Inspired by the Bokujo Monogatari or Story of Seasons series, Eric “ConcernedApe” Barone developed and released Stardew Valley on February 26, 2016. Ever since then, both the game and the developer have garnered an incredible loyal following. Before Stardew Valley, the farm-sim genre was getting pretty stale, with Nintendo’s Animal Crossing series being the only saving grace. But post-Stardew Valley, everything changed in this niche genre, which is now one of the most famous genres with a lot of indie games. Stardew Valley is what revitalized interest in farm sims once again, and there’s no end to how much the game has contributed to popularizing indie games in general. Even to this day, SV sees a lot of new players who want to start a new farm-life journey or are just looking to relax a bit. And it’s for such players that we’ve got guides that will help in understanding every bit of Stardew Valley. This one in particular will focus on shining a light on what exactly those red hearts are in the game.
Farm Sims in general, are one of the easiest types of games to get into. Almost everything’s pretty much understandable. But sometimes certain things can be confusing to wrap your head around. This red heart thing in Stardew Valley is one of them for some players. So without much further ado, continue reading to learn what it exactly means in the game.
What does a red heart mean in Stardew Valley?
The red heart that you’ve been racking your brains so much about simply signifies your friendship or relationship level with a particular NPC. The higher your friendship level, the more red hearts you will have, which in turn means friendly dialogue, cutscenes, gifts, and more. Besides growing crops and selling them for profit, increasing your friendship level with the NPCs is also another important goal you will have in Stardew Valley.
Although we have already mentioned some benefits of raising friendship levels, the best of them is that after maxing out the hearts, you can date any one of the dateable NPCs and even eventually propose a marriage to them. There are ten empty hearts in total, which slowly fill up and turn red when your friendship score increases with an NPC. There’s also the fourteen hearts meter, but that one is only for the player’s in-game spouse. It takes about 250 friendship points to turn an empty heart into a red one. There are various types of positive actions that give you a certain number of friendship points. You will also see a dot or a colored circle when interacting with an NPC, which is a helpful gameplay mechanic related to friendship level. You can read more about it here.
Well, if you want to know more about Stardew Valley or would like to see more guides related to it, don’t forget to follow DigiStatement. Also read: Stardew Valley Update 1.6 will bring new festival, new items, dialogues, secrets & more
