Stardew Valley creator has upgraded his bed-drawing skills

It might be indulgently silly, but I — and many others in the Stardew Valley community — have a years-long obsession with one particular bed. It’s not some rare item with a low drop rate, nor does it have any special powers. I’m talking about Grandpa’s bed, which is shown in the early cutscenes of the game.

For the unfamiliar Stardew ValleyYour grandfather wills you land to build your farm. During one of the first cutscenes the game displays your grandpa in bed. The bed is uncomfortable. The bed looks like a small table without a mattress. This looks like a hard surface to sleep on and is, frankly, not very attractive for a pixel-art game.

It is a bad bed. In fact, it looks so bad in this community that the image has become almost a meme.Stardew Valley players. Players have created mods for the game that “fix” Grandpa’s bed and make jokes about it. When?Stardew Valley creator Eric Barone, primarily known by his alias “ConcernedApe,” shared an image of his next game called the Haunted Chocolatier, and the image showed an old man in bed, some fans couldn’t help but fixate on that single detail.

“In my head, I would like to believe that we all made fun of his bed drawing skills so much that ConcernedApe put so much effort into drawing this bed so nicely,” one fan said on TikTok.

This simple question brought up many philosophical and important questions. What was Barone’s opinion of the bed art he created? Has he tried to make this bed more detailed? This new game is a way to show off his drawing skills. Instead of asking Barone, I simply asked him if he had added the bed intentionally. Turns out, he didn’t even realize the visual parallel.

“The funny thing is, I don’t think Grandpa’s bed ever crossed my mind when I was drawing this. It wasn’t until I posted the screenshot and people commented on it that I realized I have some weird inclination to draw old guys sleeping in beds,” Barone told Polygon via email. “If my latest bed is looking better, I think it’s simply because I have more pixel art practice than when I drew Grandpa’s bed.”

There you have it. As it turns out, working in game development and pixel art for over a decade has the effect of improving someone’s skills. Who’d have thought it?