A deceiving game, Stardew Valley is the story of a young man/woman that has moved to a small coastal town with a vibrant community and ecosystem in an attempt to escape from the crushing burden of corporate work and take on a respectable career in farming.
All of this sounds great, so why is it "deceiving?"
After you've played the game for a while, you start to notice something: there's only a few areas you can go to. There's your farm, the town, the woods, the beach, the mountains, and if you have the bus stop running again, you can go to the desert. However, this "city" that's mentioned so many times, and is even shown once, is completely inaccessable, as is the rest of the outside world.
At first, you will just ignore this fact. It's not significant yet, and there's plenty of exploration to be done.
However, as you continue playing and get past a couple of years, something else starts to become apparent.
Nobody changes at all. Not a single person will age; the children that are present stay children forever, the old man in the wheelchair never dies, and nobody grows up. The only exceptions to this rule are your children; however, once at a certain point they will stop aging forever. No amount of years ever changes any of this; you could go to 1000 years and nothing will have changed.
You will also notice that there is no way to die. You can eat poisonous mushrooms, but all they'll do is make you pass out from exhaustion. You can have your health lowered to 0 by taking too much damage from hostile creatures, but you'll just end up in the hospital and lose some stuff from it. You cannot die by starvation, freezing, drowning, dehydration, burning, and you can never get sick with anything.
You are immortal, immune to death or aging, as is everyone else in the game. You will forever be condemned to life, eventually rendering any and all activities boring beyond comprehension, and there will never be an end to this boredom. By moving into the town, the worst curse to ever be conceived has been forced upon you, as with its other residents.
While your grandfather's death suggests that escape is the only way to be freed of this suffering, this task is impossible for you. The only place the bus can take you is to the desert and back to town. You cannot escape by following the road, as an invisible forcefield blocks the way. There is no path to the outside, and you cannot teleport out by magic.
The true antagonist of Stardew Valley is your grandfather. He is the one who tricked you to move to his farm. He forced you into this life, while ensuring his own immunity. He is the true mastermind of this world. The only purpose you serve and will ever serve is being a source of entertainment for him; you are the embodiment of an act of infinite foolishness, and are thus a matter of infinite comedic value.
There is no freeing yourself from this torture. You are left to the agony that is life for as long as time exists, unable to express your pain. Meanwhile, your grandfather, the sole survivor of this hell, forever laughs at you from the afterlife.
It was all a trap, and you fell for it.
This is the true story of Stardew Valley.
