In a year almost unprecedentedly packed with brilliant game releases, Honkai: Star Rail — which today celebrates the first anniversary of its release — nevertheless stands out as a 2023 success story. A low-key one, admittedly; it wasn’t hugely lauded at the end of the year, receiving only three nominations across all five major game award shows and winning just one (Best Mobile Game at The Game Awards) — although it did sweep up every gong it could at several smaller and more mobile-focussed ceremonies.
But not only did Star Rail review positively among critics, it’s been an enormous hit with the gaming public: boasting nearly 22 million estimated players in the past month according to the unofficial tracker ActivePlayer.io, and spending several months since its launch vying with Genshin Impact for the title of the top-earning gacha game, even managing to beat its predecessor into second place on more than one occasion.
There are a number of potential reasons why one of the most popular games going right now is often detached from wider conversations around gaming. Despite being available on both PC and PlayStation 5 as well as iOS and Android devices, Honkai: Star Rail is almost exclusively talked about in critical circles as a mobile game, perhaps because its free-to-play gacha monetisation model indelibly associates it with those platforms in many peoples’ minds.
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