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 × setting: what the pairings end up with
every setting 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 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 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}  | |
| Cats | 34 | 8 | 21 | 17.6% 8%–34% | 13.6% | cliché ×1.58 | 173 d |    | |
| Job Simulator | 12 | 4 | 6 | under 20 | 13.5% | ordinary ×1.42 | 348 d |  | |
| Birds | 5 | 0 | 50 | under 20 | 13.3% | cliché ×3.56 | 509 d |   | |
| LGBTQ+ | 28 | 9 | 29 | 17.9% 8%–36% | 13.2% | ordinary ×1.27 | 434 d |    | |
| Noir | 21 | 12 | 13 | 19.0% 8%–40% | 13.0% | cliché ×1.56 | 509 d |  | |
| Detective | 24 | 11 | 24 | 16.7% 7%–36% | 12.1% | ordinary ×1.16 | 509 d |  | |
| Military | 8 | 3 | 61 | under 20 | 11.9% | avoided ×0.23 | 297 d |   | |
| Mining | 9 | 7 | 26 | under 20 | 11.5% | ordinary ×1.07 | 173 d |  | |
| Snow | 11 | 4 | 26 | under 20 | 10.8% | cliché ×1.94 | 459 d |   | |
| Romance | 31 | 13 | 60 | 12.9% 5%–29% | 10.5% | ordinary ×0.88 | 124 d |   | |
| Gothic | 12 | 3 | 43 | under 20 | 10.4% | ordinary ×0.92 | 424 d |  | |
| Post-apocalyptic | 22 | 6 | 35 | 13.6% 5%–33% | 10.3% | ordinary ×0.56 | 297 d |  | |
| Trains | 5 | 2 | 132 | under 20 | 9.3% | ordinary ×0.76 | 813 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.
