Good news, Stardew Valley enthusiasts: the 1.7 update will make children 'a little more interesting' and add two new marriage candidates

Stardew Valley's 1.7 patch is going to be much bigger than anyone probably expects, and that's accounting for the fact that most Stardew Valley patches end up being bigger than anyone expects. In a new interview with IGN, creator Eric Barone listed a handful of features coming in the update, and one of them answers an oft-made demand from Stardew Valley die-hards: make kids interesting.

Stardew Valley kids—ie, the children you raise yourself, not the diminutive NPCs roaming around town—are very boring. They just walk around your house and don't do much else. They don't grow, and they have few demands. They're quite unlike real children.

"What I will say without maybe being too specific is that with this update, one of the things we're trying to do is... Well, there is a popular fan request, which has to do with the children, trying to make the children a little more interesting," Barone said. "So I'm trying to do something with that, but there's a lot of other things in the update as well that no one's really asked for, but I think people will appreciate it."

Another confirmed new feature is two new marriage candidates. (Krobus, anyone?) Barone also talked about the potential for a farm map editor "so you could basically make your own," though he's unsure yet whether it'll actually materialise in 1.7.

"Because with every update, it's traditional to add a new farm type," Barone said. "When the game first came out, there was just standard farm, that was it. And then 1.1, I added four different farms or something. And then with every update, there's been one added. What if we opened this up to the community and it was like now you could press an extra button, go into a browser and look at everyone's farm creation? That now adds almost infinite replayability to Stardew Valley. So I'm interested in ways to make the game more just infinitely replayable without the use of AI. That's never going to happen."

As Andy Chalk reported back in December, Barone has already vaguely confirmed "some more character/social stuff" and that "it's also traditional to add a new farm type". But as always, the full scale of 1.7 won't be clear until just before launch.