The publisher behind Blossom Tales, the Link to the Past-like adventure game on Switch and PC, revealed that the Switch version sold twenty times the Steam version, saving the developer in the process.

FDG Entertainment, the publisher behind games like Oceanhorn and Monster Boy, announced the sales on Twitter and added "Humble indie dev @castlepixel can stay in business and continue making games." The game released on Steam in March 2017 to positive reviews but without much in the way of attention, getting ported to Switch last December. FDG didn't go into more detail, we asked Castle Pixel what the publisher meant.

"We were first approached by a Nintendo rep at PAX last year where they expressed interest in porting Blossom Tales to the Switch," the developers told us. "We are all huge Nintendo fans so we jumped at the chance to work with them and bring Blossom Tales to their platform. After the initial release of Blossom Tales on Steam, the numbers weren’t great, so FDG decided to shift the funds from our next game we had in development to a Switch port of Blossom Tales.

"It was a complete turn around, like FDG tweeted, it’s exceeded lifetime sales on steam by 20 to 1. Blossom Tales was built for Nintendo fans and the fans ultimately saved us in the end," Castle Pixel reiterated. "With the success of Blossom Tales on Switch, we’re able to continue making updates and ports to other languages like Japanese."

The developers wanted to express their gratitude to Nintendo players for allowing them to continue working on games. Thanks to the Blossom Tales sales, Castle PIxel says they are going to work on a new project, but are undecided as to what it will be.

You can read our review of Blossom Tales here, which Brian Shea called "a delightful take on a familiar style."

Our Take

Great news for the developer and genuinely impressive improvement for the sales. The curation problem for Steam is getting worse, as things get lost in the weekly releases, but this is a problem that can eventually happen on any store, and there aren't a lot of good answers for it besides just hoping a port does better.