Experimental games on Steam
Ask the research agent about this niche →The niche at a glance
Experimental on Steam: 1,678 released games, 253 in the last 12 months, 384 announced and still unreleased. Median lifetime reviews: 14. 43% of them never reached 10 reviews. Free to play: 14%. Experimental 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 included358 releasesReleases per year
outcomes count only games released more than 90 days ago, anything newer has not had time to gather reviewsExperimental × mechanics: what the pairings end up with
every mechanics tag shipped with Experimental at least 5 times · same window× setting× mechanics| Experimental × | 3 y | 12 m | median | ≥500 | adjusted | vs chance | last hit | who made it | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Management | 31 | 18 | 106 | 29.0% 16%–47% | 20.3% | ordinary ×0.83 | 137 d |    | |
| Idler | 41 | 22 | 88 | 26.8% 16%–42% | 20.2% | cliché ×1.64 | 137 d | | |
| Building | 18 | 9 | 126 | under 20 | 19.3% | ordinary ×1.07 | 137 d |   | |
| Economy | 18 | 12 | 126 | under 20 | 19.3% | ordinary ×0.83 | 137 d | | |
| Incremental | 53 | 25 | 63 | 20.8% 12%–33% | 16.9% | cliché ×1.58 | 137 d | | |
| Resource Management | 26 | 15 | 106 | 23.1% 11%–42% | 15.9% | ordinary ×0.84 | 137 d | | |
| Roguelite | 21 | 4 | 13 | 23.8% 11%–45% | 15.4% | ordinary ×0.60 | 209 d |  | |
| Hacking | 10 | 4 | 25 | under 20 | 14.4% | cliché ×3.65 | 546 d |   | |
| Collectathon | 12 | 4 | 82 | under 20 | 13.5% | ordinary ×1.05 | 620 d |    | |
| Procedural Generation | 27 | 6 | 8 | 18.5% 8%–37% | 13.5% | cliché ×1.64 | 189 d |   | |
| Automation | 13 | 7 | 39 | under 20 | 13.1% | ordinary ×1.22 | 137 d |   | |
| Sandbox | 29 | 13 | 14 | 17.2% 8%–35% | 12.9% | cliché ×1.54 | 620 d |  | |
| Mining | 6 | 2 | 126 | under 20 | 12.8% | ordinary ×1.00 | 137 d | | |
| Bullet Hell | 14 | 0 | 19 | under 20 | 12.7% | ordinary ×0.90 | 546 d |   | |
| Roguelike | 23 | 5 | 10 | 17.4% 7%–37% | 12.4% | ordinary ×0.52 | 209 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.
