Visual Novel games on Steam
The niche at a glance
Visual Novel on Steam: 13,236 released games, 2,983 in the last 12 months, 4,830 announced and still unreleased. Of the 6,305 released between three years and 90 days ago, the median has 19 lifetime reviews. 37% of them never reached 10 reviews. Free to play: 11%. Visual Novel 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 included6,305 releasesReleases per year
outcomes count only games released more than 90 days ago, anything newer has not had time to gather reviewsVisual Novel × presentation: what the pairings end up with
every presentation tag shipped with Visual Novel at least 5 times · same window× setting× presentation| Visual Novel × | 3 y | 12 m | median | ≥500 | adjusted | vs chance | last hit | who made it | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FMV | 276 | 110 | 147 | 26.4% 22%–32% | 25.1% | cliché ×4.56 | 95 d |    | |
| Memes | 96 | 24 | 30 | 18.8% 12%–28% | 16.7% | cliché ×1.60 | 182 d |    | |
| Music | 38 | 14 | 51 | 21.1% 11%–36% | 16.1% | ordinary ×0.70 | 174 d |    | |
| Isometric | 60 | 25 | 17 | 15.0% 8%–26% | 12.9% | avoided ×0.33 | 126 d |    | |
| Cinematic | 597 | 199 | 18 | 12.9% 10%–16% | 12.7% | cliché ×2.20 | 95 d |  | |
| Cozy | 74 | 38 | 27 | 13.5% 8%–23% | 12.0% | ordinary ×0.52 | 160 d |    | |
| Wholesome | 42 | 14 | 51 | 14.3% 7%–28% | 11.8% | ordinary ×0.66 | 346 d |   | |
| Third Person | 208 | 62 | 18 | 12.0% 8%–17% | 11.5% | avoided ×0.31 | 105 d |  | |
| Narrative | 158 | 78 | 20 | 12.0% 8%–18% | 11.4% | cliché ×2.94 | 111 d |  | |
| Psychedelic | 161 | 52 | 33 | 11.8% 8%–18% | 11.2% | ordinary ×1.22 | 154 d |   | |
| Retro | 196 | 84 | 24 | 11.2% 8%–16% | 10.8% | ordinary ×0.36 | 106 d |   | |
| First-Person | 734 | 248 | 22 | 10.9% 9%–13% | 10.8% | ordinary ×0.58 | 95 d |    | |
| Gothic | 95 | 24 | 20 | 11.6% 7%–20% | 10.7% | cliché ×1.54 | 154 d |    | |
| Lore-Rich | 516 | 203 | 23 | 9.7% 7%–13% | 9.6% | cliché ×2.42 | 97 d |  | |
| Emotional | 1506 | 535 | 30 | 9.6% 8%–11% | 9.5% | cliché ×4.30 | 105 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.
