Banana has entered the Steamcharts list as one of the daily top-played games. So, what is this game, and why is everyone playing it?
I recently visited Steamcharts to find out what people were playing on Steam these days. Suddenly, I saw a game named Banana in the “Top Games By Current Players” list, which I had never heard of or seen before.
My curious mind wanted me to comprehend more about this weirdly named game and why it had over 250,000 concurrent players [while writing] and growing. So, I searched for the game on Steam, and this is what the official description says about this game.
Banana is a clicker Game, in which you click a Banana! In Banana you click the Banana to gain even more Bananas! Every 3 and 18 hours, you get dropped a banana. Each banana is also made by the community in discord. Come hang out with us and let’s grow into something awesome !
Without further delay, I downloaded the game, which didn’t take long as the game had only 17 MB of download size. However, don’t be deceived by its download size, as it took a whopping 61 MB of my storage, which made me appreciate how some of the modern games like Warzone 2, RDR 2, and Starfield take so little storage space.
All puns aside, upon entering the game, I was greeted with a 640×480 window with the settings tab opened. The settings tab has only two options to tweak: Fullscreen mode and Resolutions. Thankfully, the game supports the monitor’s native resolutions, so I wasn’t forced to play in the 1980s standard resolution format.
After I closed the settings tab, there was a nice ripe banana in the middle of the screen with a click counter on top. The counter goes up as you click the banana. That’s it. That’s the game. There’s nothing more or less to it. So, why are so many people playing it?
What Made Banana So Hyped?
Apparently, the game drops a banana every 3 hours, which you can sell in the community market for 3 cents each. You don’t need to keep playing the game to get these drops. According to Banana’s current community market, 77 bananas are available in the range of 3 cents to hundreds of dollars. These bananas drop randomly every 3 hours. Depending on your luck, you can get some rare and expensive bananas. As the community in Discord creates these bananas, you can find some hilarious bananas such as Dogenana, Belugana, Pepenana, and more.
Everyone would typically think that people are playing the game for money, as it takes nothing to keep it on. However, if you think rationally, you can only get drops worth 24 cents in a single day and $1.68 in a week, considering you keep the game on 24/7. Moreover, after selling each banana, you get to keep only 8 cents a day and 54 cents a week. So, any normal human being knows that it isn’t worth it.
So, the question still remains: why is it getting popular? To me, Banana is just a product of a ripple effect that was somehow ignited among like-minded people. Everyone is literally playing it because others are. Remember how Among Us became popular? That game was released in 2018, but no one even knew it before mid-2020. It only became famous as streamers and content creators started to play it.
However, unlike Among Us, which is fun to play, Banana has nothing to offer. Even the game’s main character, the banana itself, does not have a proper hitbox. I often found that the clicks registered even after clicking outside the banana picture. However, I don’t blame the developers, as they probably made it just for fun and didn’t expect it to go viral like that.
Nonetheless, it is just a matter of hours or days when the game reaches its peak. After that, the player count will start going downhill, and maybe in weeks or months, players won’t even remember that there was a game called Banana that became one of the top-played games on Steam.
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