While the Harvest Moon franchise, now known as Story of Seasons, has been a rather beloved farming simulator game for decades, the genre fell into obscurity as many gamers felt like its base features weren't what they wanted as the years went by. Many farming simulation games tried to pick up the slack, but none garnered the same amount of attention until Stardew Valley was released in 2016. While it faced some criticisms, such as being seen as "too needy" by some players, it ended up being the perfect relaxing game for fans of the genre at the time.