Accessibility & Quality of Life Suggestions for 1.7

Patricia · 2025-09-06T01:19:59-0700

Hi everyone! :smile:

Stardew Valley is truly one of the best games I’ve ever played - I’ve spent over 900 hours in the valley, and I still love it.
Most of that time has been in multiplayer, enjoying wonderful moments with friends and family.
I want to thank ConcernedApe and his team for creating and continuing to improve such a beautiful game! :stardrop:

Moreover, I want to thank this incredible community - I’ve even made new friends here, which has made the experience even more special. :iristar:

I really appreciate all the work that went into the 1.6 update - it truly made the gameplay more fun and diverse.
I’m very excited to see all the new elements that ConcernedApe and his team might come up with in the future.
At the same time, I really hope accessibility will be considered too, so that people of all demographic groups can enjoy this awesome game to its fullest.

With the upcoming 1.7 update, I’d like to share a few accessibility and quality of life ideas.
I hope these can spark discussion in the community, and maybe even serve as inspiration for future updates:

Making the fishing minigame optional

Please consider making an option to disable the fishing minigame to make fishing more accessible for many players.
My mom actually loved Stardew Valley, but she stopped playing because of the fishing.
She adores fishing in Animal Crossing: New Horizons - there you can simply reel in the fish after the “blop” sound.
In Stardew Valley there is also a signal, but the actual minigame was too difficult for her due to decreased reaction speed.
A toggle to skip the minigame while still being able to fish would make this feature much more accessible for people in similar situations.
I want to note that this is not about increasing the fishing skills, since that can be achieved by using crab pots.
Pause button & time adjustment in online multiplayer mode

In local multiplayer and single player mode you can kind of pause by going into home mode, but online multiplayer doesn’t have this option.
Since days are only about 15 minutes long in-game, time keeps running and things can get hectic.
A true pause button in online play would help in several ways: dealing with lags, letting players take a quick break, and reducing stress.
I’ve played with elderly players, and they sometimes found the tempo exhausting.
A pause option would make the game more relaxed and fun for them (and honestly for everyone).
Ideally, it could work a bit like in The Sims: one button to pause, one to slow down time, and one to speed it up.
That would give players more flexibility and make the pace adjustable to different needs.
Zoom Options (Relevant for players playing on Nintendo Switch & smaller screens)

On the Nintendo Switch version, the maximum zoom level is currently 200%. In certain situations, especially for players with vision difficulties, this is still too little.
I’ve also noticed this when playing split-screen co-op on a smaller monitor (the kind normally used as a PC screen, not a big TV).
In split-screen, the area gets reduced by about 50%, and with the zoom capped at 200% it’s still hard to see everything properly.
Allowing higher zoom levels would make the game much easier to play on handheld devices and smaller screens.
Even better would be a customizable zoom slider (rather than fixed percentages), so each player could adjust the view exactly to their screen size and comfort needs.