Stardew Valley has a hardcore mode now thanks to a silly joke, but it's no laughing matter - you will lose your save if you use a guide

If you like to live on the wild side, cosy farming sim Stardew Valley now has a hardcore mode mod.

Stardew Valley isn't exactly the kind of game you can make a hardcore mode for. It's meant to be a mostly relaxing, slice-of-life type of game, not Elden Ring, or whatever. Maybe you could make it so that crops need more specific types of care, and money is hard to make, or you could die or something, but it's mostly against the spirit of the game. Last week, though, satirical games news outlet Hard Drive offered its own idea of a hardcore mode: one where your farm gets deleted if you open up the game's official Wiki. Any seasoned Stardew Valley player will know that the Wiki is the place to go for all your farming needs, so such a challenge could pose to be impossible.

As noted though, Hard Drive is just satire, so this obviously isn't real. Except, well, it is now! Within a day of Hard Drive's article going live, someone made this an actual mod you can download that checks whether you have the Wiki open or not (thanks, GamesRadar). The user that made it, nightshademagia, showed it off in a short video above and yep, as soon as you open that Wiki, your save file is immediately deleted, and if you try to open it up again, it's just simply gone. Now, I obviously wouldn't suggest doing this if you've got a save file you've been playing on for a long time, though I think that simply not opening the Stardew Valley Wiki doesn't seem like much of a challenge.

While this mod might be a bit of a joke, Stardew Valley creator Eric "ConcernedApe" Barone's next game Haunted Chocolatier certainly isn't. The indie developer announced the game back in 2021, and recently said he's feeling the pressure to get it out, but is taking his time with it so that it isn't a bad game.