Nonlinear games on Steam
The niche at a glance
Nonlinear on Steam: 3,329 released games, 1,243 in the last 12 months, 2,283 announced and still unreleased. Median lifetime reviews: 12. 46% of them never reached 10 reviews. Free to play: 10%. Nonlinear 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 included1,524 releasesReleases per year
outcomes count only games released more than 90 days ago, anything newer has not had time to gather reviewsNonlinear × presentation: what the pairings end up with
every presentation tag shipped with Nonlinear at least 5 times · same window× setting× presentation| Nonlinear × | 3 y | 12 m | median | ≥500 | adjusted | vs chance | last hit | who made it | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cozy | 41 | 23 | 55 | 22.0% 12%–37% | 16.9% | ordinary ×1.10 | 166 d |    | |
| Narrative | 30 | 17 | 22 | 23.3% 12%–41% | 16.7% | cliché ×2.08 | 96 d |    | |
| Isometric | 54 | 20 | 20 | 16.7% 9%–29% | 14.0% | ordinary ×1.40 | 124 d |   | |
| FMV | 12 | 4 | 50 | under 20 | 13.5% | cliché ×1.78 | 118 d |    | |
| Realistic | 190 | 57 | 18 | 13.2% 9%–19% | 12.5% | cliché ×1.50 | 118 d |    | |
| VR | 23 | 8 | 9 | 17.4% 7%–37% | 12.4% | ordinary ×0.52 | 446 d |  | |
| Lore-Rich | 116 | 40 | 20 | 12.9% 8%–20% | 12.0% | cliché ×2.77 | 196 d |   | |
| First-Person | 375 | 131 | 18 | 12.0% 9%–16% | 11.7% | cliché ×1.55 | 137 d |  | |
| Noir | 35 | 12 | 19 | 14.3% 6%–29% | 11.5% | cliché ×2.53 | 518 d |    | |
| Atmospheric | 467 | 169 | 19 | 11.6% 9%–15% | 11.4% | cliché ×1.70 | 91 d |  | |
| Cinematic | 64 | 24 | 13 | 12.5% 6%–23% | 11.1% | cliché ×1.54 | 118 d |  | |
| Story Rich | 408 | 141 | 24 | 10.8% 8%–14% | 10.6% | cliché ×1.80 | 91 d | | |
| Experimental | 12 | 2 | 10 | under 20 | 10.4% | cliché ×2.00 | 1047 d |   | |
| 2.5D | 64 | 17 | 8 | 10.9% 5%–21% | 9.9% | ordinary ×1.41 | 141 d |   | |
| Dark Comedy | 35 | 12 | 20 | 11.4% 5%–26% | 9.7% | cliché ×1.93 | 96 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.
