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Eric “ConcernedApe” Barone is definitely feeling some pressure over fans expectations of Haunted Chocolatier, but it’s not weighing too heavily on him.
Back in 2021, Barone announced Haunted Chocolatier, the acclaimed indie developer’s second game that even over two years since its reveal (no, I don’t know how that much time has passed either) it hasn’t really been shown in action all that much. There have been some screenshots shown here and there, but mostly fans have been kept busy with Stardew Valley’s recent 1.6 update. In a recent interview with Aftermath, though, Barone spoke about what’s next following this update, including some discussions about Haunted Chocolatier.
“[Fan expectation] definitely puts pressure on me, but it’s better to have a delayed game that’s actually good than a bad game that’s on time,” Barone said of working on Haunted Chocolatier. “When it’s ready, that’s when I’ll release it. I’m not too concerned with the pressure. I don’t feel like I owe anyone anything when it comes to Haunted Chocolatier. It’s a game that I’m deciding to make. I don’t need to make it.”
It certainly seems that part of the reason we haven’t seen more of Haunted Chocolatier is because when Barone starts working on something new for Stardew, he finds it hard to stop. “It wasn’t something that was necessarily planned,” Barone said of pausing development on Haunted Chocolatier for the Stardew update. “I was like ‘I can’t just release a technical update, because if I say there’s a new Stardew Valley update, and there’s literally no new content, I feel like people will be disappointed.’ So at first it was just the Desert Festival, but I have this problem where once I start, I can’t stop. I’m thinking ‘Oh, this isn’t enough. It’d be really cool to add this. I would love to add this.'”
As you can probably tell, there’s still absolutely no word on when Haunted Chocolatier is supposed to release, and it’s only confirmed for PC, so you’ll have to keep waiting to hear more.