Difficult games on Steam
The niche at a glance
Difficult on Steam: 8,495 released games, 1,167 in the last 12 months, 2,461 announced and still unreleased. Of the 2,446 released between three years and 90 days ago, the median has 13 lifetime reviews. 43% of them never reached 10 reviews. Free to play: 7%. Difficult is a Steam store tag, applied by the developer and refined by players; a game carries several tags at once, so niche counts overlap and do not add up to the size of the Steam catalogue. Data as of .
What releases end up with
lifetime reviews · released 3 years ago to 90 days ago · failures included2,446 releasesReleases per year
outcomes count only games released more than 90 days ago, anything newer has not had time to gather reviewsDifficult × mechanics: what the pairings end up with
every mechanics tag shipped with Difficult at least 5 times · same window× setting× mechanics| Difficult × | 3 y | 12 m | median | ≥500 | adjusted | vs chance | last hit | who made it | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Colony Sim | 16 | 3 | 322 | under 20 | 25.9% | ordinary ×0.44 | 202 d |    | |
| Base Building | 56 | 17 | 137 | 28.6% 18%–41% | 22.8% | ordinary ×0.49 | 140 d |  | |
| Martial Arts | 21 | 3 | 17 | 38.1% 21%–59% | 22.7% | ordinary ×1.04 | 230 d |    | |
| Open World | 103 | 36 | 46 | 25.2% 18%–34% | 22.2% | ordinary ×0.77 | 140 d |    | |
| City Builder | 22 | 6 | 174 | 36.4% 20%–57% | 22.2% | ordinary ×0.38 | 202 d |  | |
| Metroidvania | 95 | 26 | 70 | 25.3% 18%–35% | 22.0% | cliché ×2.87 | 156 d |  | |
| Character Action Game | 19 | 5 | 149 | under 20 | 21.3% | cliché ×2.75 | 370 d |    | |
| Souls-like | 203 | 64 | 36 | 22.7% 17%–29% | 21.2% | cliché ×4.08 | 98 d |  | |
| Action RPG | 139 | 38 | 44 | 23.0% 17%–31% | 21.0% | ordinary ×0.98 | 98 d |  | |
| Dating Sim | 6 | 2 | 1,459 | under 20 | 20.5% | avoided ×0.08 | 181 d |    | |
| Extraction Shooter | 6 | 2 | 10,698 | under 20 | 20.5% | ordinary ×1.36 | 183 d |   | |
| Building | 94 | 26 | 45 | 23.4% 16%–33% | 20.5% | ordinary ×0.54 | 202 d |   | |
| Roguelike Deckbuilder | 142 | 63 | 51 | 21.8% 16%–29% | 20.0% | cliché ×3.60 | 93 d |    | |
| Sandbox | 79 | 34 | 46 | 22.8% 15%–33% | 19.5% | ordinary ×0.60 | 168 d |  | |
| Economy | 28 | 12 | 29 | 28.6% 15%–47% | 19.4% | avoided ×0.33 | 202 d |  |
About these numbers
“Adjusted” is the share pulled towards the catalogue with the weight of twenty releases: the top of any ranked list is optimistic (out of a hundred pairings one will show 35 % on 23 releases by luck alone), and the adjustment is what stops a small lucky group from leading. The band next to the raw share is the 95 % interval. This list is the same for everyone today; the second opinion is the description-based one on Pitch comps.
