Stardew Valley now has a "secret, experimental" mobile multiplayer mode and it's so hush-hush that to get in you have to, er, consult an official guide

Stardew Valley's been getting some big updates this week as its 1.6 update has finally arrived on consoles and mobiles, after dropping on PC back in March. As it turns out, it's brought with it a multiplayer mode for the mobile folks, that's so "hidden" there's a full official guide to help you access it.

Yeah, forget about the patch that's saved some disappearing chickens, you need to get into the secret club on your phone, and you've got not much detective work to do to get there.

To do that detective work, you'll want to head over the the helpful blog post SV developer Eric ‘ConcernedApe’ Barone has penned about this new feature, which is hidden because its "experimental" state means it "might still have some bugs or issues" and the nature of mobile could make for a "frustrating" mutiplayer session in some cases.

"Mobile multiplayer works pretty much the same as on other platforms, except there is no farm 'discovery' capability," Barone explained, "You can only connect via IP. You can, however, join a PC-hosted farm from a mobile device via IP."

So, basically, the kind of "worst case scenario" that might turn your multiplayer dream into a nightmare is something like this: "If someone were to host a game from a low-performance phone, on a cell network (you would probably have to create a mobile wi-fi hotspot for others to connect to locally), and they were on a train or something, going through tunnels. And then the host is also getting calls, causing the app to be interrupted repeatedly."

So, yup, sorry, stay away from Stardew with your mates if you're travelling cross-country through some mountains by rail, and are due your monthly chat with your grandma.

If that's not you and you're keen to give the mode a go, you'll need to be very, very quiet and follow the steps in the blog post's guide to accessing it. The main thing is to head to the game's main menu and tap the leaves on the Stardew Valley logo in a manner that matches the famous Konami code, before finishing up by entering and exiting the menu brought up by a question mark button. That should bring up co-op button for you on the title screen, and from there you're into a probably really fun bit involving IP addresses.

It's ok, I'm sure you'll have it figured out by the time some "performance issues" currently affecting the 1.6 version of the game have been dealt with, meaning you'll be able to put a hat back on your furry friends without worrying - as of right now, Barone's advising that you should let their ears breathe.