Supposedly Stardew Valley-like games I own and am eyeing

I haven't been reading much lately, but I've been playing more Stardew Valley. I still love the game and have put hundreds of hours into it, but there comes a point when you'd like to play something new...but still similar.

I own a bunch of games that I bought because they were supposedly in some way similar to Stardew Valley:

• My Time at Portia: Last played in January 2019. It had some nice character interactions, although it was clearly missing some of its voice acting, and the emphasis on crafting occasionally annoyed me. You have to craft a lot, and a lot of times the things you're asked to craft require you to learn to craft a bunch of other things first. I was also not a fan of the fighting. The first creatures you come across are fairly low level and not inclined to hurt you unless you hurt them first. Later on, however, you have to battle tougher monsters and deal with boss fights. The boss fights were an unpleasant surprise, and one of the reasons I eventually quit playing.
• Garden Paws: Last played in April 2019. From what I've read, the game has changed a lot since I last played it. For one thing, apparently it now has fighting. I'm not sure how I feel about that. I kind of liked that it was completely nonviolent, but fighting must be a thing that a lot of people want in their games, since it keeps showing up. Back when I played it, I really liked the exploration and foraging aspects of the game - there were a lot of little islands and hidden places to discover, some of which took a bit of crafting and thought to get to. What I didn't like was how empty the NPCs felt. I can't even remember most of them, they made so little of an impression on me.
• World's Dawn: Last played in May 2019. This one gets a giant NO from me, which makes me sad, because on paper, at least, it sounds like the perfect "Stardew Valley, but not" kind of game. I managed to play it for four hours before rage-quitting due to the number and kind of bugs I encountered. F12, which normally takes a screenshot in Steam, crashed the game. I was kicked out of a shop when it hit closing hours, and for some reason this meant that my dog, which had been accompanying me, permanently disappeared. The controls were clunky and impossible to properly customize. The list could go on. What's shocking is that this is considered a finished game. It felt like an Early Access game that still needed work.
• Verdant Skies: Last played in February 2020. The character portraits are gorgeous, but the actual game art looks weirdly stiff and unfinished. The exploration aspects are nice, but after a while the world started to feel extremely small, and I never really got into one of the most unique aspects of the game, the gene splicing. The character interactions also didn't work as well for me as I'd hoped. That said, there's still a few NPCs I haven't met.
• Yonder: The Cloud Catcher Chronicles: Last played in February 2020. The world is huge, the game is completely nonviolent, and there's lots of quests to complete and things to discover. One of the ongoing tasks involves finding kittens! And there are a bunch of cute animals in the game, even if you never really get into the animal taming aspect of it. That said, once you've built the Cloud Catcher or whatever it was, there's nothing much new to do unless you're a Steam achievement hunter or really want to complete all of the remaining quests. I doubt I'm that committed. As much as I love the kittens, for example, I'm not sure I can put up with the fact that some of them can only be found during certain seasons or times of day. I'm not sure I'd call this a very Stardew Valley-like game, either. There's almost no need to grow crops or keep animals, unless you're an achievement hunter, and there's no depth to your interactions with NPCs.
• Littlewood: Last played in September 2019. Not as Stardew Valley-like as I'd hoped it would be, but not a bad game. It is, however, Early Access, and so you'll occasionally run into things that haven't been rolled out yet. I didn't encounter any game-breaking bugs (looking at you, World's Dawn), but I decided to quit playing for a while and wait until it was finally finished. On the plus side, game updates are pretty frequent, and the developer includes version numbers with the update announcements, which seems like a strong indication to me that the game will eventually be 100% finished.

Speaking of Early Access games, one of the things that frustrates me is that a lot of games listed as being similar to Stardew Valley in some way are Early Access, and have been for a few years. The game advertisements and many of the positive reviews talk more about their future potential than what players can actually do in them right now. A few I've been eyeing:

• Fantasy Farming: Orange Season: This one looks quite nice, but from the sounds of things updates have been slow in coming. I've been looking at reviews, and it's tough to tell how much there currently is to the game, although this seems like one of the more finished Early Access Stardew Valley-like games out there.
• Kynseed: This looks lovely...but the reviews that aren't glowing squee-fests indicate that it has very little content, and what it does have currently serves no purpose. I'd have expected better from a game created by a couple experienced developers. 
• Peaceful Days: Something about the way it looks seems very amateurish, and the non-glowing reviews indicate that it doesn't have much content and is clunky.
• Serin Fate: I'm not sure how Stardew Valley-like this actually is. It seems cute, but also potentially more focused on battles than I'd like. Also, again, it sounds like there are content and clunkiness issues.

Steam also keeps pushing games like Graveyard Keeper and Gleaner Heights at me, which, yes, seem Stardew Valley-like on the surface and are actually complete (I'm starting to loathe Early Access), but only in terms of overall gameplay. Story and character-wise, however, they both sound dark as heck, definitely not the warm fuzzy blanket sort of games I'd actually like to be playing.

At the moment, what I'd really like is to get my hands on a Nintendo Switch so that I can play Animal Crossing: New Horizons. But from the sounds of things the Switch is going to be nearly impossible to buy until sometime after the pandemic. In the meantime, if you have any Stardew Valley-like games to recommend, I'd love to hear about them and what it is about them that appeals to you.

Currently playing: Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy, Garden Paws, and The Caligula Effect: Overdose

I'm very bad about not finishing games I've started, so it's rare for me to write full final reviews of them. But I thought some kind of update post about games I'm currently spending a lot of time playing might be nice.

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy

I've heard so many good things about this series, but until recently, it was only ever available to play on systems I didn't own. I was very excited when I saw that a PC version was coming to Steam, even though the price was considerably higher than I tend to be comfortable paying for games.

I don't think I've managed to finish the first game in the trilogy yet, but I've made it through several cases, and I'm really enjoying it overall. It's structured to be part "collect items and question people" adventure game and part "pay attention and find the inconsistencies" logic game. The periods where you look at crime scenes and question witnesses/potential suspects can occasionally get tedious (during the case involving the murdered actor, there was a brief period where I seemed to be stuck, because I hadn't done whatever was required to get some new characters to suddenly appear), but the stories and characters are generally interesting.

During trials, there's an opportunity to fail: if you don't object at the right moments, or bring up the right piece of evidence at the right time, you're gradually penalized until your client is declared guilty. I haven't found the game's logic to be too difficult, however, and I like that you're allowed to press a witness without being penalized.

Just be aware that the story and characters can get a bit wacky.

Garden Paws

I picked this up during one of my "trying to find something similar to Stardew Valley, but different" efforts. If Stardew Valley's combat was an issue for you, you're in luck, because absolutely nothing in the world of Garden Paws will kill you, not even the bears. That said, although the NPCs will now occasionally chat with you (they used to not talk to player characters unless they needed something), in-game interactions aren't nearly as satisfying as those in Stardew Valley. There are no romanceable or even friendable NPCs here.

Still, I've put more than 40 hours into this game and am nowhere near tired of it. There are at least a couple hundred quests, lots of places to explore, treasure chests to find, and eventually museum collections to complete, and the developers are still adding new content. I haven't done much building yet, but that's my next goal, since I recently noticed that there are several islands that are too far away for me to get to using my favorite method of transportation, gliding.

The game still has a few issues - I had to turn off the animated grass because it was interfering with my ability to play the game, and I still worry that if I play for too many in-game days my computer will overheat. And I wouldn't recommend it to those who need games to have more to them than collecting items and exploring. But I've found that jumping in to play for a single in-game day (approximately 15-20 minutes depending on what you opt to do and how early you send your character to bed) is a nice way for me to wind down after work.

The Caligula Effect: Overdose

Another very expensive game, considering that most of what I buy is $20 or less. I really debated before buying this. The story sounded interesting enough, I liked the animated cutscenes, and turn-based battles seemed like a nice way for me to ease back into this sort of gaming. I tend to avoid games with actual combat, so this would be an unusual purchase for me.

Every review I looked at brought up the original release, which was apparently widely viewed as a failure. The general consensus seemed to be that Overdose (the original release was just The Caligula Effect) was an improvement over the original game, but that the new release still had problems, such as overly easy combat, a battle system that gets tedious a while, and way too many NPCs (more than 500!).

I've been playing it for about 4 hours now on the Normal difficulty setting, and while I'd agree with those who say that it's pretty easy, its easiness is part of its appeal for me. I'm slower on the uptake when it comes to figuring out battle strategies, and this game is, so far, super forgiving. We'll see how I feel once I take on my first big boss, but I just completed a battle against two enemies, one of whom was one level stronger than me and my companions and one of whom was 7 levels stronger, in only one attempt.

As far as the Causality Link aspect goes...eh. I haven't gotten far enough into it to unlock any quests yet, but so far I feel like the NPCs and the main characters efforts to "befriend" them are pretty weak.