Stardew Valley bachelors and bachelorettes, ranked

Like many people I know, my life has been consumed by playing the recently released 1.6 update for Stardew Valley, one of my favorite games of all time. Naturally, my evenings have been sucked up by getting drawn back into the world of Pelican Town and its environs. I'm still in the early days of this playthrough, but I'm slowly but surely building up my little farm, venturing into the unexplored mines, and fishing. (So much fishing.)

Stardew is one of the few games I've played to any real extent since my writing career began in earnest in 2009. I am the kind of gamer who finds it difficult to stop playing when I'm reasonably sucked into a game, but Stardew's rhythm of days giving way to nights giving way to new days provides plenty of hopping off points. If I just want to play for a half-hour or so, I can get quite a bit done. And if I want to play for a full evening, there's enough stuff to do to keep me occupied.

Where my wife tends to be a bit of a grinder, focusing heavily on one aspect of the game at a time, I like to sample a bit from everything the game has to offer. This means I often take longer to do things than my wife would like – which made the one time we tried co-op disastrous – but I play the game as an alternate life simulator for the most part.

As such, I frequently avail myself of the option to marry one of the game's 12 bachelors and bachelorettes, then have children with them, living out my tradwife fantasies (except I'm also the breadwinner somehow). I love the slightly undercooked social aspect of Stardew so much that I have watched all of the cutscenes for relationships I have not progressed through on YouTube (though I have also progressed through almost all of the relationships).

This depth of research makes me the single person most qualified in the world to rank the Stardew marriage candidates, which I will do... now. Spoilers follow!

1. Leah

An unfortunate reality of Stardew's marriage candidates is that they are probably meant to be in their 20s, but they largely read as being about 16. Some of that is due to the genre the game is in and some of it is thanks to the fact that they all live with older family members who care for them, giving them childlike vibes even if, say, jock Alex keeps talking about his glory days as a high school athlete, which are implied to be in the past.

Not so with Leah! Leah feels like she's about 34. She lives on her own in a cottage in the woods, she's trying to make a go of being an artist, and she has an ex from the big city who wanders through and attempts to infringe on your burgeoning relationship at one point. When you finally marry her, she seems much more capable around the farm, fixing up fences and the like, her woodworking skills coming to bear.

Now, listen: I know that all of the marriage candidates in this game have roughly similar likelihoods of, say, doing some chores post-marriage. But something about Leah just makes her feel like she's dedicated to building a life with you out here on the farm. She retires to her studio to make art every night while you wander into caves and try not to get eaten by monsters. Love!

2. Harvey

The other obviously-an-adult marriage candidate is Harvey, the town doctor, who seems like he's probably 45. If he suddenly revealed that he had a wife and kids he'd just walked out on one day, then never looked back, you'd be, like, "Well, that makes sense of some things." Also, he has a cute little mustache!

One of the underrated aspects of Stardew is how its coziness is built atop stories of deep sadness and regret. Most of the characters in this world are hurting, and it's only through living in Stardew Valley that they're able to start healing. The game lets you invent your own fiction for your character, but it strongly wants you to think that you are healing, too. Maybe you are!

What's fascinating about Harvey is that his narrative of healing is one most adults will find poignant: He likes his work, and he likes his life, and he loves you, but he feels a deep pang at giving up on some long-held dreams in the name of pursuing something more secure. Several of the marriage candidates have more forthrightly DRAMATIC arcs, but Harvey's has a beautiful subtlety.

Also, he's an amazing chef.

3. Emily

Of the characters in this game, Emily is the one where you'd never mistake her for being anything other than in her 20s. Within the fiction of the story, she and her sister, Haley, are living together in their parents' house while their parents explore the world, but there's a distinctly maternal vibe Emily has with Haley. It feels as though she's been left in charge and has a deep ambivalence about that. She wants to be a fashion designer, and she works in the local bar. One of the locals has his eye on her, and she's just not interested. But maybe if you took a shine to her...

Emily's story is of a woman who wants to try to help everyone and finds that such a task is impossible. She's a kooky free spirit who sometimes seems like she's trying to simply leave her life behind in the name of Something Else, but she wouldn't actually abandon her responsibilities because that's not who she is. Notably among the marriage candidates, some of Emily's cutscenes are outright fantasy sequences she drags the player into. She's dissociating in Stardew Valley just like you are.

Emily was not one of the marriageable characters when the game first launched and was added in a later update. To some extent, the game shows a bit of this evolution in how it handles her character arc (especially in re: Clint, the local who's into her), but you'd really have to go digging around in the game's dialogue trees to realize this.

Also, one of her cutscenes heavily implies the two of you bang it out, which is as explicit as this game gets.

4 Sebastian

Cool and mysterious, Sebastian pretty much has to be in his late 20s for the game's chronology to make any sense, since his younger half-sister, Maru, works as a nurse and, therefore, would seem to have some level of professional training. Yet his story is all about being stuck in Pelican Town and longing to get out to the big city but finding himself unable to take that step. And then if he falls in love with you, he stops wanting his horizons to be so big.

There's an interesting tension to this character the game doesn't fully explore. Why doesn't he just leave? He's an adult, right? Why does he stay in the basement playing video games and working on songs for his band? Does he, you know, have a job? There's a disaffected quality to the character that feels 15-ish but ends up feeling slightly more complicated when you consider that he's probably about 28.

But! That's what makes the game's arc of him realizing that he can be happy right here at home surprisingly effective when I normally might bristle at it.

Also, his musical theme is the game's best.

5. Maru

Now we're truly getting into the "Are these people all 16??" string of characters. Despite being the nurse at the local clinic and, thus, subtly paired with (45-year-old) Harvey for couples events around town unless you start dating one of them, Maru has huge "I can't wait to go to college!!!" vibes. She spends most of the game trying to get her dad to be less protective of her, which doesn't really scream "I'm 25" to me like the game probably hopes it does.

Except! When you consider Maru's story in tandem with that of her half-brother Sebastian, a richer psychological portrait starts to form. The two share a mother, and while we learn very little of who Sebastian's father was, it's not hard to imagine the many ways in which his absence might have drawn this family into a too-tight knot. Why is Maru's dad, Demetrius, so protective of her? Perhaps because he's seen how easily lives can be ripped apart.

Stardew Valley frequently states that there's a very long war going on just outside of the valley, and a part of me wonders if Sebastian's thwarted ambitions and Maru's attempts to escape her father's protectiveness stem from the same motivation on the part of their respective parents: a need to make sure their children are okay in a world rent by chaos. I understand that!

Also, she's the only marriage candidate who is not white, which is maybe a thing designer Eric Barone should rethink in future updates/sequels.

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6. Haley

Welcome to the ranking that has made the most Stardew fans in my life stare at me in bewilderment. Haley, who almost immediately negs you when you move to town and who definitely seems like she's 16, is almost nobody's favorite character or marriage candidate. But I love her! I originally had her third, and I feel bad moving her this low! Sorry, Haley!

Yet where the marriage candidates mostly have arcs that involve them opening up to the character and revealing hidden depths, Haley has an honest-to-gosh romance arc with the player. It's a very trite enemies-to-lovers thing, and it comes with a heaping helping of "I've learned to not care about appearances so much!" lesson learning that flirts with being dismissive of femininity for no good reason. But gosh, when she starts to fall for you, it's so satisfying in the way of all great romcoms.

Also, she's a popular girl who's blonde. Of course I love her.

7. Abigail

On the one hand, Abigail rules. She wants to be a bold adventurer, and the player will sometimes encounter her in the depths of the mines, where she's bravely fighting monsters and the like. She's got amazing purple hair. She loves videogames. She is quite possibly the child of a wizard. Her arc – about learning to be a person separate from her parents – is pretty fantastic. Her evolving portrait from the game's development log resembles a transition timeline. And so on.

On the other hand, there is no way she's older than 17. Stay away!!!!

8. Shane

You want to talk about dramatic arcs!? You want to talk about dramatic arcs??? Here's Shane! He's all fucked up about everything, and only you, player, can fix him! If you don't help him, he'll probably die or something!

Like Emily, Shane was not originally a marriage candidate, but unlike Emily, Barone went super fucking hard when it came time to develop a story arc for Shane. An alcoholic and (it's heavily implied) an addict who suffers from depression, Shane lives on a farm with his aunt and goddaughter, in a situation where it's, again, heavily implied that both Shane and his goddaughter are orphans. Should the player get involved with him, he will slowly but surely clean up his act, but once you two get hitched, his corner of your house will be an absolute pigsty.

The thing about Shane, however, is that his arc is so dramatic, it very nearly doesn't seem like it should exist within this game. Yes, Stardew contains a lot of interesting and melancholy stories within it, and it's a wonder of balancing tonal elements, so the Shane stuff manages to feel relatively coherent within the game. But if you're embarking on a relationship with him, be aware that he will be a huge dick to you for a long time until he's not.

Also, dude loves chickens. He's not all bad.

9. Penny

I like Penny a lot, and I think the game says some interesting – if not particularly nuanced – things about the grinding crush of endless poverty through her arc. When the player is able to buy an upgraded house for her and her alcoholic mother, Pam, it's presented as the ultimate act of altruism.

And it is! It's a very nice thing to do for Penny and her mom! Penny sacrifices so much for everybody in town, to the degree that she doesn't seem to care about her own needs. She's also the town's de facto teacher, which puts her in the same boat as Maru – characters who seem about 19 but must be in their late 20s. And the love story here is also involving. The scene where the player and Penny go for a swim and chastely kiss is super sweet.

But everything about Penny's story is also sort of... gross? You know? I'm not asking Stardew Valley to develop more nuanced policy positions around poverty, but the game's portrayal of its class system is simultaneously more nuanced than you'd expect and not nuanced enough, and Penny falls precisely in that gap. Instead of the town itself caring for her, the onus falls on the player, which makes the whole thing feel a little like... well, like she falls in love with you because you took pity on her.

SORRY TO PENNY, WORST OF THE GIRLS.

10. Alex

Now, I love a dumb jock who immediately starts flirting with you when you get to town. Most of Alex's story before you really get to know him is about how he wants to get super buff and swole and relive his high school glory days. And while, like Haley and Abigail, he seems to be a junior in high school, he mentions frequently enough that high school is in his past that you have to assume he's actually, like, 20. Which is not 16!

Plus, Alex's story is the most forthright about this game's fascination with dead or otherwise absent parents, focused as it is on a legacy of abuse and his sorrow over the death of his mom. There's some really rich material in there. It just rarely gels terribly well with the way he acts through the rest of the game, where he's kind of a beefy himbo. This is not to say that beefy himbos can't have tragic, emotional depths; it is to say that Alex's arc occasionally feels a bit more by the numbers than some of the others.

Also, if you play a guy and you marry him, his grandpa will do a little speech that's, like, "I didn't know about all this gay stuff, but you make my grandson so happy," which is very sweet.

11. Sam

I routinely forget Sam exists.

12. Elliott

This guy thinks he's a better writer than me?? Fuck him!

This week's reading music: "Forest Theme 1" by Danny Simmons

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