Stardew Valley is an indie-game that came out in February of 2016. Since then, the game has sold over 3.5 million copies. Since then, players have been calling for the creator to implement a co-op mode for players to share the fun.

Even I after logging so many hours on the game desperately waited for the co-op to be introduced to the game. Since August of 2016, the developers have been hard at work attempting to port Stardew Valley to other consoles as well as launch the multiplayer feature.

The developers announced that the multiplayer feature would come to the Steam port of the game in early 2018. However, the online co-op function would not come out until April of this year.

As soon as I heard about this feature coming to one of my favorite games, I jumped on the bandwagon and opted into the beta. Bugs didn’t concern me, I wanted the co-op and I had waited for so long.

Calling up three of my friends, I jumped right into it and immediately fell in love with the game all over again. Having one main house and three other smaller cabins for the joining players made the farm you inherit feel more closely knitted.

Entering the mines with three of my close friends and defeating monsters as well as finding valuable items for selling, there was no better feeling. Pressing play on my playlist and falling into this world was simply so exciting.

The few bugs that I encountered in my time didn’t concern me, collecting resources and completing tasks as a team meant many laughs and enjoyable moments.

Not all of our time was spent farming parsnips in the spring or spending all of our money on potatoes for mass amounts of profit. Often times we all went our separate ways during the start of a new day and we met each other throughout often messing with each other in any possible way that we could.

A shared banking system meant we all shared the money we earned, which led to many interesting and hilarious moments. Harvesting a massive crop wave and waking up the next morning to a couple thousand coins was always exciting. On those days however, we found ourselves at a loss for coins as my friend Nathan screamed, “Time to blow all this money on more potatoes!”

A defeated sigh often fell from my friend Sean, but we all laughed it off. Overall, I have enjoyed this newfound beta for one of my all time favorite games. Despite the bugs, the beta is near perfect, it gave me and many other players exactly what we wanted, just a taste of building a farm with your closest friends and making hilarious moments.

That’s why I recommend this game as well as this beta for anyone with the gaming platform Steam on their PC.