There actually are games that are making money on Steam. Real money. And even small games made by small teams (sometimes even one person) are doing it.

Every quarter I dig deep and look at and play Indie games that have earned over 1000 reviews to get a sense of what is actually selling on Steam. 

I find it so inspiring to look at games this way. It gets you past the stuff that is served up to you on youtube and the social media algorithms and the outrages of the day. You get to see what is actually working and games that are really neat. I highly recommend it. 

In this blog post I look at the games that were released from April, May, June or those that were released in Q1 but didn’t hit 1000 reviews until April, May, June.

(If you want to know why I pick 1000 reviews as my bar, check my explanation in my 2024 post. Also read it before you yell at me for survivorship bias because I address that there too).

So here are the trends I saw in the latest quarter

1000 hits fast

The number one thing I have learned since looking at games every quarter is that there really aren’t any “late bloomers” or “hidden gems” that slowly find an audience. 

Steam is built to detect a game that connects with people and then showing it to everyone who might be interested. Every single game that has hit 1000 reviews so far this year had at least 715 reviews in the first month. Here are the slowest growing games released in 2025 note how fast they grow. 

  • Screen Cat (736 reviews in first month)
  • Cruel (715 reviews in first month)

A game doesn’t “grind its way to success.” You know whether your game is going to take off immediately. 

Top genres

GenreNumber of indie games that reached 1000 reviewsSome example games
Narrative19S4U: CITYPUNK 2011 AND LOVE PUNCH
The Roottrees are Dead
Date Everything!
RPG18Look Outside
Crashlands 2
Simulation16Streamer Life Simulator 2
City Transport Simulator
Horror14Amenti
Kiosk
Idle12Ropuka’s Idle Island
Revolution Idle
Shooter10CRUELFBC: Firebreak
Adventure9Hyper Light Breaker
FlyKnight
Management8Aviassembly
Hollywood Animal
Strategy8Cataclismo
Broken Arrow
Open World Survival Craft7Age of Water
Atomfall

Idle Idle Idle

We are living in an idle game golden age right now and the bank accounts of those developers are looking like a late stage Cookie Clicker run.

Look at this trend of how many idle games hit 1000 reviews

  • 2022 3 games
  • 2023 3 games
  • 2024 16 games
  • 2025 12 games (and we are only half way through the year!)

I wonder if the clicker boom came from the viral hit of the somewhat scammy banana idler game. Many commentators feared that this mindless banana game with questionable monetization was the death of Steam. It was free, it was dumb, it was scammy. It’s a race to the bottom!

But those commentators turned out to be wrong!

Banana may have led to something good! I theorize that the viral hit introduced the idler genre to a lot of people. You would expect a free idler would mean only free idle games would succeed. But it isn’t true! There was no race to the bottom. Steam fans want to spend money. THEY LOVE SPENDING MONEY. 

Only 3 of the hit idlers so far are free. The other 9 are paid with an average price of $3.89. There is even Cast n Chill which is a beautiful idler that is $14.99. Everyone should be charging more for your idler! 

I don’t know how long this idle boom will last. It could be over already. But if you are years deep into a metroidvania, a puzzle platformer, multiplayer shooter, or some other genre that is waaaay too big or unpopular for an indie team to make, take a 9-month break. Make an idler. Refresh your creative juices and see how fun it is to make a game in a genre that is highly desired by the Steam audience. 

Tower Defense merged with City Builder

Tower defense has really been picking up in the last couple of years. City Builders have been decreasing but the two genre have essentially merged. 

Look at games like Border Pioneer, Nordhold and Drill Core. I think they have absorbed that itch that players have for city builders and reignited the TD genre which seemed to have faded in the early 2020s.

Already I found 5 tower defense games that hit vs only 8 in all of 2024. These are the Tower Defense winners so far:

In general, Tower Defense is still a very viable genre, but it must evolve past the traditional build tower + earn gold + upgrade towers loop (such as Bloons TD and Kingdom Rush). You need to add a deeper city building, roguelike, or colony-sim like meta layer. 

Note The King is Watching released in July which is outside of my April, May, June sample but is a certified hit and has that similar city builder + defense setup. 

Multiplayer games get abandoned 

There were 7 multiplayer shooters that hit 1000 reviews so far and it is so clear to me that indie developers should never make them.

Even if a multiplayer shooter is a hit with 1000 reviews, it quickly dies. Every single time. I am sorry, but indie scale multiplayer shooters just cannot succeed. They just aren’t possible. 

Here is a table of all indie multiplayer shooters that hit 1000 reviews and their CCU at launch and today. Only 1 game (Splitgate 2) is still alive and even then players are complaining about the lack of players. On the far right are player reviews complaining about “dead games” or “empty servers”

GameLaunch dateTotal reviewsCCU peakPeak CCU in last 24 hours of writing this blogReview complaining about dead game
Splitgate 2May 22, 202518,67425,7851,122Fun game, I don’t get why there are so few players. Best battle royale since Call of Duty Blackout.
Wild AssaultApr 11, 202528952,274325Games are majority bots, if you like this game because it has animal people in it then cool, but don’t recommend it for that. Game play is mid, guns are mid, characters are mid. This game is meant to sell to furries and its selling hook is 30 second ads or character trailers that have panty shots.
Neighbors: Suburban WarfareApr 17, 202516573,308102Dont bother buying this game – the lobbies are dead and the only people who do play are just hackers….. Was great when it first came out but the game has now dead. RIP.
Steel HuntersApril 2, 20254025447345“What an absolute joke.Game was dead before, now it’s officially dead…
The most baffling thing is that their long term plan was to monetise this crap.”
OUTLAWEDMarch 13, 2025107687314“Was a fun game. Abandoned as hell tho.”
Last RemainsFeb 17, 20251,40975114
5 players in game currently. Damn. Its a good game, cant recommend if only 5 players playing worldwide. Fun co op tho.
Cheaters CheetahMar 10, 20251,2669568Literally no one playing it, I have only got a few matches before. DO NOT GET

Wild Assault is also barely hanging on and I think mainly because it has bots that can fill servers when there aren’t enough players. And also probably because of the Furry thing.

Also,I swear, the Wild Assault capsule looks like a Furry Juice Newton. 

Tiny Indie Hidden Gems

Again I am always so inspired after looking at all these hits. There are so many creative projects that just hit games that aren’t “part of the discourse” but can totally inspire you to make games 

Try these tiny successful games