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.

First thoughts: My Time at Portia (game)

I started My Time at Portia a bit too late to consider it for my "2018 Game Recommendations" post, but I somehow managed to rack up 15 hours of playtime in the past few days, so I figured I'd write up a quick post about it.

This is another one I bought in an effort to find something that hits the same spot for me as Stardew Valley, and I think it's come close (with a few caveats), closer even than Cattails. It's still an early access game, but from what I've seen, it's pretty stable and most of the content appears to be there. The voice acting is the only area where things are noticeably still missing - many characters are missing at least a few voiced lines, and some have no voiced lines, just subtitles. (Edit on 1/24/19 - This article may explain why, even after the game's official full release, it's still missing a lot of its voice acting. Oof. Here's hoping all the voice actors are paid what they're owed ASAP.)

Based on what I've played so far, you can do many of the same activities in My Time at Portia that you can do in Stardew Valley, and then some, although the balance of activities is very different. There are lots of villagers to befriend and potentially marry, and you can complete missions for fellow villagers in order to earn money and stronger relationships. You can grow crops (in tiny little planter boxes - this is not a farming game), build items, raise farm animals, go mining, go fishing, chop down trees, etc. There's world lore for you to gradually learn about - this is actually a post-apocalyptic world where technology almost led to the destruction of everything. Just as Stardew Valley asks you to choose between working towards rebuilding the community center or teaming up with Joja Mart, in My Time at Portia it seems you have a choice between turning some of your mining efforts over to the church or to the scientists at the Research Center (or maybe you can mix it up a bit - I honestly haven't tried that yet).

There are two glaring issues so far, and they're the main reason I'm not entirely sure whether I enjoy this game or not: the Assembly Station mechanics, and the fact that you can't progress without finding half a dozen things you need to track down, build, or do.