Eric Barone, the solo developer known as ConcernedApe, posted a new development update on Haunted Chocolatier’s official blog on June 25, confirming that the long-awaited follow-up to Stardew Valley is still in active development. The post, titled “Still here, still grinding…”, arrived roughly five months after his last written update on January 28, and it focuses almost entirely on one feature: the in-game recipe book players will use to craft chocolates.
Barone opened the post by acknowledging how repetitive these check-ins have become. “Yep. I’m still working on the game. Feels kinda dumb posting this same thing over and over, but that’s the reality,” he wrote. He then explained that the slow pace comes down to how much time he spends refining systems players will interact with often, stating that such systems “need to be seamless, clear, intuitive, satisfying, aesthetic.”
Why ConcernedApe Keeps Saying The Same Thing About Haunted Chocolatier
A Recipe Book Three Ways: tap each tab below to feel the exact design problem Eric Barone says he is solving inside Haunted Chocolatier — and why that problem is the real reason updates have stayed so quiet.
Interactive · Recipe Book Polish-O-MeterTap a stage to rebuild the page
This is the version Barone wants to avoid: every chocolate recipe dumped into one dense block. “If the data is all clustered together, it will be disgusting to look at,” he wrote in his June 25 update.
Chocolatier’s Recipe Book
Closer, but Barone says comfort alone is not the bar. “I want more than just comfort. I want to delight the player,” meaning even a readable layout gets reworked again.
Chocolatier’s Recipe Book
Grouped, breathable, and minimal-click. This is the standard Barone says every frequently used screen in the game needs to clear: “seamless, clear, intuitive, satisfying, aesthetic.”
Chocolatier’s Recipe Book
“There needs to be just the right amount of data presented to the player: not so much as to be overwhelming, but not so little as to be trivial or mundane… If all of that is accomplished then the player is now comfortable while perusing the recipe book. But I want more than just comfort. I want to delight the player.”
Eric “ConcernedApe” Barone, Haunted Chocolatier development blog, June 25, 2026Haunted Chocolatier is announced with a short gameplay trailer.
Barone confirms a Stardew Valley 1.7 update will only slow Haunted Chocolatier “a little.”
A short post reassures fans the game is not cancelled or merged into Stardew Valley.
Barone details his recipe book rework and explains his “half-baked bread” approach to reveals.
Tabs dramatize Barone’s own description of the design problem; they are not screenshots from the game. Primary post: ConcernedApe’s Haunted Chocolatier blog.
The recipe book is one of those systems. Barone described it as a screen players will open constantly while running their chocolate shop, which is why he has rebuilt its layout multiple times. He wrote that the data shown on the page has to avoid two extremes: too much information, which overwhelms the player, and too little, which makes the screen feel empty. According to his post, the deciding factor is how the information is grouped on screen, not simply how much of it appears.
He was direct about what happens when that grouping fails. “If the data is all clustered together, it will be disgusting to look at,” Barone wrote, adding that recipes need to be sorted into “compelling, intuitive and easy to read/understand groupings.” Even after a layout becomes functional, he said comfort is not his finish line. “I want more than just comfort. I want to delight the player,” he wrote, which is why a single UI element can go through several more passes after it already works.
That same post addressed why screenshots and detailed system breakdowns have stayed rare since the game was first revealed. Barone compared early previews to serving “half-baked bread,” writing that he would “rather serve a fully baked bread” once a feature reaches its final form. He added that showing work-in-progress systems risks disappointing players if the finished version turns out differently, and noted that because Haunted Chocolatier carries no marketing pressure, he can keep that approach without a publisher pushing for more frequent reveals.
Haunted Chocolatier was announced in October 2021 with a short gameplay trailer, arriving as the next project from the developer behind one of the best-selling indie games ever made. Stardew Valley launched on PC on February 26, 2016, and had sold more than 50 million copies across all platforms as of February 2026. Barone built that game largely by himself over roughly four years, handling its code, art, music, and writing, a solo-development pattern he is repeating on Haunted Chocolatier. The new title still has no release window, and Barone’s January post used the same direct language he has returned to throughout development: “The bottom line is, I don’t want to give a release date. The game will come out when it’s done.”
While Haunted Chocolatier remains unscheduled, other corners of the gaming industry are moving on firmer timelines. Microsoft’s Xbox Series X and Series S price increase takes effect on August 1, driven by rising memory and storage component costs across the industry. Collectible makers have also locked in release dates for upcoming merchandise tied to other long-running franchises, a contrast to Barone’s approach of withholding any date until a feature is finished. Fans debating who will lead Rockstar’s next major release are dealing with a similar information gap, where a developer’s silence on specifics fuels ongoing speculation among players.
The recipe book update is the most detailed look Barone has given into Haunted Chocolatier’s interface design since the project was revealed. It also lines up with how he has approached interface work on Stardew Valley, a game whose menus longtime players rarely think about precisely because of that repeated refinement. Some of that same scrutiny has shown up elsewhere in the industry recently, including discussions around dungeon design pacing in other franchises, where designers have weighed similar trade-offs between guiding players and overwhelming them with options.
The June 25 post discussed Barone’s ongoing work on the recipe book system and his reasoning for limiting early previews of Haunted Chocolatier. No release date was given, and the post closed with a note of thanks to players for their continued patience.