Stardew allows people to achieve their dreams that are unrealistic in the real world, like -
Home ownership
Finding friends and community in a new place
Finding love
Evicting their local walmart and replacing it with a cinema
Escaping the fresh hell of late stage capitalism (or becoming the very worst proponent of it, sometimes somehow both)
I would sub in like maybe Darkest Dungeon 2 over Frostpunk? Less well received but still better than any of the other three. Both were distinct changes of pace, darkest dungeon just sold its soul to the epic games store and lost the bond you formed with characters over a long campaign in exchange for the roguelite shorter runs.
As much as I hate being a corporate shill: ask yourself this. Is the game worth the asking price with no DLC? You don’t have to buy every DLC, that’s just the cost of the additional game development time. And maybe the game isn’t worth the price now, but in two years you can probably pick it and a few of the best DLCs up for the same price as it is now and get your money’s worth.
Tedious: too long, slow, or dull; tiresome or monotonous
I think what you were going for was challenging and/or punishing. The first game explicitly has ends to each city type, and I certainly wouldn’t describe watching the city steam a man alive to get the people to tolerate you putting sawdust in their food “dull”
Conventional economic theory holds that a small, consistent level of inflation is the most beneficial. In short, you don’t want hoarding cash to be a smart long term economic decision, you want more of that money invested/moving in the economy. I recommend reading about the Japanese deflation in the 90s if you’re curious what the effects of even relatively moderate deflation can be.