Stardew Valley is the golden child of farming sims. Inspired by Nintendo’s Harvest Moon, it’s gone on to sell more than 20 million copies since 2016 and kicked off a torrent of imitators on PC. Why haven’t we had that moment for the monster-taming genre? Pokémon clones are abundant, but none have had a sliver of Stardew Valley’s success, yet alone Pokémon’s. If there’s a formula for reimagining classic Japanese series as modern indies, monster tamers haven’t found it.
“An RPG where [players] can create their own adventure based on the characters they know is of course appealing,” say Jochem. The challenge for indies is, “Players would often rather stay with what they know than trying out new games,” they say.
