‘Haunted Chocolatier’ inspired by ‘Stardew Valley”s ‘Moonlight Jellies’ festival and ‘Final Fantasy’

Eric ‘ConcernedApe‘ Barone has revealed that Haunted Chocolatier has taken heavy inspiration from Stardew Valley’s Moonlight Jellies festival and classic Final Fantasy titles.

According to Barone, Haunted Chocolatier is a “life-affirming” RPG about ghosts and chocolate and while it doesn’t currently have a release date, Barone has revealed what players can expect from the title in a new interview with NME.

After revealing that he believed his “under-appreciated” soundtrack is one of the reasons Stardew Valley went on to sell over 20million copies, Barone said he wanted to go “more experimental” with Haunted Chocolatier.

“The whole idea of the game is that it’s more exploring these weird, transcendental ideas and scenarios with ghosts and weird stuff. I feel like I can go weirder with the music, and do things that I couldn’t do with Stardew Valley, so it’s kind of freeing and interesting.”

As well as taking inspiration from “old-school PlayStation One” RPGs like Chrono Cross and Final Fantasy alongside his own electronic music tastes, the soundtrack for Haunted Chocolatier has also been inspired by his previous work on Stardew Valley.

In particular, Barone wants more big, emotional moments like Stardew Valley’s Dance Of The Moonlight Jellies festival, which saw various townspeople gather at the beach to watch the glow of passing jellyfish, backed by chiming, melancholy music.

“My whole goal as a game creator is to create these moments where I want people to feel something, like actually feel this connection to something deeper than you would normally feel like in a video game. I want to go deeper, and connect with people in a real way that’s memorable, that they’ll take with them for the rest of their life,” he explained. “I think music is integral to that. I’m really excited with Haunted Chocolatier to create more of these special musical moments that will really touch people.”

In other news, the length of the first Grand Theft Auto 6 trailer has been revealed, with the highly anticipated first look at the game set to come tomorrow (December 5).