The niche at a glance
Mars on Steam: 343 released games, 74 in the last 12 months, 124 announced and still unreleased. Median lifetime reviews: 6. 56% of them never reached 10 reviews. Free to play: 10%. Mars 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 included114 releasesReleases per year
outcomes count only games released more than 90 days ago, anything newer has not had time to gather reviewsMars × mechanics: what the pairings end up with
every mechanics tag shipped with Mars at least 5 times · same window× mechanics× presentation| Mars × | 3 y | 12 m | median | ≥500 | adjusted | vs chance | last hit | who made it | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Resource Management | 13 | 6 | 485 | under 20 | 22.2% | cliché ×2.88 | 218 d |    | |
| Base Building | 20 | 8 | 80 | 35.0% 18%–57% | 20.8% | cliché ×5.16 | 218 d | | |
| Building | 22 | 5 | 19 | 31.8% 16%–53% | 19.8% | cliché ×3.90 | 218 d |  | |
| Sandbox | 18 | 5 | 19 | under 20 | 19.3% | cliché ×2.58 | 218 d | | |
| Automation | 6 | 2 | 21 | under 20 | 16.7% | cliché ×2.79 | 218 d |   | |
| Open World | 13 | 8 | 14 | under 20 | 16.2% | cliché ×1.89 | 218 d | | |
| Crafting | 8 | 5 | 14 | under 20 | 15.5% | cliché ×1.81 | 218 d | | |
| Economy | 8 | 3 | 19 | under 20 | 15.5% | cliché ×2.03 | 267 d |  | |
| Procedural Generation | 8 | 2 | 6 | under 20 | 15.5% | ordinary ×1.41 | 383 d | | |
| Management | 15 | 4 | 73 | under 20 | 15.2% | cliché ×2.28 | 267 d | | |
| Colony Sim | 16 | 6 | 19 | under 20 | 14.8% | cliché ×13.92 | 267 d | | |
| Simulation | 30 | 11 | 12 | 20.0% 10%–37% | 14.7% | cliché ×1.71 | 256 d | | |
| City Builder | 10 | 3 | 19 | under 20 | 14.4% | cliché ×4.82 | 267 d | | |
| Space Sim | 25 | 10 | 6 | 20.0% 9%–39% | 14.1% | cliché ×23.95 | 218 d | | |
| Strategy | 26 | 7 | 17 | 15.4% 6%–34% | 11.6% | ordinary ×1.39 | 267 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.
