This time at home has freed up a lot of our schedule to get on electronics and possibly find ourselves new, online hobbies. This concentration of homebound gamers may explain the huge burst in popularity surrounding a new game, Genshin Impact, and its relatively unknown developer, miHoYo.

The game, an open world, anime-styled RPG, takes inspiration from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. You play as either a boy or a girl who get stuck in the distant past by a woman named The God. You get to the land of Teyvat and meet your friend Paimon who acts as your guide and leads you places throughout the game. She’s also become the games mascot with its growing popularity.

The game, released on September 28, has made almost 1 billion dollars in revenue already. That figure may not seem like a lot for most Triple-A companies, but considering the game is only in beta, those numbers have rarely been seen before. Genshin Impact is completely free to play with microtransactions being the only form of income collected by miHoYo. This is great for students who don’t have a lot of money and want something new. The only problem with this accessibility is that some students have a lot of workload to manage, and have been receiving a lot more assignments lately, so they don’t have much time to focus on other things outside of school. 

Senior Chase Henkel, who has played every day since the game was released, says the game “discourages players from constant play by locking out certain parts of the game, but the base game has enough content to not get bored, and also has a lot they can add, and a good looking future.”

If you are a student who plays video games and want something free that will last you a while and you won’t get bored easily you should check out the game. It’s popularity isn’t for nothing and most people are having tons of fun with friends during these times, so why not give it a try?