Stardew Valley creator Eric “ConcernedApe” Barone has shared an update on his next game, Haunted Chocolatier.
Haunted Chocolatier was initially announced back in 2021. In May of 2024, Barone said he’s “not too concerned with the pressure” of releasing Haunted Chocolatier, stating “it’s better to have a delayed game that’s actually good than a bad game that’s on time”.
Then, last year, Barone assured his fans that he is “committed to not working on Stardew Valley” until he’s “done with Haunted Chocolatier”. Since then, Barone revealed that “the world of Haunted Chocolatier is larger than Stardew Valley”, but otherwise word on the anticipated release has been somewhat slim.
That has changed now, though, thanks to a new Haunted Chocolatier blog post. Here, the solo developer said he had “been very productive lately”, and Haunted Chocolatier is indeed alive and well. While he did admit it is “taking a while” to get everything finished, he said there is nothing wrong with that.
“I know, I know, I shouldn’t have announced the game so early. But I had my reasons,” Barone wrote, before going to on “debunk a few myths and false assumptions” he had seen making the rounds.
First off, he assured everyone he will not be abandoning Haunted Chocolatier. He added even if he did decide to move on from his next game, he wouldn’t be adding any unused content to Stardew Valley, as they “are separate games”.
“It doesn’t even make sense from a technical perspective, as Haunted Chocolatier is written from scratch, it’s not the same ‘engine’ as Stardew Valley. You can’t just copy and paste Haunted Chocolatier into Stardew Valley,” he explained. He furthered that when he is working on Stardew Valley, he is “not thinking” about Haunted Chocolatier, and “vice versa”. This means he would “wouldn’t ‘test something out’ in Stardew Valley” for Haunted Chocolatier.
Speaking of Stardew Valley, he is also working on a new update with “additional ideas for how to improve it”, so there is something else to look forward to.
Finally, Barone addressed Haunted Chocolatier’s release date. We still don’t have one, alas, but Barone doesn’t sound too concerned about that really. “The bottom line is, I don’t want to give a release date,” he explained.
“The game will come out when it’s done.”
Back in January last year, Barone revealed that, as of December 2024, Stardew Valley had sold in excess of 41m copies across platforms. Of those 41m, over half are on PC, with 26m copies sold. Meanwhile, the Nintendo Switch accounts for 7.9m Stardew Valley sales.
