Stardew Valley+

First, I love this game. Had the paid version before getting Apple Arcade+. FYI, if you have both you will see your game saves from both in either version BUT if you try to play the Apple Arcade version on your paid Stardew Valley app the updates to the paid app will not be applied. They fixed the pet water bowl issue for the paid version in 1.6.12. They still have not fixed this issue in the Apple Arcade version. They also haven’t fixed the sizing issue for iPhone 16 Pro Max in either version of the game. Probably because in the screenshots it doesn’t look like there is a huge issue which isn’t the case. I would rather pay a reasonable amount for updates if it means the updates are better fleshed out. The game is worth paying for updates…. But only if they are not as buggy as all the updates from 1.6 have been to date. I have gotten so far in my saved game in Apple Arcade and would hate to start over again in the paid version but I may have no choice to have a less buggy experience.

I love this game and have had a blast playing it, but it’s clear that the game was designed to be played with a mouse. My largest complaint is that the entire area of the screen is allowed to control the movement of the player. On my 13 Pro, where the screen extends to all edges, this presents a problem in that the touch controls pick up my palm (which is holding the phone and slightly touching the edge of the screen) as what it thinks is a control to move. This means that, when I’m just holding my phone and not trying to go anywhere, my character will stray to the right near constantly, because my palm that is holding the phone is also touching the very edge of the display, which the game picks up as a movement control. I can put my phone in a case, which mostly solves the issue because my palm touches the display less, but I don’t want to carry around a case just to play one game (I don’t typically use a case because it makes this already huge phone even more unmanageable). Oh well. I still recommend the game. Highly recommend even. It’s a wonderful “cozy game” that has the polish of a professional dev team, but the love and attention that would go into a personal project. ConcernedApe has something to be really proud of here. Just be ready to hold your phone at odd angles (if you don’t have a case). I’ll be purchasing the regular, non-apple arcade version of the app as well to support the dev. It’s a wonderful game, just hard to play on the phones that are all display and no bezel.

I’ve been absolutely addicted to this game for the past three weeks or so, and I’ve loved every minute of game play. The music is so calming, and the game content keeps you wanting more. It’s very easy to get caught up in the game and next thing you know, three hours have passed! So yeah, I’d say it’s pretty cool. But why the four stars instead of five? Well, it’s simply because there are quite a few bugs. Yes, some of them are pretty harmless. There seems to be an audio glitch where the fishing pole reeling sound and the black smith area sound will keep playing and won’t stop unless you close out the game. Not to terrible, right? Well there is one particular bug that is quite the opposite. It seems like sometimes when accessing the artisan bundle in the community house, the game won’t unpause when you exit out. You can’t fix this unless you exit out of the game, but it DOESN’T SAVE THE GAME! There have been plenty of times when I’ve gotten a lot done in an in game day, only for it to be stuck paused and I loose all my progress. This is very frustrating quite obviously. While I understand that this game hasn’t been out long on Apple Arcade, I can not give five stars in good faith unless some of these glitches are fixed. Much love to Concerned Ape for all their hard work, though <333