Stardew Valley, the indie darling that brought the Harvest Moon-style gameplay back into the fold, is now the most-downloaded game on Nintendo Switch in 2017 for the US market.
While that’s impressive on its own, it’s worth noting that it only released on the console in October. It had two months to beat the rest of Nintendo’s eShop library for the year and it did so deftly. The second most downloaded game was Minecraft. Although, in Japan, Minecraft beat Stardew Valley for first place.
If one knows about Stardew Valley, it’s hard to be surprised by this news. It has a perfect mix of new and nostalgia mixed together. It took what made the original Harvest Moon so great, stuffed more features in, then applied some 21st-century knowledge for good measure. The game can be played for hundreds of hours of farming, mining, adventuring, cooking, getting to know townsfolk, and now its all portable. Yes, a Nintendo Switch release is exactly what Stardew Valley needed and its place on the charts makes sense.
Sonic Mania placed third on the most-downloaded list, followed by Rocket League, Snipperclips, and Overcooked.
Stardew Valley is a one-man developed game, with only publishing being handled by Chucklefish. It launched two years ago on PC and has since been released on Mac, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. A big multiplayer update is on its way soon as well.
