The best selling Steam games PART 3

[Music] All right, here is part three of my Steam games of 2025 that have already reached 1,000 reviews. They're winning. They're winning, kids. Uh, and this is where I just look at all every game that won in 2025 so far. We've done two other videos. I link below. Uh, you can watch all of them. I kind of have some scraps left over at the end. So, we're going to go through this as fast as possible because you have work to do. Don't be multitasking. Okay. I'm going to post a blog down below by Harvard Business Review that found even though people think they're good at multitasking, they actually aren't in productivity studies. So, I hope you're listening to this um in a nice quiet place, you're focused 100% on me. If you're not 100% focused on me, close me. Just close this browser right now. Finish your work. Set a 1 hour timer and then as a little pleasant reward for 100% concentration for one hour, you get me. All right. So, now that you're 100% focused on me, eyes on me here, we're going to go through this. I write for how tomarket.com. Uh, this is my book. You get it when you join my

mailing list. That's all I care about. I don't want subscribers. I don't want YouTube subscribers. I want mailing list subscribers. So, just enter your email address here. I am Chris Sukowski is my email address. Yours most likely different. In fact, I'm 100% certain your email address is different than mine. Let's dig right in. Okay, so we're back in the list. I went through and I made sure some of these are not pornography that I was originally there. Um, this one is not visually pornography, but something's something's up on this one. This one's called Your Mother. Your mother. It's it actually is in all languages, so it it doesn't do that. Um, and it's described as a computer desktop companion. And it's kind of I I don't know. There's something going on here. I don't know what it is. Uh, and the comments are worth a peek. So, it is worth a peek. I don't There's something going on here. And it says, "Are you winning, son?" There is. I know that's a meme. Another meme, but um there's something here. I don't know what it is, but it is definitely It's one of those desktop

companions. I'm I'm calling it an idol game. Um anime definitely. Um maybe it's Yeah. What is it? I don't know. Let's see. Maybe it is an idol. They never tag it as idol. I might just put it as narrative. I don't know. Maybe sim. This is a weird one. Family. Thank god it's family friendly. Thank god. Maybe it's too friendly. Maybe the family is too friendly in this. I don't know. There's a lot going on here. I don't even know what to tag this. It's just some pretty Japanese woman or Chinese woman sits on your desktop. I don't I don't know what it is. I'm trying to find out. And And the comments are no help. They are um they are something special. Um so I have no idea. You know what? I'm just going to call it's I'm going to call it a simulation because you're simulating a mother. This this is a weird one. Um so it's called your mother and it is co-op. No co-op even though your mother's helping you or a mother. It's not clear if it's your mother or a mother. Even

though it's called your mother. A lot of people were saying it's a friend's mom that comes over which adds a whole another dynamic. I I no. Um I'm going to say yes because simulation is crafty. So, I'm going to put it under simulation because it's simulating a mother and it is anime. Okay. Now, this other one I'm going to pull out. I'm going to remove I'm not going to count this one. This one's called My Journey. It's It is Chinese only, but and the only reason I bring this up, and this is one of the things reasons why I kind of segregate games that are Chinese only and I don't include them in my accounts of like, oh, these are the genres you should do. This is very culturally specific. It's just this weird artifact I see every time. This is a hot genre in China where there's they're full motion cinematic games with pretty girls and they're like there's nothing sexual about it's just like you just hang out with with pretty girls and it's like very like FMV like you eat with them. A lot of eating. There's a lot of eating going on. Um and

that's it. It seems totally chased and then that's that's the that's the game. So, I don't I doubt you could make this seems very culturally specific. So, I think if you tried to make something like this, this is why I usually move this to the tab that's that's somewhere else. Okay. U we're going to do the next one here. So, I'm just not going to classify that one. It would be narrative. I wouldn't mark this one as FMV. I actually have an FMV tag, but again, there's something culturally specific to this game. I doubt it would transfer over. Now, cheaters cheetah, similar to my mother. What I I didn't want to cover this earlier because I flashed real fast and I thought it actually said cougar instead of cheetah like mentally my thing said cougar. So it's like c cheat cheaters cougars and I was like oh this is definitely a an adult game and then I I clicked it looked tunnel furry and I was like there is no way this is not and it is not it's not pornography it's just a it's a multiplayer shooter. Um but apparently

you can just cheat like it's full of cheats are enabled which is a neat hook. Um, but like most multiplayer games, there's probably empty servers. Look, this game's fun, dead, and buggy. This folks, even if you have a hit multiplayer shooter, see people performance and people are actually exploiting the game. Please fix your game. Eventually, even if you have a hit interesting multiplayer game like this multiplayer game, it will eventually get overrun by cheaters and you're constantly patching the games to to keep the cheaters out or the server's just going to atrophy. Let's look at the stats here. I'm serious folks. I see this every year. Every year. So you get a lot of people are interested. N a thousand players is very good. That is very good. The team did good. Got a thousand reviews and then the game just drops like this. This is called pancaking where you have an initial audience. It spikes and then it just the player base dies off. And even if the game's good because there's no player base and everybody likes it, there's just not enough of them to play against each other. And so folks, if you really really really want to make a multiplayer game, just make a multiplayer mod for an

existing big game. You I at Indie Scale, we just cannot do multiplayer games. They just do not work. And now the the game's empty. How many multi there's 24 hours there were 33 people playing this game in the last day. 33. That's not enough for a multiplayer game. You need in the thousands. It was just the the peak the peak player time was a thousand. That's barely enough to maintain servers to keep that up. And that was at their peak. I'm I'm serious folks. It's just multiplayer games are so so hard. Even if you have a good one. There's the challenge of making a good one. And then the second grander challenge of keeping the player base full. So, this is a multiplayer shooter and it is um I'm going to say low poly. I think it's kind of low poly. Let me let me look real quick. Yeah, it's Yeah, look at that paw. It's like a low poly paw and it's a low poly tiger. Um, so yeah, that's what it is. Again, it looks like a good game, but even if the good game, if you don't have the player base, it's there. So, it is co-op

because technically play with friends. Demo live and crafty. No. Okay. Um, let's do Wonder Swap. Although, let's see. I I'll go this. I tried to open them in there. Let's do the uh this Berserker Kazan. Um, that's that's the one that I'm looking at, right? Berserk. Berserker cuz go by the ID. I think I found this one. Where is this? It's not in here. Why? Sometimes I swear I just kick and something click and something goes. It's go schedule. We all know this game. This is like the hottest game right now. Made by one guy in Australia apparently and it's it's doing 36. This is why I'm confident about Steam. Steam is like this is awesome. Like Steam can do this. Um, uh, it's it's just it's amazing. It's a game made by one person and it looks kind of kind of jank. Not not in a bad way, but it kind of looks like this. The guy couldn't even model noses. You know how you save time in your game?

Don't put noses on people. Saves so much time not adding those noses and you can get there. So, um, let's see. Where is schedule I in this? There it is. Okay. I kind of went bottom up. Okay. So, it is co-op because you play with your friends. Demo live. No. Crafty, yes. Because this is where people are going to yell at me. I know it's multi- things, but it's kind of the management sent. So, I'm going to put management under here because you're like managing a drug being a drug kingpin and there's mini games associated with it. So, I'm calling it management. I know you can shoot people. It's not a shooter because there's that management layer to it. And I'm going to call it low poly. Uh so few polies that they couldn't even model noses. So, good for schedule eye. This is why I still am confident doing what I a single person game that's the right type of genre can do well and go crazy crazy crazy. This is why you pay Steam 30% by the way to get 54,000 reviews and it came out like two weeks ago. Two weeks ago when your game hits it hits so hard. So

hard. And this is why we study the genres. It's crafty. Did I mark it as crafty? I did right. It is definitely crafty. It's crafty building. It does have that co-op multiplayer aspect to it. This is hot, folks. This is This is the type of game and it's it's kind of sleazy. Okay. Um, this one is also a weird one. I said this one. I was like, "Way to go Steam." This is uh again, these are I don't know the size of this. I think they said I thought I saw somewhere that was made by one person somewhere. I think I saw that. That was um It's a $4. It's It's bizarre. It's like a sword game. Just beat up people. I have no idea. Um, I'm going to call it adventure because you're kind of a swordman and you just go around on adventure. This is one to flag. I have no idea. And it's bizarre. You can pick up, you can get in a car, but it looks like I'm adding this one to the cart. I got to just add this one. It's $4. Yeah, this is again I have no idea what this uh um game is. I'm gonna I Let

me look at it again. Let me look at what simulator. It's a simulator game and you can do other things like you can get in cars. I can't tell if it's simulator. Let's see here. It could be a sandbox because you like they just throw all this junk in the in the world and you just kind of play with it. Um I Secret Gear Unleash. Let's see what the reviews are saying. I know they're gonna be people like to make jokes when it's a funny game like this. Um let's see. I'm trying to find out. No season pass, banger soundtrack, historical accuracy. See, it's funny. It's a kind of a meme game. This game is a short, loweffort unity asset thirdp person shooter with a Japanese theme. It's main claim of fame. Um, oh, it must be a joke or something else. This is like a fast follow stuff. This is actually This is why it's so funny. Um, if you're embedded in the gaming culture, you can understand

Um, oh, it probably has something to do with I don't know. There's probably something some cultural context I'm not getting and it's probably toxic just reading some of these comments. Um, I'm just trying to find out. I think it's Sandbox. I think it's like a a meme sandbox game. Um, I'm just trying to find out if it's sandbox. And it doesn't matter. It doesn't really matter since it's a joke game. I'm just going to call it um I'm going to call it action adventure adventure because you kind of go around. I know it's a simulator, but it's not. And it's fantasy because um it's I know it's like a joke game and it's got a lot of Unity asset store stuff. So, no. No. Yes, this is what game which you would not want to do a demo for because and it's not crafty

even though it's called a simulator. It's a joke being a simulator. That's why I was making sure just because it says the word simulator doesn't mean it make it a simulator. It's a joke. Um but this is what this is the type of game that would not be good because the joke is that it's making fun of Ubisoft for I have probably something Assassin's Creed some stupid thing where they said this is historically accurate and then they sounds like there's some racial undertones here that's going on. But anyway, so that's what that is. And um if you did a demo, then people will get the joke. Like the joke is a one-hour joke at max. And once you get the joke, it's over. So if you do this, don't do a demo because then that's the joke. People get their fix from that thing. So Reckfest 2. Let's move on. Okay. Wreckfest is a driving game racing, sorry. And it is realistic and it is Let's see if it's co-op. Um, co-op. I'm just trying to see if it's multiplayer. They don't have enough tags. They should get more tags. Multiplayer. Yes. But is it co-op? Let's see what

they're co-op thing. Online PVP. It's all PvP. So, it's not co-op. Um, demo level is no. Crafty, no. Because it's I kind of consider them sports games and they're not quite crafty. Although sometimes it's like you can you can test suspension. I consider crafty if you're like customizing the car, not just like racing ready for Mayhem. If it's more of a simulation side of racing, then I consider it crafty, but if it's not, it's more of a multiplayer game. Witness ideas vehicles powered by the enhanced physics engine created for breakfast. Flat out. Oh, that's an old game. Flat out, I think. Um, wait, is this by No. Okay. I'm just trying to determine the customization sensor screenshots suck since from THQ. I don't know. Um, okay. Technically, this one's on the fence of whether I should include this as an indie game. I don't know. I don't want to have that fight. So, it's included. We need as many as indie games as we

can. Okay. Let's go Cataclysm. This, I think, is a narrative game. Oh, no. It's strategy base building. So, um, it's base building because you build this base. It's by Hooded Horse. This is the crafty build publisher of everybody's dreams. So everybody's dreams. Let's just say my dreams. So yes, crafty demo live. No. And co-op. I don't think so. I don't think it's a co-op game. Let's check. Co-op single player. Yeah. Okay. Let me let me just talk about this demo thing because people were getting confused about the demo when I was saying Whoa, whoa, whoa. Somehow I switched into some crazy mode. I pushed some button. I Oh man. Or maybe Steam just updated all of a sudden. Uh oh, it's the stupid AI. All right, I've said no to that AI so many times. Okay, let me explain the the demo thing. I am saying specifically it doesn't matter what they did in the past. I'm just looking at at are there games that after they're for sale, 100% for sale, have

they kept their demo up? Like is it still up? Now the demo could have happened a long time ago. Like a lot of these games find most of their visibility to get to that 10,00 by demo. That is the number one way to get visibility is make yourself a demo. You got to get demo pre-launch. This game's not ready. Streamers can play it. All that stuff. It's perfect. What I'm trying to study is how many games have the demo live afterwards? And I don't know if that's good or bad. I'm just investigating. I don't give advice until I actually do the research. I show my receipts. What I'm going to do is I'm going to go to those devs that had their demo live and I'm going to go track them down and say, "Hey, can I ask you about whether your demo why you keeping your demo up? I'm not sure if it's causation or correlation. A lot of devs are don't have their demo up." And I think it's just they're scared. They're just scared like, "Oh man, if I put my demo up, it's going to hurt my sales." But everybody's so scared they're not going to test it. But I'm not scared because I don't have money on the line for this. So I can ask them like, "Hey, did it work?" And then I can encourage people to say, "Hey, I think it's okay to put your demo up after a game's live." and then we'll get a couple people who are brave enough to

try it and if it works it works and if it doesn't it doesn't and I write a blog says don't keep your demo up after you launch. I have a feeling it's actually good. If you've got a crafty building game that can be replayed over and over and over again I actually my gut tells me it is a good idea. Okay, so I am I'm going to do that. I'm going to say that's why I'm doing this tracking. Okay, the demo live. It's is the demo live now so that I can go back after this and knock on the door of the people who kept their demo live. There aren't many people who have done it. It's like three or four games have done it in this so far and we'll see. All right, Halfife 2. This is interesting. I call this a mod. I know it's a shooter. Um, and it's for free, but I think more people should be making. And this looks cool. This is that um overlay where they're using the RTX raid casting stuff uh to to uh HalfLife. It's just interesting. It's an indie project because it's made by this thing. And Valve's cool about just like, hey, you can just have access and they get front page. Yes, I know it's free. Yes, I know it's HalfLife, but I think if you are an indie dev I there were

other games, not not so much before. There were many mods that were just like a a side story. It's fanfic basically in the HalfLife 2 world and they got front page featuring thousands of reviews. If you want to make a a first person shooter, just make a mod. Like all the tools are there. You don't have to code. You don't have to if you're making a mod, most of the art is you just adapt from the engine is already made. Maybe you hire somebody to make a couple assets that are new, maybe a couple new monsters or something. But it's a great way to get your foot in the door and learn how to release on Steam, how how to, you know, make a game. You don't have to make the whole game. These mod tools are great. And I've got a blog post that I've been cooking on for for years that I've wanted to write, which is like, dude, just make mods. Same thing I was talking about with the multiplayer. If you really want to make a multiplayer game, just make a mod to a multiplayer game. Um, demo live. No. Crafty, no. It's a mod. I actually have a tag for this mod because I think more

people should do it. And it is sci-fi cuz it is Halflife. Okay, let's go. U Party Club was one I thought this one could be porn. And then I clicked it and I was like, "Oh, it's not porn." Um, four player. It's a local co-op party game type of thing. Kind of like couch couch co-op, you know, overcooked style game. Th this is also a genre that I don't really like. So many people try and make these and they rarely work. I don't know why one works and one doesn't. I just see so many devs. I just there's always one or two every year that succeed. So, it's good to I'm I'm happy for these. I call them couch. I think couch or local. Local local multiplayer. Um and it is I call it illustrated because it's cute. Um no, I I think I have a wholesome I think I have a wholesome. Yeah, I have a wholesome. It's got cute animals. It's wholesome. Uh, co-op, yes, that's the name of the game. No. Crafty, no. It's basically like a party game. I think a

lot of indies make this because you can do this in a game jam. And let me tell you, if you're in a local game jam, like in your city or something, people love these games. Like you I had a friend who's really good at game jams and he said he pulled me aside after I entered a game jam and he was like Chris if you want to win a game jam just make a local party game because people love at the end of the that's the funnest thing you've just been game jamming for a whole weekend or something and at the end you're like hey let's all gather around play this fun smashing game against each other and then people get so excited after the game jam they're like everybody loved our game let's let's publish this on Steam this is so good we'll make a million dollars off of this but it's a totally different environment when you're on Steam you're not with your friends hanging out after a game jam It's just like one dude alone in his basement buying video games. And so they just don't do as well. And you know what? I don't think they did well. See this? You know what they did? See how it says 44? They didn't even I'm kicking them off the list because what happened here is see how it's for paid. There's this trick that people have been trying where they make the game free. I'm pretty sure this is the case. They make the game free for like the first

couple weeks to get visibility for free and then they switch to paid. I bet this is going to be the case. See how they had all-time peak 40,000 people and then they're like, "Oh, we got all this possibility. Flip and all of a sudden it's paid and it goes nowhere. This is what happened. This is what it is." So look, um, VG insights, I've contacted them about this trick. This is the This is the VG Insight. See how it had So what happens is, see, when VG Insight scraped the data, they said, "Oh, you have 1,800 reviews." But Valve caught on to this. This is an important lesson. Valve caught on to this and now they say, "No, no, no, you have 44 paid reviews." And it blows away all the 100 previous 1,000 previous reviews. Watch. Watch the price. I'm I'm pretty sure this is what happened. Price. Let's go to price history. Where do I do it on VG? What am I doing? Steam DB. Where's price history? Right here. There it is. See, they did free. I knew it. I knew it. I'm telling you folks, I know how this works. Um, so the price zero. Keep it to free. They did it for how long? A day. They launched for

free. got a thousand reviews and then turned on the price and it didn't work. People think visibility is what matters. It doesn't. They got all the visibility in the world and 44 reviews is not a win. Okay? I I mean, good for them. Making any game is a miracle, but it doesn't work. And this is the thing is these party games just don't sell well, folks. And I got tricked for a second. I was like, "Wow, the party game actually sold." They don't sell well. They just don't. And so, I'm sorry if you're making a multiplayer local co-op game. They're fun and easy to make and every time you bring your friends, you're like, "Hey everybody, come over. We got some beers and some pizzas. Try play test your game. Everybody's going to love it." But most Steam players do not do that. They're just solitary people playing remotely with their friends. And this is the proof. They got tons of visibility. They had 2,000 people playing at launch. All they had 40,000 people playing at launch. That's unbelievable visibility. But then then the game went for paid and it went nowhere. And it went nowhere. They had tons of visibility. And that's the

thing, folks. It doesn't matter about visibility. Devs always ask, "How do I get visibility? How do I get visibility?" I was like, "No, it's not about visibility. It's about making the right game for the right store." And for Steam, it is not party games. I'm sorry. I know Overcooked did well. I know all these like played up some of a lot of these games did well, but those are rare cases. It's very hard to make it. I got to kick this game off the list. I'm going to kick it off the list. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Party Club. I love you. you're cute and you're adorable, but you did you did that thing that Valve doesn't like. And Valve does not like that. I mean, they don't they don't kill you, but they they they essentially smother you because they're like, "Well, we're going to get rid of all your reviews. You just went paid." So, those don't those previous reviews don't count. A Viji Insights doesn't know that. And I it's hard for them to track it. So, that's why you got to be careful. I got I got there were a couple other games that did that last year. Uh I don't recommend the strategy. It doesn't work. It just doesn't work. People think I outsmarted Steam. I got all the visibility. It's not about visibility, folks. It's about making the right game for the right price for the right audience. That's price, product, promotion, platform. All right, let's do

this one. Blood Strike. Um, Battle Royale multiplayer game that looks like it's still positive, so it's still holding on. Good for them. Free to play. That's still good. Still good. Free to play causes a lot of people do it. Not too much. Worst game I've ever played, literally. I doubt that, dude. I've played some really big games. Okay. Um, so yeah. Oh, before it was on Steam. Let's see what they said. Uh, love this game before it came out on Steam. It's massive. See, they brought their audience. It is so hard, folks. Um, so it came from mobile, I think. Yeah, it came it built its audience on mobile, came over to Steam. Um, and so it it came from Steam. It's free to play or it came from mobile. Um, see, look, 100 free phones. This is probably NIS. Yeah, they're not indie. I'm going to kick this off, though. This is not an indie game. Sometimes some of these these games. So good on Blood Strike. It's It's funny they don't have Blood Strike here. All caps. Blood Space

Strike. Come on, get your naming convention down. Um, but yeah, I'm going to kick this game off the list. It's not an indie game. It did well, but this game is has tons of money. They're giving away stuff. They get big on mobile. It is so hard to do a multiplayer game, folks. I hope I hope hope you understand this. This is why I do this stuff. Okay. Anism 4. Cool looking game. This is again this is this kind of low poly PlayStation one style graphics you can do. I'm trying to determine if it's horror or shooter. Dystopian simulator. I don't think it's a simulator. I I don't I know they said simulator, but I think it's more narrative. Join players. Protect the monopolist from ruin. Hasten it downfall. Simply work. It's multiplayer. says PvP. Is this PvP life sim game? Let's see what they're [Music]

um It's like a role playing game. Yeah. Weird. This is cool. It's not even a shooter. It's like role playing experience with immersive oppressive atmosphere. Yeah, I don't think it's a shooter. It's like a multiplayer simulator, like they said, like you role play. You like run a town. Light role playing. Um, I don't know if it's aneurysm IV or aneurysm 4. I don't know. [Music] Um, yeah. I'm just trying to find out like what do you do? Um, I'm going to call this crafty building. I'm going to call it a simulator just because it's it's like a multiplayer simulator. You grab stuff.

You can like fun stuff. I'm going to call it I'm going to call it a simulator. It's like a multiplayer simulator. because like so it is co-op demolive no crafty build yes um I'm going to go is it grim dark or is it low poly I'm going to go low poly and the reason I do that is because low poly a lot of people ask me can I still do the low poly style because it's a great way for um people to make a lot of art for cheaper is go low poly because you don't have to do as detailed as textures you don't have to do as much shading and bit map bump mapping and all that stuff so I like to track this to say like you can get away with a lower style thing. Yes, it is grim dark, but it's low poly grim dark. So, I could if you want to argue with me on it, you're right. You are completely 100% right. All right, I'm locking into the final few. Uh, this just was my reminder to unsubscribe from YouTube. Don't follow me. Don't follow my channel. I want you

to join the mailing list. That's what I care about. That's how you support me. That's how you do it. You get a free book because YouTube sucks. All right. Now, let's go through this. Um, let's do one. Uh, let's do wonder stop. Let's see what's this one. Um, Anna Perna. So, that means probably narrative. Um, I think it's a an uh from the st. Oh, yeah. Stanley Parable guy. Um, narrative cozy game about changing the the main thing I'm trying to figure out. Oh, it's farming sim life sim. Um, you like managing a little little farm. I thought it was like an adventure game, but yeah, you do a little farming on a hex grid. Crafty building. This is what Annaperna get into the crafty building games. Good on Annaperna because those narrative games, folks, it's hard. It's very hit or miss. And if you do a really detailed narrative game, I mean, I know it's narrative, there's this thing, but I think doing farming, I'm going to put it as farm. I actually have a farm tag, so we're going to put

farm here. Did I put that as puzzle? I must have missed that one. Um, oh yeah, I default this puzzle farm. Ah, okay. So, I added farming, but I swear I had farm. Sometimes I grab the tag that's wrong. I added farming to a lot of them. So, what I'm going to do is add farming. So, it's going to do I'm gonna add farm to this. I did add it in another spreadsheet, but What's the genre? Farm. I I still call it farm. And it says up apply to all. And it's just so that I can do this nice drop down because farming is Come on. All right. Um, it is. Is it wholesome? Yeah, I'm going to call it wholesome. They even call themselves cozy. Is it co-op? Let's see. Um, single player. No. No. Yes.

crafty build. Um, yeah, I think this is the way to go. Like if you want to do cute art style, folks, you want to just do a nice narrative and stuff and you want to do 3D farming crafty is the way to go. People don't want to just go on an adventure. It's so hard to do an adventure because you have to make so much art. And this game is beautiful. Like they did very good with the art. Um, to do an like an adventure game where you go out on a quest, it takes 10 times as much art. But if you do farming, you don't need as much art because you have to keep coming back to the farm. Keep coming back and you keep watering and you keep growing stuff and so you can get by with less art relatively. Um, oh, here's the berserker. Oh, cuz I spelling Berserker wrong. Never know how to spell that game. Okay, the first Berserker. Like you would think the first Berserker would named Berserk, but Berserker, I know it's like a a soldier class. Um, Kazan, but you would think they would name it after him. Like they we'd call them Kazans. um hardcore action role playing game. Uh the main thing is I'm

trying to find out if they use Souls like see they put Souls like up there up front. So I'm going to call Souls like um Soul Like and because I I find souls like is a very specific genre that focuses on combat and a lot of people try and make them um and art style. I'm going with um fantasy because look at that. You got zombies, you got dudes with swords, and their skulls. That's fantasy to see. Okay, now um co-op. I'm pretty sure it's a No, it's Nexon. This is where we're like I don't think this is an indie game. I think this is not an indie game. I don't know. It's Nexon. I don't know. This could be a nice cute small indie doing this, but it's also a big publisher. I'll keep you in. I'll keep you in. Um, okay. I'll just keep it in just so that you can be like I can be like, "Hey, I'm making a Souls like does souls like work?" And I'll be like,

"Well, if you're published by Nexon and you're like at a billion dollars." Um, single player. Okay. Nope. Nope. Nope. So, like is action you control the main character, so I don't consider it crafty. Um, I'm trying to find out. Oh, they do have the demo. They do have the demo live. See if they do it. Let's put it live. Demo live. Yes. Okay. Um, you know what I'm going to do is I'm going to do wrapping it up. I'm going to do the crafty buildies on these existent containings from this list. What? What? What? Some validation. It doesn't matter. Um, let's do let's do these. Identify crafty build. That's a no. No on that game because it's sports. What was this game? No, it's a horror

game. Okay. U Click Mage. Yes, it's that idol game. Um, what was this one? What was it? That's for use. City Punk. Um, it's a narrative interface. No. Heroes of Hammer Art. Yes. Adventure game Hyper Light Breaker. No narrative. No survival game. Yes. Narrative game. No. The root trees are dead. Um Evo. Let's see. Racing games are no on that. Um fantasy action rogike is yes because action rogue likes to consider crafty build because you're building a person. Oh. Um yep. It's one of those vampire survivor likes. Narrative is no. Racing game, no. Simulation, yes. Okay, so let's let's do a quick gut check. So, here's the deal. Is this going to be posted? I'm gonna do a blog post next week summing up the first quarter of 2024. Couple gut check things. I have to

rerun the numbers just to make sure, but there were not a huge number of increase over the previous year. It was a little bit more, but it was like last year at this time. I think I had 4,000. Let's see. What was it? I think I have it. I think I wrote it down. But there were a lot of games like there was a big jump between from 2023 to 2024. Huge jump increase. Let me um I'm just searching. I just started taking notes. I'm just doing a quick recap of um hang on. I'm just searching some stuff. Um I'm just doing a quick off the top of my head recap of what we can learn. The full blog post will be fullrained. This is halfrained. Notice how I say you cannot multitask. I am trying to run an entertaining stream where I'm entertaining you and do some math and look at my notes from last year and I'm I'm failing at all three. There is no such thing. It's a it's a common myth. Uh people will think that um that they can multitask, but you can't. You actually they've proven it.

Even though you're like I'm the youngest generation, you really can't. Okay, this is just some quick stats. I'm going to go deeper in the full blog once I compile it, but okay. Okay, so in 2024 there were 4,147 games released in the first 3 months, you know, at the end of March. This year there were 4,237. That's only an increase of less than 100. It's like or less. Yeah, less than 100. There weren't that many more games increased this year. It's like 90 games. They only grew by 90. The previous year it was like a jump of like 30% over the previous year. So that's that's where I have to do the math. But so there really wasn't that many new games that came out. I think things are slowing down, which now people are going to be like, "Oh, the industry is dying." Like before they're like complaining that we had too many games. Now we're like, um, oh, there's not Oh my gosh, not enough games are releasing. So, um, let me see if I can find them the graph.

This is what I'm going to look at. Let's see here. Um, let's see. I I'll pull this up. I'm pulling up my blog. So, what I'm going to do is I'm going to make this in a nice chart, but I'm just doing some some some gut check feeling. Um, sorry. See, I can't you can't talk and think and look up data. Let me see. This is a good enough chart, I think. Yeah. Okay. So, this is my blog post on Q3 of 2024. And so, that's this line and the line shot up here. Like each quarter, see each quarter I check in the line. See how there was a big jump? This the red line is 2023. The blue line is 2024. It was only an increase of 100, right? Quarter the number of games it released in quarter one was just about a hundred more than this. It doesn't even go up to this check mark. It was just a little bit. I'm pretty sure. I got to rerun the numbers to double check because anytime there's something shocking like this, but it's the the smallest increase year-over-year that I've seen quarter to quarter. I think that's what this is

halfass thought. Don't quote me on this. If you're writing an article, don't quote me on this. wait for the article that's coming out on how to market a game.com. You'll get a notification. Just join the mailing list. That's when you're gonna find out. But I have to stop, think, tone things out, and really do the numbers. But I'm thinking there's not as much of an increase in games released so far this year. It's not. People always say, "Oh, number of games released every year is increasing exponentially." No, exponentially means the percentage increase is increasing. And actually, the percent increase decreased. So, it's not exponential. It's poly poly rhythmic poly poly mathic. I know whatever. I gotta look it up. I can't talk and think about this stuff. The other things. Let's count up how many uh count if let's see I can do this. Well, let's just look up let's just look up um platformer. No platformers. I mean yes it is because people say like oh this narrative game is a platformer. But it's not. Remember, not a single platformer

reached 1,000 reviews so far this quarter. None. Okay. Um, let's look up citybuilders. We didn't find any of this here, did I? There was a citybuer tower defense, which is interesting. Um, those games are hard to make. Um, we also saw, but there aren't that many make. Uh, 4x also. Forex, I used to recommend them like, oh, Forex. That was because I was in my younger years and I would just say like if you just look at the median, but there's really not that you have to have a big big studio to make a good Forex game. Um, and it's very niche, but they do well, but it's very hard to make a good one. Um, so that's that's not I didn't see any of those. Um, the only puzzle game I saw not too many puzzle games. Um, let's see how many puzzle games we see. One, two, three, four. Four puzzle games. But there are also uh well one oh I didn't even mark this one. It's multiplayer. I got so mad at it because it's not even a it's not a real thing. Cataclysmo I think I've just got leftover stuff like this. Cataclysm is

not that's that's why I double check all my numbers live. Uh Cataclysmo was actually a um I've got the default thing. That's why I default to puzzle because I always search for puzzle. Um it was actually strategy or it could be base builder. I didn't actually do that because I was so enamored by um Hooded Horse. I'm going to call it strategy because it had base building plus some resource management. So, I'm calling it strategy and it was fantasy. Um let's see. The other puzzle game, Bongo Cat, that was idle. And this game is actually narrative even though I'm going to kick it out. It's one of those FMV games. And I'm going to make this FMV. Um, so yeah, I didn't actually I didn't actually identify any pure puzzle games. Um, so again, puzzle, whether it's puzzle, platformer, or platformer, didn't see any. Um, horror. How many horrors did I see? Let's see. How much horror? Uh,

62. Count if um, sorry folks, it's really hard to do this. Sorry folks, it's hard to spreadsheet and talk at the same time. Um, if what is it? We want to see how much horror. Five. Five horrors. Let's count how many idols. Five. Let's do this. Horror. Idol. I'm just doing I could do a I know I could do a pivot chart, but I don't want to. Not right now. This is I'm just halfassing this four idols. The These are the genres, folks. Um, let's check action rogike. These are vampire survivor likes. I'm just doing gut checks of what

I saw a lot of. I think I spelled that right. Two two action rogikes. They're still pretty good. Um, what the hell? Let's just do it. I I'm going to mess up this pivot chart. I know I will. Um, let's just do it. Let's just see what the top genres are. Let's just do it live. We're going to do it live. I'm probably going to mess it up. So, uh, insert pivot table. New sheet. Create it. Let's just see. Um, suggested. I always use suggestion. No suggestions. Oh, you know why? Delete. Delete. Yep. I told you I'd mess up. I always it always takes me like three tries to do pivot tables. Let's see. What do I have to do? I have to select two. I think I have to se Oh, I think I also have to tile this genre art style. You're going to see a little preview of my blog post. I'll go in the full thing. So, join the mail list to get the the full thing. Let's do this. And I think if I just cover this insert pivot table, I think then I can I always

go with the suggested because I always mess it up if I don't do what they suggest. Count of name. Count of name by name. Come on, you're drunk. Come on. Good. This is what I want I AF AI for just to be able to do this really fast. Kind of name for each name. Come on. Like they wanted to like do all the stupid AI stuff. Now I got to manually do it. Okay. I think if I do columns because I include a name. I'm just going to stop. I'm gonna I hate like this is where it's like come on. Okay. So I think if I do this, I think I'll do this and it should be able to do a pivot table that I want. I count of art style. Yeah, this is what I want. I want this and I want I can't do both. Count of genre for each genre. This is what I want. Narrative is big. Narrative is big. A lot of narrative games. Let's sort. Sometimes you can sort this, sometimes you can't. Typically what I got to do is go like this. And then I'll do a new table in

here. So let's just top of our head sort Z to A. Um so what we're talking narrative horror simulation adventure idol multiplayer shooter even though people like oh we should all make it multiplayer shooters. You got to know the context like three out of the four and one of them is not even a real is a AAA or triple A game. Rogike's big RPG racing pretty good. Um we got some farming in there. Again all these games are winners. So, if you made it in here, but no platformers, no um I'm a little surprised there weren't more simulation. But again, this is your best bets here. A narrative game. See, narrative is hard. I do think narrative games are good. The tricky part with narrative is you have to be a good writer. You really have to be good writer. You can't just do a narrative game. Uh horror and simulation are really good. Um so, that's it. Yeah, I I think if you're a first-time dev, idle games, I think a rogike, action rogike is still

doing pretty well. Um, tower defense, I'm I'm coming around to recommending tower defense more and more. Farming games are always good. Again, just because there's one doesn't mean bad. It just means like this is awesome. I am a little surprised. I normally say ruggike deck builders aren't actually oversaturated, but I am starting to see that this is a little low. But again, we'll see. This is just the beginning of the year. There's still four times as much time to come out. We still got four more quarters to go. Um, but this is just kind of what I'm seeing. Open world survival craft, which is a survival. Usually see a couple more of those. And again, January is the lightest year or the lightest month of first quarter. Usually see a lot more in the second and third quarter. The other thing to note before we go um is um that the um the games so what I did in my analysis I found that 75% of all games will reach 1,000 reviews. If you're going to reach 1,000 reviews of those games they did it within one quarter within three months

basically. Then I think it was like 20% thereabouts somewhere in the teens maybe 17 to 20% somewhere in that range did it within 6 months. Okay. And then after that it's like a fraction. If you don't hit a,000 reviews in six months you're basically not going to do it. Okay. And so next time we're going to go back I'll do this again on second quarter. We're going to go back and be like wow there's all these games that released in the first quarter and just barely did it. But it's only going to be probably like how many? There were 60 games here that met all my filters. There's probably going to be like another 20 games that we'll maybe find that released in the first quarter that are now in the third quarter that are now in this quarter. But most games, the way the Steam algorithm hits folks is, you know, immediately Valve looks, the Steam algorithm looks at games and if they see that hot, you know, oh man, there's so much activity here. Let's promote it up to the top. And then they show you to the top and you get to a thousand super fast. It's super fast. You don't grind it out. I see so many devs like, "Well, I'm grinding out for a thousand wish

lists." That's a sign. You don't grind out that people like, "Oh, it's so marketing is such a grind." It isn't. If the game is hot, if people are really into the game, it goes so fast. The game takes off. It has an effervescence. It just goes. And that's what I'm trying to teach you by looking at these numbers. And so it's these games, these narrative horror simulation-y strategy games, you know, tower defense, base building. These are the effervescent games that just as soon as you put them out, you're like, I don't know, it's just this crafty strategy horror game. They just take off. So, all right. Uh, that ends the stream. YouTube sucks. So, join my mailing list. Do this thing. I'll see you on Have a good weekend. Um, I hope you I hope you're listening to this in the weekend because you're not working. You're just focused 100% on me. Um, maybe get outside, turn off YouTube. This is your last video you're going to watch because you got to get back to work. Um, you just took a nice break because you had an hour of grinding with just putting earplugs in. A good thing I

like to do is put earplugs in, not listen to anything, not watch anything. Just grind on my work and then um, take a break and just grind on taking a break. Just hardcore take a break, which is what we did. Now it's time to get hardcore to work. You can't multitask, folks. It just doesn't. Read that Harvard Business review. I'm going to I'm going to link to it below. Um, you just can't multitask. It's impossible. Uh, this this stream sucked because I was multitasking. I was trying to be entertaining. I was trying to count games. I know I made mistakes. I'm just going to say, "Oh, yeah, you actually entered puzzle game into the wrong row." I know I did because you can't multitask, folks. You got to focus 100% on stuff. So, anyway, YouTube sucks. Uh, so join my mailing list. All right. Good luck. Have a good weekend. Bye.