Mowing a lawn is a couch activity. At least, it should be. Until now you could already drive your mower with a gamepad, but the moment you opened a menu you had to reach for the mouse. That is fixed: Lawn Mower Empire now has full controller support, from the main menu to the very last upgrade.
Every menu, one gold frame
Every screen in the game now knows where your controller is. A gold frame shows which button, card or slider is selected, and you move it with the D-pad or the left stick. A chooses, B goes back, just like Escape on a keyboard. Close a window and the frame lands on the button you came from, so you never have to search for where you were.
That works everywhere: save slots, settings (sliders step left and right), the pause menu, the area list, the garage and skins, the story journal, statistics, letters and the victory screen. Tabs and pages switch with LB and RB, and long lists scroll along with your selection or with the right stick. While you play with the pad, the mouse cursor hides itself, and it comes back as soon as you move the mouse.
The tech tree, from the couch
The tech tree was the hardest part, because it is a big, free-form map instead of a neat list. Now the view follows the card you select: the details and tooltip appear next to it, A buys the upgrade, the right stick pans and the triggers zoom in and out.
Shortcuts while mowing
In the game itself, the triggers (RT / LT) or the right stick zoom the camera. The D-pad got its own shortcuts:
- Up: story journal
- Down: statistics
- Right: achievements
- Left: show or hide the controls card
Y still opens the upgrades, LB the garage, RB the areas, View the seed tree and Start the menu. The controls card and the tutorial hints now name the pad buttons when you play with a controller, so the game never tells you to press a key you are not holding.
Even the secret code
One last detail: the secret code field. Typing a code with a stick sounds miserable, so when the game runs through Steam it opens Steam's own on-screen keyboard for it.
To make sure nothing slips through, the game also has a test that plays through all the menus with a virtual controller, without a mouse. So grab a pad, sit back and mow.