If you’ve zoomed into every new Haunted Chocolatier screenshot looking for clues, welcome. You’re among friends.
Ever since Eric “ConcernedApe” Barone announced his follow-up to Stardew Valley, fans have been preparing for their next career move: supernatural chocolatier.
We know you’ll live in a haunted castle, hunt for unusual ingredients, make chocolates, and sell them from your own shop. There’ll be townsfolk to meet, mysteries to uncover, and much more combat than you’d usually expect from someone carrying several pounds of confectionery.
What don’t we know?
Haunted Chocolatier has not been abandoned. We just don’t know when we’ll actually get to play it.
Fortunately, waiting doesn’t have to mean refreshing ConcernedApe’s blog until your mouse gives up. From dungeon-crawling shop sims to haunted islands and ethically questionable cemeteries, these games each deliver one part of the Haunted Chocolatier fantasy.
What Makes Haunted Chocolatier So Exciting?
Part of the anticipation comes down to trust.
ConcernedApe turned a humble farming RPG into the kind of phenomenon that makes otherwise sensible adults develop fierce opinions about fictional spouses, optimal blueberry placement, and whether Pierre deserves happiness.
Now he’s taking that familiar “move somewhere new and accidentally become the center of town” formula somewhere stranger.
So, Haunted Chocolatier vs Stardew Valley, what’s actually changing?
Familiar DNA, different creature.
ConcernedApe described Stardew Valley as channeling the energy of the sun, while Haunted Chocolatier channels the energy of the moon. Despite the ghosts and looming castle, it’s meant to be uplifting rather than outright horror. Think magical and mysterious, not “possessed truffle launches itself across the kitchen at 40 mph.”
What to Play Until the Castle Opens
None of these is secretly a Haunted Chocolatier wearing a fake mustache.
Each one nails a different part of the fantasy: combat, crafting, shopkeeping, ghosts, or the dangerous urge to reorganize a digital room at 1:47 a.m.
Moonlighter (The Closest Overall Match)
About twenty minutes into Moonlighter, you’ll have the same realization everyone else does: “Oh. This is dangerous.”
Not the dungeon. The shop.
By night, you explore monster-filled ruins and stuff your backpack with anything that isn’t nailed down. By day, those treasures go onto the shelves of your store, where you set prices and study customers’ reactions like a tiny pixel-art economist.
The loop comes remarkably close to the central promise of Haunted Chocolatier: go somewhere dangerous, find rare materials, bring them home, and turn them into profit.
Play this first. Seriously. We expect Moonlighter 2 to leave Steam early access this year, but in the meantime, the original is one of our favorite alternatives.
Potion Craft: Alchemist Simulator (The Crafting Fix)
Anyone thinking about chocolate recipes should try Potion Craft.
And keep both hands free. Things bubble.
You run an alchemy store, grinding herbs, stirring cauldrons, and combining suspicious garden matter into potions for local customers. Brewing feels like a process rather than clicking “Craft x1” and waiting for a cheerful ding.
Then the requests begin.
Some customers need healing. Others want help sneaking somewhere they clearly shouldn’t be. A few have you wondering whether your alchemy license covers accessory to burglary.
The joy comes from experimenting, refining recipes, and deciding how much information to give the stranger requesting poison at lunchtime.
Travellers Rest (Build the Place Everyone Wants to Visit)
Maybe the monsters are incidental.
Maybe you saw “run a chocolate shop” and immediately started planning floor space.
In that case, play Travellers Rest.
Your modest tavern soon becomes the fantasy equivalent of a “hidden gem” that somehow has a queue outside every evening. Brew drinks, cook meals, grow ingredients, hire staff, and expand until the humble inn becomes a hospitality machine.
The pleasure lies in watching the business become yours, even when its eventual identity is “rustic charm, but optimized within an inch of its life.” This game is still in early access but has limitless potential.
Graveyard Keeper (A Darker Sense of Humor)
Graveyard Keeper is often called the dark version of Stardew Valley.
That’s fair, although Stardew Valley rarely asks what you’d like to do with an inconvenient corpse.
You manage a medieval cemetery, gather resources, craft equipment, improve the surrounding land, and make business decisions capable of causing an ethics committee to spontaneously combust.
It’s gloomy, complicated, and deeply silly.
Rather than genuine horror, it delivers talking skulls, bureaucratic nightmares, macabre slapstick, and the grim discovery that even death comes with paperwork.
Just don’t borrow any of its supply-chain ideas.
Cozy Grove (Come for the Ghosts, Stay for the Bears)
A haunted island full of restless spirits sounds like the opening act of a found-footage movie.
Cozy Grove somehow makes it adorable.
As a Spirit Scout, you help ghostly bears recover memories, complete unfinished business, and gradually bring color back to the island. You forage, decorate, chat with residents, and handle a few small tasks before getting on with your day.
No crop empire demands attention. No dungeon boss waits behind the trees. No bear threatens to repossess your tent because you missed three payments.
Its slower real-time structure won’t suit everyone, but it gives the island a lovely rhythm. The spirits feel more like neighbors than reward dispensers, each revealing their story at an intentionally patient pace.
Until we meet more of the Haunted Chocolatier characters, these bears make excellent supernatural company.
Fields of Mistria (No, Seriously—This One Might Stick)
Every time a farming sim appears, somebody inevitably calls it “the next Stardew Valley.”
Most disappear from the conversation a month later.
Fields of Mistria hasn’t, and will be leaving Steam early access on August 5.
It has beautiful pixel art, magic, farming, romance, and enough charming townsfolk to power several thousand tier lists. More importantly, it understands why these games work.
The dialogue has personality. The residents feel like actual people. Its quality-of-life features remove several tiny annoyances farming-sim fans have spent years politely pretending not to mind.
This isn’t the pick for someone who only wants baking or shopkeeping. It’s for anyone who wants another town capable of quietly stealing 200 evenings.
Roots of Pacha (Civilization, but Make It Cozy)
Roots of Pacha begins before anyone has invented conventional farming.
A bit inconsiderate, honestly.
Rather than inheriting an established plot, you help a Stone Age clan discover new ways of living. You domesticate wild crops, tame animals, explore the surrounding region, and contribute ideas that transform the whole settlement.
You’re not just upgrading your own home. You’re watching life improve for the whole clan.
New tools open up fresh possibilities. Irrigation reshapes the daily routine. A community that began with very little slowly becomes somewhere you helped create.
There’s still plenty of familiar cozy-game business—relationships, festivals, fishing, caves, and crops—but the prehistoric setting stops it from feeling like Stardew Valley with the serial numbers filed off.
When is Haunted Chocolatier Coming Out?
There is still no official release date yet for Haunted Chocolatier .
In his June 2026 update, ConcernedApe confirmed that development is continuing and that he’s still refining core systems, including the chocolate recipe book.
So, when is Haunted Chocolatier coming out? The answer remains: when it’s ready.
That may not help anyone book vacation days, but it’s very on-brand for a developer determined to keep polishing until every menu behaves itself.
Keep the Magic Going
Any of these games should keep you busy until the castle doors finally open, and a few may end up stealing just as many evenings along the way.
Whether you want the dungeon-to-shop loop of Moonlighter, the strange recipe experiments of Potion Craft, or another town to disappear into with Fields of Mistria, there’s plenty here to satisfy that Haunted Chocolatier itch for now.
And once you’ve found your next favorite, give it a permanent place beyond the screen. Explore Displate’s gaming metal posters and officially licensed collections to bring a little more mystery and pixel-art charm to your walls.
Save some shelf space for the chocolate shop.
