Recently, Stardew Valley creator Eric Barone, also known as ConcernedApe, gave an interview and spoke about his work on his new project.
Eric continues to develop Haunted Chocolatier, but he also doesn't forget about his past hit. Sometimes he releases technical and content patches for the game. He currently works seven days a week: five days for Haunted, and the remaining two days for Stardew Valley.
The developer said that his new game will be more ambitious:
[Haunted Chocolatier] is significantly larger than Stardew Valley — at least in terms of the number of locations, monsters, the depth of the item system, the number of equipment slots, and all that. Everything is cranked up to the maximum.
The developer also noted that he is now very popular — he has to sort through letters from fans and "constantly receive requests from business people." Because of this, he cannot focus exclusively on working on Haunted Chocolatier.
Earlier, Eric Barone teased update 1.7 for Stardew Valley:
My goal with update 1.7 is to add more depth to various aspects of the game that are currently a bit underdeveloped, without "bloating" the game with an excessive number of systems. More depth, but not necessarily more complexity. I'm sure you'll like the result. However, there is no release date yet — it's still "in development." Thank you for your patience.