Stardew Valley dev on Haunted Chocolatier: a ‘skeleton of the game’ is now in place

Eric Barone – also known as ConcernedApe – is most known for being the creator of Stardew Valley, which has gone down as one of the era-defining indie games in recent memory. Seriously, if you haven’t played it, you are urged to treat yourself. However, years later, people have been wondering where Barone’s next project is.

Although the developer has already said their next game, Haunted Chocolatier, is currently in the works, there have been very few, if any, updates since. But in a recent post on the upcoming game’s website, Barone has made it clear that progress is underway. In fact, the message goes on to say they’ve “already done a ton of work on the game,” adding that “essentially a skeleton of the game with most (not all) of its bones” is now in place.

As you can imagine, what’s halting development is the sheer popularity of Stardew Valley. The post says that the big 1.6 update that rolled out this year required much work and time. Barone says the patch was originally intended as more of an “under the hood” update rather than anything substantial. However, as they got more involved, version 1.6 became a much bigger project, which diverted attention away from Haunted Chocolatier.

What’s next?

The bones of the developer’s next project are just the beginning. The next phase is to tweak these aspects and then “add all the rest of the bones, and then flesh it all out with all the content that will need to be in the game.” This is, as you can imagine, going to take some time.

But Barone does make it clear that creating video games is something they intend to carry on with, saying, “I like making games, and I have a lot more that I want to share.” Unlike Stardew Valley, Haunted Chocolatier won’t be available for pre-order or be out in Early Access. This is so ConcernedApe doesn’t “feel a ton of external pressure to finish the game on a timeline.”

Haunted Chocolatier will not be abandoned, even if the developer doesn’t give updates for a while. Much like the Stardew 1.6 update, there are likely to be periods of radio silence so Barone can “work in isolation” and “only emerge when I have something complete and worthy, rather than share a bunch of stuff that is unfinished.” It’s coming, folks. Just give it time.