Experimental games on Steam
The niche at a glance
Experimental on Steam: 1,679 released games, 254 in the last 12 months, 386 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 × setting: what the pairings end up with
every setting 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 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cats | 6 | 3 | 134 | under 20 | 12.8% | ordinary ×0.73 | 245 d |   | |
| LGBTQ+ | 6 | 1 | 42 | under 20 | 12.8% | ordinary ×0.82 | 372 d |   | |
| Mining | 6 | 2 | 126 | under 20 | 12.8% | ordinary ×1.00 | 137 d |   | |
| Female Protagonist | 16 | 1 | 47 | under 20 | 12.0% | ordinary ×0.57 | 797 d |   | |
| Magic | 8 | 2 | 25 | under 20 | 11.9% | ordinary ×0.46 | 481 d |   | |
| Psychological Horror | 64 | 22 | 38 | 12.5% 6%–23% | 11.1% | cliché ×1.85 | 565 d |   | |
| Supernatural | 11 | 4 | 10 | under 20 | 10.8% | ordinary ×0.79 | 245 d |  | |
| Horror | 67 | 24 | 33 | 11.9% 6%–22% | 10.7% | ordinary ×1.37 | 372 d |  | |
| Post-apocalyptic | 12 | 3 | 35 | under 20 | 10.4% | ordinary ×0.87 | 887 d |  | |
| Mystery | 41 | 19 | 14 | 12.2% 5%–26% | 10.4% | ordinary ×1.35 | 372 d | | |
| Sci-fi | 34 | 11 | 14 | 11.8% 5%–27% | 9.9% | ordinary ×1.14 | 137 d | | |
| Aliens | 5 | 0 | 62 | under 20 | 9.3% | ordinary ×0.67 | 887 d | | |
| Dating Sim | 5 | 1 | 8 | under 20 | 9.3% | ordinary ×0.59 | 1084 d |  | |
| Detective | 5 | 3 | 11 | under 20 | 9.3% | ordinary ×0.83 | 372 d | | |
| Noir | 5 | 2 | 12 | under 20 | 9.3% | cliché ×2.21 | 957 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.
