The Isle of Elanor copied game mechanics from the games Stardew Valley (SDV) and Harvest Moon. Some people aren’t aware that major parts of Stardew Valley were copied from Harvest Moon. Both of those games were obviously huge influences on The Isle of Elanor.
Those people who say that The Isle of Elanor is a “copy” of Stardew Valley obviously haven’t played The Isle of Elanor, (or they are just throwing around childish insults). The two games differ in just about every aspect of core game play: combat, skills, role playing, crafting, etc.
The roguelike mechanics of The Isle of Elanor make it a fundamentally different and more complex game than SDV.
There are clear aesthetic differences between the user interface and art styles of The Isle of Elanor and SDV. The Isle of Elanor is more subtle: it uses a less saturated color palette and much less “bling” than SDV.
Using a standard color palette, and without using very plain art assets, it’s physically impossible to make a game with 16 pixel tiles that doesn’t look in some part like SDV. This explains why many SDV game assets look like assets from Harvest Moon.
Here are two bed graphics. They are the same size, 32 x 64 pixels. One asset is from Harvest Moon and one asset is from SDV.
Which bed is from SDV? Which bed is from Harvest Moon?
The only distinguishing artistic difference between the two is the lower graphic uses a black outline. Each graphic could be easily fit into both SDV and Harvest Moon. This same comparison can be done with a lot of assets from the two games.
ConcernedApe (the creator of SDV) didn’t steal the design of this asset. He was working within the constraints of 16 pixel tiles. 16 pixels is the graphical unit size in SDV, Harvest Moon, and The Isle of Elanor. When you only have 16 pixels to work with, it’s physically impossible to draw some items that don’t look like items from other 16 pixel tile games.
There’s a huge library of art work created by SDV modding community, and in most cases, this art work fits into the SDV world, not because the mod creators were following a SDV style guide, but simply because the modders were working within the constraints of 16 pixels.
During the prototyping stage of The Isle of Elanor, I made use of SDV art assets. I posted screenshots of these prototypes on reddit and places like the libgdx discord server. Some people who saw those screenshots mistakenly believed that I wanted to use the SDV graphics. Obviously, that would be impossible. Nearly the entire history of the creation of The Isle of Elanor, from its earliest screenshots, is available for anyone to see on the libgdx discord.
Here’s a comparison of a few common sprites in Elanor and SDV. They are clearly different, every pixel.
Stardew is a great game. I will probably play some SDV tonight with my daughter.
Cheers!