In the past few weeks, sales data revealed that Atelier Ryza: Ever Darkness & the Secret Hideout had exceeded a landmark of 350,000 sales since its debut. With the game continuing to charm new and loyal fans alike, the game’s producer has now offered his take on the game’s wild success for the franchise.

In a recent interview with Siliconera, Gust’s Junzo Hosoi spoke at length about how the game’s theme came to be – including Ryza’s popular design and more. Chief among his comments, however, was his sense of gratitude to the many players who purchased the game. This was in spite of Hosoi and his team building the game up from scratch, and challenging themselves to try new ideas:

“An extraordinary number of gamers played this game, and we are very grateful for this. The thing I learned the most from this game is that you need to keep challenging yourself.

In this game, we considered everything from scratch, from the theme to the production concept to the visual concept. Even within the company, there were various opinions about the scenario concept and use of the single season of summer.

But because we took on these challenges, I feel that as a result many gamers played this game.

And so, we will continue to create games without forgetting to always challenge things with a positive attitude.”

Are you one of the many fans who enjoyed Atelier Ryza on Switch? Feel free to share your favorite part about the game with us below!