Stardew Valley meets Zelda and Final Fantasy in new Steam hit

This latest Steam release is like a weird blend of Stardew Valley, The Legend of Zelda and Final Fantasy, and it’s already doing numbers on the platform.

Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma officially dropped on Steam on Thursday, and its critical reception and player count should really speak for itself.

The Rune Factory series originally began as a spin-off of the Harvest Moon series, until eventually branching off into its own thing following the release of Rune Factory 2: A Fantasy Harvest Moon back in 2008.

The thing is (and this is coming from someone who actually likes this series), it was never actually a massive hit, although you wouldn’t assume that considering Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma marks its ninth mainline release.

In fact, things were so dire, sales-wise, that the original developer of the Rune Factory games actually filed for bankruptcy back in 2013.

Well, clearly things are on the up because the latest game is charting pretty well on Steam. It might not sound massive in comparison to the likes of bigger releases, but, as of 24 hours ago, Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma is peaking at roughly 13,000 concurrent players.

Not bad for a series that was thought dead just over a decade ago.

Reviews are equally good too, as it's currently sitting at a "Very Positive" rating on Steam with over 900 reviews (86% of which are positive).

Personally, I always assumed the Rune Factory games endured because they were relatively cheap to develop, but the latest game looks like it has a bit more budget behind it than usual. I’d wager that’s probably what’s led to this uptick in popularity (the cute anime girls on the cover probably help too, though).

Here’s hoping the sales have a knock-on effect for the quality of the rest of the franchise, because I know there are a lot of die-hard Rune Factory players out there.