After 10 years of working on exclusively Stardew Valley, Eric Barone, more commonly known as ConcernedApe, has announced his second game, Haunted Chocolatier. Along with this announcement, he posted a short glimpse at some early gameplay which showcases an art style extremely similar to that of Stardew Valley, simple but extremely effective. While the gameplay makes the game look close to completion, on a blog post on the game’s official site Barone assures players that there is still much left to be done in the game and we shouldn’t expect a release anytime soon. Barone is currently working on the game entirely by himself and has no plans to invite anyone else to work on it besides him at this time.
Though he kept what he said about the upcoming game limited as to not box him into any corners as he continues to flesh out this new world and story, he did give a few details. As you can see in the gameplay, you will indeed be playing as a chocolatier in a small town, and as you can guess from the title, you will also be haunted by a ghost. As the chocolatier, you will have to collect rare ingredients to create the best chocolate in town and sell it in your chocolate shop to earn profits. Haunted Chocolatier may look similar to Stardew Valley in some respects, but it also is very different. Barone wanted to use this game to explore “beyond the ordinary.” He compared Stardew to the Sun while Haunted Chocolatier is closer to the moon, both are vital and positive forces but are still quite different. Barone says he is having lots of fun creating this new RPG/simulation game, but he seems to also be putting a lot of thought into creating a more purposeful experience, as evident in this quote from the full post linked above:
Chocolate represents that which is delightful. The haunted castle represents the allure of the unknown. The ghosts represent the imprint of the past. All of these things are important.
Barone said he began working on this game about a year ago now in 2020, spending their evenings and weekends creating the world we see in the early gameplay, but he is still actively working on Stardew Valley-related things as well. This is also not the first or only “new project” he has been working on, but he believes this is the one he will complete first.
Eric Barone has created a new engine for Haunted Chocolatier using C#/Monogame but he does intend to reuse some code from Stardew Valley as he continues to create it. Right now the only platform and languages that are confirmed 100% are PC and English, but he definitely wants to at least localize the game to other languages, but that is too far into the future to make further comments on at this time. Haunted Chocolatier is also currently single-player only with no plans to make it multiplayer. That is all there really is so far about the Haunted Chocolatier, but being avid fans of his work, we will definitely be keeping our eyes open for future updates as Eric Barone continues to create his next project.
