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At the end of every year I go back and look at all the games that reached at least 1000 reviews (old blog posts see my 2022 recap and 2023 recap). Here is a preview of my 2023 recap:

This year, instead of doing one post in December, I am checking in each quarter and see how many games have reached the 1000 review milestone. My goal is to see how and 

when games reach 1000, and to discover trends that I might be missing by waiting to the end of the year. This is my post from April looking at the games that succeeded in Q1.

For more information about the types of games I included in my survey and why I pick 1000 as my bench mark, see the Appendix below. Just please note that there is no magic number in the Steam algorithm based on earning 1000 reviews, it is a somewhat-arbitrary metric I picked out. Don’t try and game the system to get 1000, nothing magic happens.

Side note my Q2 dates go for games released from April 1st –  July 12th. I picked the 12th because the Steam Summer Sale ended on the 11th and the increase in sales number could push some additional games into the 1000+ review zone.

How many games have been released in 2024?

As of July 12th, there have been 8,362 games released this year. 

This continues a trend of there being 27% MORE games than at the same time last year (for both Q1 and Q2). As long as this rate holds, I expect there to be 17,598 games released in 2024

Here is the chart of the number of games released per quarter for the last 5 years

How many reached 1000 reviews? 

In Q1 of 2024 there were 72 games that hit 1000 reviews. 

By Q2 there were 160 MORE games that got to 1000 reviews

Of those 160, I filtered out AAA and games with big IP to find that there were 119 true indies that reached 1000 reviews by Q2 of 2024 (for more information about filter criteria see the Appendix below). 

For a few years now I have been tracking total releases vs number of 1000+ reviewed games and I find that the number of 1000+ games every year is always about 500-ish. It hasn’t changed in a while. 

This chart was made for the 2022 year of releases

So far this year there are 232 of them. Since this is the halfway point, it seems 2024 will be no different: right around 500 hit games by the end of the year.

The status quo isn’t great news. 

If more games are being released and yet the number of “hit” games is static, there is a higher percentage of studios that will be disappointed. 

Were there any Sleeper hits?

Since I am counting the number of games and the number of “hit” games every quarter, there will be times when a game released in Q1 but didn’t hit the 1000 threshold until Q2. Let’s call these “late bloomers” how many were there in Q2?

28 games didn’t achieve 1000 reviews until the quarter after they released.

I made a chart of all the late bloomers. Each blue bar represents a different game and the Y axis shows how many reviews each game had on April 1st (when I sampled the Q1 data). The bars are sorted by release date. Bar on the far left released before the games to the right of it.

As you can see, most of these games were ALMOST to the 1000 cutoff. The average review count for these games on April 1st was 767.

That short blue bar on the far right was Felvidek which launched on March 29th but still managed to rack up 188 reviews in 3 days. As of today, Felvidek is sitting on 1713 reviews.

Beautiful screenshot of hit RPG Felvidek

What does this mean?

Most games don’t sell well. And a lot of developers launch their game and are looking at their poor sales and think to themselves “Maybe we are like Among Us and will become a hit later in life.” Unfortunately, that doesn’t happen very often. 

All the Q2 hits that were released in Q1 had very high review counts already. There were no “sleeper hits” that slowly built up to 1000. 

Oh Deer was the closest to being a sleeper. It generated 601 reviews in the first month. That is a lot! 

Oh Deer’s review count grew steadily until Steam Next Fest where it entered with 857 reviews and ended the sale with 1165.

Oh Deer is a social deduction hunting game

I am sorry, but if your game doesn’t sell well in the first month, there really isn’t much evidence that the game will become a hit. 8000+ games have already been released this year and 0 of them that earned fewer than 400 reviews in the first month, later earned 1000 reviews. 

People often ask how they should market their game after launch. Unfortunately, if it isn’t a hit, there isn’t much you can do. I recommend people show the Steam shoppers that you are a “good dev” by patching any known show-stopping bugs, or major data loss issues, maybe add one small content update, and then move on to your next game. You should also discount at every opportunity, and enter all themed festival sales. But, there are no more levers you can pull within the algorithm. Visibility Rounds don’t work any more – Valve nerfed them. If you are nowhere near earning $150,000 gross revenue within your first 6-9 months, there isn’t much you can do. 

This business is hard. I am sorry.

Percentage of coop

VGInsights recently released a report showing that co-op (and other multiplayer games) are very popular. They found that despite only 6% of games on Steam having co-op, they made up 36% of the total revenue in 2024. 

I can see this success in the 1000+ review games too.

21% of the 2024’s hit games so far (51 of them) were tagged with co-op.

Co-op is huge. 

End of Action Roguelike

Two and a half years ago I wrote about how Vampire Survivors popularized a genre that is a great way to start making games. It was a very profitable genre while it lasted. However, in 2024 it seems like the action-roguelike-bullet-heaven party might finally be over. 

In 2022 there were 10 action-roguelikes that earned 1000+ reviews. In 2023 there were 17. 

In the 6 months of 2024 there is only 1 Action Roguelike to break through: Deep Rock Galactic Survivors (I wrote about it here)

Horror persists as do other popular genres

Although the Vampire Survivors-like fad looks like it has finally died off, the core Steam genres are still very popular. Here is the 2024 count halfway through the year compared to the total count at the end of 2023.

  • Horror = 20 already (28 at the end of 2023)
  • Open World Survival Craft = 16 (23 in 2023)
  • Simulation = 7 (21 in 2023)
  • City Builder = 7 (14 in 2023)
  • Management = 7 (11 in 2023)
  • Farming Sim = 4 (6 in 2023)
  • Roguelike Deckbuilder = 4 (7 in 2023)

Indies are always worried that genres will change out from under them during their development. But I have been tracking this data for years and the same types of games persist: Crafty-buildy-simulationy (plus horror). 

Here are some of the top Crafty-Buildy-Simulationy games I am talking about that hit in Q2:

Citybuilders were popular back in the 90s with SimCity. I will bet they will be popular in 30 years. 

Fad genres

Although Crafty-buildy-simulationy games are the bedrock of PC gaming, there are trends that popup and blaze hot for a couple years. Just because a genre is a fad doesn’t mean you should shun it. Sometimes it can be refreshing (and maybe profitable) if you are in-between projects or need a break from your long in development game to make a SHORT DEVELOPMENT time fast-follow of a fad game (read my blog on the joy of Fast Follows here)

Here are some fads I see

Dead Simple idlers

Besides these weird (somewhat dubious) fad idlers, the overall idler genre is very healthy this year. Here are some idlers that have some really clever game design behind them. In 2022 and 2023 there were only 3 idlers per year that hit 1000+ reviews. Half way through the year I already count 8 hit idlers.

There is a lot of innovation in this space:

PS1 Aesthetic

This year I noticed a ton of 3D games adopt the PS1/N64-ish low poly, CRT inflected aesthetic. I wonder if the generation that grew up playing PS1 finally reached prime buying age and are rekindling their nostalgia replacing us older folks who grew up playing 2D plxelart games. 

Notable games:

Adult Percentage

Glance at the front page of Steam and you are bound to see some “Adult” content. Encountering this every day and you might think that Steam is slowly turning into a digital Adult Bookshop. 

So far there are 9 Adult games that have become best sellers. In 2022 there were 20, and in 2023 there were 15 adult games that earned 1000+ reviews. 

But don’t worry, adult games are not crowding out other games. Consistently 10% of all best selling Steam games are adult. It is just the pornographic tithe to support the church of Valve.

The rise of 3D Platformers

Platformer is the genre indies just can’t help but make despite them having horrific sales records and abundant supply. 

In years past there were 5, 2D Platformers, and 5, 3D platformers to reach best seller status.. 

This year we are already at 4 3D platformers that have hit 1000+ reviews!

The abysmal underperformance of 2D platformers persists though: only two have  earned 1000+ reviews this year

Note that I break out Metroidvanias into their own genre so are not counted as 2D platformers.  

VR

Still not doing too well on Steam. There was only 1 VR game that hit 1000+ reviews.

UNDERDOGS

Prologues

I wrote about how games can use the prologue trick to get hundreds of thousands of wishlists. People are still using it to great effect. Here are 7 games that did it this quarter. These are big companies using the trick.

Before you jump in and try it, remember, the prologue trick is a wishlist multiplier. If your game is stuck at 0 wishlists and you can’t get any attention, the Prologue trick won’t work. Your game must already be popular.

Summary

So what is the TL;DR?

Really, not a lot is changing since I started doing these deep dives two years ago. Crafty-buildy-games are still what the Steam audience wants. There are still likely only 500 games that “succeed” and reach 1000+ reviews. Adult games make up 10% of the hits. Platformers still drag but there are some greenshoots in 3D. Fad genres come (single item clickers) and others go (Action-roguelikes).

Really Steam doesn’t change as fast as everyone complains that it does on Twitter. If you want long term sustainable-ish success, familiarize yourself with the core crafty-buildy genres of Steam. If you are bored, take a quick spin with a fad genre (but box in your time, and don’t over invest in it, they are risky). 

And every indie should make a horror game.

Appendix: Why 1000 reviews?

Why is 1000 reviews my cutoff in this survey? Don’t read too much into it. 1000 is NOT some magic algorithm number where you hit it and amazing things happens. Don’t try to artificially get to 1000 reviews using devious schemes. There is nothing special about 1000. It is kind of random. I kind of use it because it is just a nice round number. I just picked 1000 reviews because it is a very hard number for most games to get to. It typically correlates to about $300,000 (depending on the price of the game) in gross revenue. When a game earns in this revenue range, Valve starts giving you things like Daily Deals, Weekend Deals, Popups etc. AND YES 1000 reviews is hard to get even if your game is free. In last year’s analysis only 3.5% of all free games were able to get 1000 reviews. Only games that players really really like get up to 1000.

And yes I am aware of survivor ship bias. I just like to look at the top games to see what types of things actually resonate with the steam audience. At the end of the year I will do deeper analysis to compare number of genres released vs number that succeed. It is coming.

Appendix: What type of games are included in my survey?

For this 1000 survey I removed all AAA and games with big IP (Intellectual property). I did this because I study indie games and most indie teams do not have the clout to get big IP like Star Wars or Warhammer. Also, I am trying to see what genres do well. IP sometimes can mask what genres are actually popular since some people buy the game because of the IP and not the genre. 

I also removed games that were Chinese only or Russian only because they seem to have found popularity because of some very very specific regional taste. For instance Chushpan Simulator which is a meme off of some Russia-only show called Slovo Patsany. Very specific and I don’t think we can learn much from this.

Also I removed games that were pulled from the store for whatever reason. I found a few that hit 1000 reviews but for whatever reason were removed:

Appendix: When I look up game <x> on Steam it doesn’t have 1000 reviews

If you check out the steam page for a few of the games I reference you might notice that Steam reports that they have less than 1000 reviews. WTF?

Steam filters the reviews (and the review counts) you see based on region. My review count is based on the total number of reviews. You can see the total across regions by checking SteamDB and VGInsights. 

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zukalous

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