheriting some of his characteristics.
Robin was originally planned as a romanceable character, but that was scrapped, most likely because it would require breaking up her and Demetrius.
The beta versions of the infidelity scenes were initially much harsher. In the 1.3 update, being caught dating every bachelor/bachelorette at once will cause them all to be angry at you and refuse gifts for a week, but then return to normal; you can even avoid the scenes altogether by just having a rabbit's foot in your inventory. In the beta version, you'd lose 250 relationship points (a full heart) with each partner, your engagement would be canceled if you had one, and all of your boyfriends/girlfriends would break up with you at once, with no way to avoid the consequences.
ConcernedApe put out a couple ofTwitter polls to decide who to make as eligible marriage candidates in a then-future update. Shane and Emily were the winners and were later made romanceable; the other options included Linus, Clint, and the Wizard for bachelors and Marnie, Pam, and Sandy for bachelorettes.
Stardew Valley's Steam Greenlight page has a few details not present in the final game, such as the inclusion of a sixth skill (luck), points to distribute to your skills, and a plan for over 80 achievements (the final game launched with about half of that). An earlier version of the page mentioned hand-drawn portraits being considered in place of pixel ones but were ultimately decided against. An example of what hand-drawn portraits might've looked like can be seen in a timeline of Shane's earlier style◊.
ConcernedApe's Youtube channel features footage of older versions of Stardew Valley that too contain elements not present in the final game. Such as:
Planting multiple seeds at a time via a similar charge-up method done by the upgraded tools.
Foragable strawberries.
Secret Notes long before the 1.3 update (and were originally called Old Notes).
Crafting had to be done via a crafting table and was not instantaneous. note Plus could likely fail due to the "...and you succeed!" text upon completion.
Armor, with Plant Armor being one of them. Plus amulet and belt accessories.
Equippable lanterns.
Villagers showing up on your farm.
The ability to return to whatever mine level you were on instead of in intervals of five. Ladders were also found via hoeing.
Farm buildings were built by the player instead of Robin and were built immediately upon placement. You could also have multiple greenhouses, though these have fewer tiles than the single one (36 tiles instead of 120).
Being able to pick up fence pieces without needing to use a tool to remove them.
Animals, like buildings, could be bought on the farm and were also placed outside their respective buildings.
A digging skill in place of the combat skill (as well as the aforementioned luck skill).
Buyable fish from the Fish Shop along with various unreleased bait.
◊ for his original look (he's in the upper left-hand corner), and notice how everyone else looks much the same.
