What Type of Indie Games Actually Sell Best? (And Why)

Data source & methodology

• Downloaded a dataset scraped from Steam API, Steam Spy, and Metacritic covering ~990,000 Steam games (dataset is “a few months old,” not fully representative of the most recent year).
• Used Steam tags and filtered out non-gameplay tags (e.g., single-player, multiplayer, Steam achievements) to focus on gameplay genre tags.
• Noted that games can have multiple tags, so genre counts and success percentages can reflect overlap.

Popularity proxy / KPI

Because companies rarely share sales, the analysis used:

• Proxy success metric: the % of games with a given tag that received >500 total ratings.

Threshold definition:

• 500 reviews/ratings used as an arbitrary but meaningful line for “at least some attraction.”

What’s most popular / performs better (by “success rate”)

• Genres with many entries (supply): Strategy, Simulation, RPG, Platformer, Puzzle.
• Key finding: genres where a higher proportion of games reach the >500 ratings mark.

Stronger-performing / “worth considering” tags (relative success + fewer competitors)

• Farming simulator style was cited as a decent choice: higher success proportion and less supply than highly competitive genres.
• Building / crafting / simulation / survival craft cluster (“crafty buildy simulation strategy” / “unique situation generator” concept) implied better market fit.
• Horror, FPS, RPG described as “reasonably popular,” but may require more content.

Genres to avoid (low success rate / oversaturated)

• VR: described as “poorest” choice—many releases, low success rates, and high technical complexity.
• Platformers and puzzle platformers: suggested as oversaturated with lower demand vs supply.
• Other low-success areas also mentioned:
  • 3D Platformers
  • Puzzle
  • Top-down shooters
  • Arena shooters
• Takeaway: developer creation trends don’t match what sells—e.g., oversupply in popular genres like platformers/puzzle.

Why these market trends happen (framework: “meta-genres”)

Citing VG Insights / industry commentary (via Chris Zikovsky / HowToMarketGame.com), successful indie “meta categories” were grouped into three buckets:

1. Live service multiplayer (e.g., Counter-Strike, Dota, MMOs)

   • Indies struggle due to dominance by major “titan” publishers and multiplayer network effects (a multiplayer game can be “dead on arrival” without players).

2. Authored content walkthrough games (e.g., typical single-player action/RPG)

   • Indies struggle due to scope: AAA expectations like ~40 hours of high-quality handcrafted content.

3. Crafty builder / simulation / strategy (city builders, survival, roguelites, farming simulators)

   • Works because it uses:
     • Procedural generation
     • Deep systems
     • Addictive progression loops
   • This creates many “unique situations” while keeping scope realistic.
   • Framed as “infinite unique situation generators.”

Concrete examples mentioned (as evidence)

“Crafty buildy” examples

• Stardew Valley
• Subnautica
• Mana Lords

Also mentioned in the market trend discussion:

• Palworld (open-world survival crafting)
• Black Myth: Wukong (mentioned as driving overall reported indie growth, though positioned as “only Indie on a technicality”)

Outlier acknowledgement

• Celeste as a rare high-performing pixel platformer
  • Success attributed to experienced/technically competent teams.

Top-100 Steam snapshot (case-style validation)

• Pulled the Top 100 games on Steam via Steam Charts.
• Filtered for indie.
• Then manually assigned a single genre tag per game (method acknowledged as imperfect / subjective).

Results

• 26 indie games in the top 100.
• 8 open-world survival craft games (e.g., Terraria, Valheim)
• 2 simulation strategy games
• 2 deck builders, grouped with “builder” (with Satisfactory and Factorio lumped into this “builder” category)
• 1 farming simulator (stated as Stardew Valley)
• 3 roguelites total (16/26 combined as “crafty buildy / unique situation generator” style)
• Remaining examples:
  • Idle games: 3 (e.g., Idle/Idle-Banana mentioned as “banana”)
  • Truck simulator: 1
  • Crab game: 1 (noted as likely popular due to adaptation/inspiration from a TV series)

What’s missing (as market signals)

No indie:

• racing
• pixel platformers
• VR among the top 100 snapshot—stated as lower likelihood of attracting a large audience (top-100 visibility risk).

Business-level conclusion / playbook

Primary recommendation (strategic positioning)

Build a game where team skill overlaps with market demand:

• If you’re a solo programmer, consider a roguelite with procedural generation (matches both demand and execution capability).
• If your team excels at story/writing, a horror game can be a niche where players may accept shorter length than RPG-style games.

Product design principle (demand driver)

Steam players are especially attracted to:

• Repeatable content
• Deep gameplay systems
• Especially long-term progression systems

Examples of long-term progression called out:

• Subnautica: base building + gradual progression
• Counter-Strike: weapon skins + competitive ranks + skill progression
• RPGs: character progression as a core focus

This also helps explain why idle games resonate (often essentially “long-term progression systems”).

Genres to avoid (summary list)

• Avoid platformers in general, especially puzzle platformers.
• Avoid VR games.
• Avoid arena shooters / shooter subtypes, including:
  • VR shooters
  • arena shooters
  • top-down shooters
• Note: shooter/horror/RPGs are “popular,” but are presented as higher content requirements, making them harder for small teams.

Metrics / targets explicitly stated

• >500 ratings per genre as the proxy success threshold (no revenue targets given).
• No CAC/LTV/churn/revenue figures presented; discussion is qualitative and proxy-based.

Presenters / sources

• VG Insights (2024 report referenced)
• Chris Zikovsky, HowToMarketGame.com article referenced: “what are crafty buildy simulation strategy games”
• Jason Rora (quoted idea: “infinite unique situation generators”)
• Steam API / Steam Spy / Metacritic (dataset sources)
• Video presenter (not named in subtitles)