Short games on Steam
The niche at a glance
Short on Steam: 3,255 released games, 782 in the last 12 months, 614 announced and still unreleased. Median lifetime reviews: 14. 44% of them never reached 10 reviews. Free to play: 17%. Short 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 included1,026 releasesReleases per year
outcomes count only games released more than 90 days ago, anything newer has not had time to gather reviewsShort × mechanics: what the pairings end up with
every mechanics tag shipped with Short at least 5 times · same window× setting× mechanics| Short × | 3 y | 12 m | median | ≥500 | adjusted | vs chance | last hit | who made it | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Economy | 22 | 13 | 106 | 27.3% 13%–48% | 17.5% | ordinary ×0.64 | 209 d |    | |
| Idler | 59 | 36 | 87 | 20.3% 12%–32% | 16.9% | ordinary ×1.42 | 103 d |  | |
| Cleaning | 6 | 3 | 492 | under 20 | 16.7% | cliché ×2.64 | 348 d |    | |
| Cooking | 9 | 2 | 147 | under 20 | 14.9% | ordinary ×0.52 | 610 d |  ![[Bober Bros] The Hole](https://shared.akamai.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/3037930/9cbf747eb97b9e3d77f96a3548813ba2d14fe325/capsule_231x87.jpg){kind=small}  | |
| Investigation | 51 | 19 | 41 | 17.6% 10%–30% | 14.6% | ordinary ×1.38 | 341 d |    | |
| Job Simulator | 12 | 4 | 6 | under 20 | 13.5% | ordinary ×1.42 | 348 d |   | |
| Incremental | 83 | 47 | 40 | 14.5% 8%–24% | 12.9% | cliché ×1.68 | 103 d | | |
| Management | 49 | 25 | 59 | 14.3% 7%–27% | 12.1% | ordinary ×0.62 | 209 d | | |
| Mining | 9 | 7 | 26 | under 20 | 11.5% | ordinary ×1.07 | 173 d |  | |
| Gambling | 10 | 10 | 11 | under 20 | 11.1% | ordinary ×1.12 | 209 d | | |
| Puzzle Platformer | 48 | 12 | 25 | 12.5% 6%–25% | 10.8% | cliché ×1.79 | 369 d |    | |
| Automation | 11 | 7 | 18 | under 20 | 10.8% | ordinary ×0.69 | 320 d |  | |
| Typing | 11 | 6 | 11 | under 20 | 10.8% | cliché ×1.64 | 446 d |  | |
| Resource Management | 49 | 30 | 41 | 12.2% 6%–24% | 10.6% | ordinary ×0.80 | 103 d | | |
| Tower Defense | 13 | 7 | 29 | under 20 | 10.1% | ordinary ×0.53 | 197 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.
