Souls-like games on Steam
The niche at a glance
Souls-like on Steam: 2,388 released games, 713 in the last 12 months, 1,382 announced and still unreleased. Median lifetime reviews: 15. 42% of them never reached 10 reviews. Free to play: 10%. Souls-like 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 included1,099 releasesReleases per year
outcomes count only games released more than 90 days ago, anything newer has not had time to gather reviewsSouls-like × presentation: what the pairings end up with
every presentation tag shipped with Souls-like at least 5 times · same window× setting× presentation| Souls-like × | 3 y | 12 m | median | ≥500 | adjusted | vs chance | last hit | who made it | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gore | 80 | 23 | 101 | 31.3% 22%–42% | 26.3% | cliché ×2.18 | 151 d |    | |
| Anime | 143 | 40 | 58 | 28.0% 21%–36% | 25.4% | ordinary ×1.24 | 96 d |    | |
| Story Rich | 251 | 81 | 41 | 25.1% 20%–31% | 23.7% | cliché ×1.51 | 167 d |    | |
| Violent | 100 | 36 | 37 | 27.0% 19%–36% | 23.6% | cliché ×2.20 | 141 d |  | |
| Atmospheric | 291 | 96 | 38 | 24.7% 20%–30% | 23.6% | cliché ×1.69 | 127 d |  | |
| First-Person | 108 | 24 | 25 | 25.0% 18%–34% | 22.1% | ordinary ×0.54 | 248 d |    | |
| Difficult | 194 | 54 | 36 | 23.7% 18%–30% | 22.1% | cliché ×4.38 | 138 d |  | |
| Funny | 110 | 30 | 41 | 24.5% 17%–33% | 21.8% | ordinary ×0.74 | 113 d |    | |
| 2.5D | 51 | 15 | 23 | 27.5% 17%–41% | 21.6% | cliché ×1.60 | 141 d |    | |
| VR | 10 | 3 | 188 | under 20 | 21.1% | avoided ×0.35 | 96 d |    | |
| Gothic | 52 | 20 | 47 | 25.0% 15%–38% | 19.9% | cliché ×5.42 | 138 d |    | |
| Memes | 33 | 7 | 32 | 27.3% 15%–44% | 19.5% | cliché ×1.67 | 113 d |    | |
| Horror | 143 | 33 | 46 | 21.0% 15%–28% | 19.2% | ordinary ×1.22 | 138 d |   | |
| Isometric | 50 | 14 | 30 | 24.0% 14%–37% | 19.0% | cliché ×1.52 | 189 d | | |
| Dark | 175 | 48 | 24 | 19.4% 14%–26% | 18.1% | cliché ×2.12 | 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.
