By EMILY PAOLICELLI
Arts Editor
Stardew Valley for Android was released on March 13, 2019. The long-awaited game has replaced the mobile version of Minecraft as the number one “Top Paid” in the games category on the Google Play Store. Since its release, it has received overwhelmingly positive reviews, earning a 4.6 star rating on the Google Play Store.
The mobile version of the game has all the features and content of the full versions, and includes new mobile-specific features that make playing on such a small screen much more manageable, including auto-select, auto-attack, and countless control supports.
Auto-select allows the player to toggle between items depending on what the game decides would be the most useful to the player at the moment. The feature saves tons of time, and is implemented so well that I wish the other versions of Stardew Valley could incorporate it. Especially on such a small screen, to constantly have to toggle between tools would only create frustration with inevitable misclicks.
Since I’ve started a brand new save file with the release of this game and have only played a few days, I have not had any encounters with monsters yet. However, with the mobile-specific auto-attack setting, I am absolutely not worried about this; the idea that my character will intuitively fight any monsters puts my mind at peace, since combat is not my strong suit, even in other versions of the game.
In terms of controlling the movements of your character, there are many settings and features that make it much easier for the player to navigate the small screen. The ability to zoom in on your character allows for better accuracy when navigating, but is not the best solution if you want your character to move long distances in one go. If that is the case, it’s possible to tap the area you want your character to move to, and it will find its own way to get there without any more effort on your part.
There are many in-game settings that allow you to customize controls, offering both on-screen and invisible joysticks and buttons for navigation and item use, as well as settings that allow you to change the size of these joysticks and buttons, whether they’re visible or invisible. While the settings are a bit difficult to navigate, it’s evident that the intent is to allow the player to find the most comfortable settings.
If using your fingers and your touchscreen to navigate the game does not appeal to you, the mobile version also accommodates external controllers, bringing even more ease to those who choose to invest more time and money in the mobile game.
Perhaps the most useful feature of the mobile game is auto-save. The full versions of the game only allow players to save their progress at the end of each in-game day, requiring players to dedicate somewhat substantial chunks of their free time if they want to advance in their save files. However, with the auto-save feature, the mobile game allows the players to pick up and put down the game as they please, bookmarking their progress as they go and offering the player the option to pick up right back where they left off in their last session. The ability to take the game on the run without the need to allocate time out of the day to play makes for a much more casual, on-the-go feeling to the game.
My only gripes with the game are the size of the graphics and the difficulty that comes with misclicking, but that’s to be expected with such a physically small platform, and I anticipate that working with such small controls is a skill that will become more with time and practice.
Overall, I am very happy with how the mobile game has turned out, and am excited to see what new choices and challenges I will meet in this new endeavor.
