Eric Baron has spent years developing Stardew Valley, leading it from Steam Greenlight in 2012 to 10 million units sold in 2020. In the midst of all this, while his dedication to Stardew Valley has always been a priority, he has occasionally hinted at other projects: the last time we heard of such was a little over a year ago, when Baron said he put an unannounced project on hold to focus on the farm.

Today, however, he took to Twitter to confirm that the wheels are turning on a new game.

The first project looks quite similar to the one Barone teased in October 2017. Barone said the next game will be set on the "same planet" as Stardew Valley, but will not be a sequel or expansion. Unfortunately, no further information was provided.

"We've intentionally kept it secret because we want to be able to work on it without pressure for the time being," Barone announced in a December 2018 devblog that the project was on hiatus. 'I also want to make sure the concept is fully realized before revealing anything. I'm a pretty cautious person when it comes to these kinds of things."

One thing we do know is that the magic school RPG published by Chucklefish in 2018 is not Witchbrook, which is sometimes incorrectly credited as Barone's work Chucklefish published Stardew before December 2018. Valley (and still publishes it on mobile), which sometimes leads to confusion as to who is "making" the game; Barone clarified the nature of that relationship in a September 2019 update, and today Witchbrook's development was not involved clarified that he is not involved in the development of Witchbrook.