Stardew Valley has made its mark in history as one of the most impactful indie games of the last decade. After all these years, players are still finding new ways to create tributes to things they love using the game's trappings. Recently, one Stardew Valley player pieced together a sprawling musical display that brings a charming cover of Green Day's iconic pop-punk song "American Idiot" to life on the farm.
The game contains furniture items called flute blocks and drum blocks that Stardew Valley players can use to create music when walking. These items play a sound when a player walks past and will continue to repeat the sound once per second if the player stands near them, with the pitch being adjustable. This isn't the first time players have used flute blocks and drum blocks to create musical tributes, but it may be one of the most recognizable.
Redditor peekitty shared a video taken from a co-op playthrough of Stardew Valley in which they walked through a maze constructed from flute blocks and drum blocks. The winding structure took up much of the sand in Stardew Valley Expanded's Calico Desert map, with what the player referred to as a coffee station located out front. At the beginning of the video, the player drank a coffee and then trotted to the beginning of the structure. When they started moving, a melodic and simplified cover of "American Idiot" began to play.
The video features the first minute of the song captured in a mix of high-pitched flute notes for the screamed vocals and a driving drumbeat. According to peekitty, the hardest part wasn't maintaining the overall tempo or getting the high flute blocks to sound like Billie Joe Armstrong. Instead, the most difficult part was the drum solo that kicks in at the end. Stardew Valley fans may sympathize, as the game's drum blocks only have seven possible sounds. If there's a way to get more sounds from the blocks, it's one of Stardew Valley's ongoing mysteries.
As of writing, it appears that other fans are impressed by this cover. Several users complimented the drum solo at the end. One user asked how peekitty managed to craft so many drum blocks, to which peekitty revealed they had cheated the blocks in because the project required too many to reasonably craft. A second user called the song nostalgic, while a third called it incredible. Now that Stardew Valley's successor Haunted Chocolatier is in production, the developer may want to keep in mind features that will allow players to create works of art like this.
Stardew Valley is available for Android, iOS, Linux, Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.