When compared to other games, these numbers are still very small in scale, but to Leonard, they are beyond expectations. This situation came as a complete surprise for Leonard, who mentioned that they never even reached 500 concurrent users in the beta version. As of July 19, the number of concurrent players has peaked at 701.

However, from around July 13, once support for Japanese had been implemented, player numbers began to increase. If you look at the change in number of concurrent players, you can see that while the game had around 200 when it launched in early access, this number dropped to two digits two weeks later. Leonard never imagined that the game would sell as many copies as it has.

We spoke to Joe Leonard, the developer of the game, to find out just how popular the title has become in Japan. After the servers were back up and running, they were improved in an attempt to cope with the large number of players. The fervor surrounding the game does not seem to be slowing down, and on July 17, the multiplayer servers for the game went down on account of too many concurrent users. Nevergrind Online was first released in early access on June 10, but after it was localized into Japanese in July, there was a great influx of Japanese players. Many players have favorably compared the game to popular MMORPGs of yesteryear, such as EverQuest. Of the more than 320 user reviews on Steam, 90% are positive. Yet, despite all of this, elements like the well-crafted gameplay loop and multiplayer mode that requires precise teamwork all come together to form a title with a solid core experience. The dungeon design is straightforward, there are no unique gimmicks, and the UI can hardly be called intuitive.

It’s certainly not the most visually appealing game, as it has very simple character graphics and monster animations. * Nevergrind Online’s unofficial Japanese trailer

Dungeon fighter online steam population