Stardew Valley developer has "not touched Haunted Chocolatier in a long time" due to ongoing update work
Wake me up before you cocoa.
Stardew Valley creator Eric 'ConcernedApe' Barone has been so "committed to finalising Stardew 1.6 first", he hasn't actually touched Haunted Chocolatier "in a long time".
Barone shared a post on social media platform X earlier today addressing the highly-anticipated console and mobile ports of the Stardew Valley 1.6 update. The developer assured his followers that these ports are still in the works, but things are taking a while.
"They have been our primary focus since 1.6 came out for PC," Barone wrote. "It would be a huge relief to me if they were ready today, but they aren't, so all we can do is continue working on them until they are ready."
Barone thanked those who were remaining patient, adding he understood those who were "frustrated or even angry" about the wait. In a subsequent post replying to another user asking why he chose to release the PC version ahead of other versions, Barone said on PC "if there are bugs (which there always will be), they can be fixed really quickly and patches put out, often within hours of discovering the bug".
Patches are not so quick to sort on consoles, he continued. "It's ideal to have all major issues resolved before submitting to consoles. Otherwise players might have game breaking, or even save-corrupting bugs in the game for a week," Barone wrote. "The truth is, I didn't expect console to take this long, but there have been technical issues with the porting process. I was originally hoping it would be maybe, one month apart max.
"At any rate, I feel bad about it"
Within his initial post, Barone added this ongoing focus on Stardew Valley has meant his next game, Haunted Chocolatier, has had to take a back seat in the meantime.
Haunted Chocolatier was first announced back in 2021, with a cute trailer showing off its spooky chocolate-making, monster-stabbing, small town-living role-playing gameplay. Earlier this year, Barone said he's "not too concerned with the pressure" of releasing Haunted Chocolatier, saying, "it's better to have a delayed game that's actually good than a bad game that's on time".