Making Stardew Valley Accessible
Stardew Valley for everyone
I conducted an accessibility audit & redesigned the UI of the game Stardew Valley.
Stardew Valley is a single or multi-player country-life and farming simulation & role-playing game (RPG) that I love to play, & want everyone to be able to play!
My Role
• Conducted accessibility audit (Game Accessibility Guidelines)
• Researched current opinion in the community
• Identified 6 major accessibility issues
• Redesigned the UI & HUD to solve issues
• Created a high fidelity mockup of the redesign
• Annotated mockup to document design choices.
Tools
• Figma
• Miro
• Adobe CC
• Google Workspace
• Social Media
Secondary Research
Community Opinion
I located one article online with a specific focus on the accessibility of Stardew Valley. In this article, titled Stardew Valley’s Click to Walk Modification, the author details how players can use a modification to overcome an accessibility issue related to game controls (Stardew Valley’s Click to Walk Modification -, 2019). The problem is that the game requires players to use either a keyboard or a controller to traverse and the author of the article cannot use a keyboard or controller. However, they can use a mouse. They attempted to use an on-screen keyboard, but this did not work because the game recognized every on-screen keyboard click as an in-game action. The article concludes with a link to a “Mouse Move Mod,” which players can add to the game in order to solve this accessibility issue. The article has one comment on it, which thanks the author for providing this information.
I found another article, titled Video Game UIs Ported to Nintendo Switch Are Inaccessible Because Accessibility Wasn’t Present Prior, that briefly mentions Stardew Valley. The article mentioned that although the UI is relatively streamlined for porting to multiple systems, there are performance issues when players try to resize the UI on Nintendo Switch, because resizing the UI also resizes the entire visible playing area.
There are, however, numerous Steam forum posts, reddit posts, YouTube videos, tweets, and forum posts on the official Stardew Valley website that address the accessibility of Stardew Valley. Many of these posts and videos echo the same message: for Stardew Valley to be more accessible it should be playable with a mouse only, and using an on-screen keyboard should be a viable option. Youtuber onehandmostly has a detailed run-through of every option in the Stardew Valley UI and how he plays Stardew with, mostly, one hand (onehandmostly, 2021). He highlights mining as one of the most difficult and thereby least enjoyable in-game activities because there is no quick or easy way to switch tools using one hand.
Youtube video: How Accessible is Stardew Valley 1.5? uploaded by onehandedmostly
One reddit poster mentions that the game’s reliance on audio cues in activities such as mining is an accessibility issue, and asks the Stardew Valley community if there are any mods that can make visual cues supplement the audio cues (R/StardewValley – Visual Cues and Accessibility When Mining, n.d.). There are various responses from people agreeing that there should be more and larger visual cues, but no mod is offered to solve this issue.
Out of curiosity I visited Nexus Mods, a website where many Stardew Valley mods are shared amongst players, and searched for mods for Stardew Valley tagged with or containing the word “accessibility.” I found that there were no relevant results(Stardew Valley Nexus – Mods and Community, n.d.).
Accessibility Issues
1. The game cannot be played with mouse only
2. Onscreen keyboards are not supported
3. The sensitivity of controls cannot be adjusted
4. Switching between tools is a slow process and game speed cannot be adjusted
5. Certain information is conveyed by sounds alone
6. The game does not solicit accessibility feedback
High Fidelity UI Redesign with Annotations
Lessons Learned
Listen to the community: Before searching for community opinion I would not have been able to identify many of the accessibility issues that my UI redesign addresses. I learned that online communities are an invaluable source of information about accessibility and UX.