The Harvest Moon games were also all dating sims. The main thing Stardew Valley does is have like 20x as much content and variety as a Harvest Moon game with significantly fewer bugs or abandoned concepts. And the Harvest Moon games were already great as they were. But yeah, if you literally rolled every single Harvest Moon game feature into a single Harvest Moon game, it would still come up short against Stardew Valley. And it was made primarily by one dude that charged way less than any single Harvest Moon game for it.
For the purposes of this comment "Harvest Moon games" refers to the ones made by the real Harvest Moon team, that eventually moved on to "Story of Seasons" when their franchise name was stolen from them. And also includes Rune Factory.
It sounds like more knowledge about virus and bacteria lives can help too. So you know how long a surface just has to be dry for before no virus and bacteria could have survived that long, and stuff like that. There are definitely surfaces and conditions that can increase their life spans, but the average life span without water and in the light, can be surprisingly short.
Definitely still a good idea to be careful, but very helpful to know more about how careful is the right amount of careful.
Also, viral/bacterial load is a huge factor. Like, you have to notice how despite how "gross" everything "should be" people still aren't getting sick as often as you would expect. Just cuz some bacteria got somewhere, and is still alive, doesn't automatically mean someone would get sick if they touched it, or brace yourself >!licked!< it. Most traces are going to be too little to make a difference against someone's immune system. That of course goes out the window when there would be no defense, or very little defense. But even there, people on chemo are still exposed to "amounts" of bacteria and virus all the time and they only get sick sometimes despite being immunocompromised. There are alot of hurdles to getting sick even when a bunch of them are knocked down.
But yes, definitely try to be more careful than the average person is, but you don't need to drive yourself crazy trying to get down to zero exposure.
Especially since that can lead to lowering the strength of your immune system long-term. And then you really will "have" to be careful. You don't want to get there. Your immune system needs to keep taking it's new tests every day in order to not fall behind the rest of the class. The more often you come in contact with an amount of bacteria or virus that doesn't make you sick, the better. But it is of course a gamble, and more knowledge about what the actual risk is, is very helpful to win those gambles.