9 Indie Video Games That SAVED Doomed Franchises

Bokujo Monogatari, or as we know it in the west - Harvest Moon, was first released on the SNES console in 1996. In it you play as a young cityslicker who inherits their grandfather's old farm and must grow crops, raise livestock, and rebuild the farm to its former glory - all while befriending the locals. It had solid sequels, including my personal favorite, 1999's Back to Nature for the Playstation and spawned spin-off series Rune Factory.

Unfortunately each new release was generally met with less acceptance, and as a result diminishing sales, with 2008's Animal Parade being the last game in the series that the original developer, Wada Yasuhiro worked on. With reviews in the 6-7/10 range for most of the series it was largely considered to be a stable choice of getting exactly what you'd expect out of it with each new release and was eventually renamed Story of Seasons in 2014 due to some legal issues with trademarking the name.

Harvest Moon ultimately inspired social-network and mobiles games like Farmville, Farmtown, and Happy Farm. But it also inspired Eric Barone to make a little gem called Stardew Valley which has since sold over 10 million copies and has been ported to basically every system on the current market, including Tesla's electric cars.