Genres

Ticker: price and year-over-year change for 40 genres. Price is the median estimated first-year revenue of indie paid launches. The change shows for genres with 100+ launches. The same figures are on the Genres page.

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Game Market DataBuild what sells
Live games
192,217
on 3 Oct 2026

Idea check

Pick up to three tags and a price. Get a plain answer: your odds of a $100k first year, what launches like yours earned, what you are up against, and what to watch for.

1Your idea

2The readout

Your odds

11 in 100 Hack and Slash launches at any price earned $100k+ in their first year. That is better than the 1 in 17 for all indie launches: about 1.8 times the rate.

Chance of $100k+

11 in 100

Notch: 1 in 17 for all indie launches.

Typical first year

$766

Under 1% of the way to $100k. Half earned less. Notch: $540, all indie launches.

Competition

219 launches

At any price, in two years (about 110 a year). Busier than 40 in 100 single tags; the notch is the middle one.

Coming soon

2,263 games

Coming-soon games with this tag. More than 87 in 100 single tags. Highest on wishlists: Tides of Annihilation (#21), State of Decay 3 (#26).

What launches like this earned in their first year

Only the typical figure is measured for this lens.

Typical launchHalf earned less$766Under 1% of the way to $100k.
Top quarter1 in 4 earned at leastNot computed yet: Last 18 months figures carry the typical launch only.
Top tenth1 in 10 earned at leastNot computed yet: Last 18 months figures carry the typical launch only.

Hack and Slash at any price past the $100k line (squeezed to fit, not to scale) all indie launches

Warning lamps

1 of 5 lit
  • One-hit marketOff

    Clear.

  • Audience splitLit

    In the West-facing view (games mostly reviewed outside China), the chance moves from 1 in 10 to 1 in 11, more than a random cut of that size would.

  • Small sampleOff

    Clear.

  • May be luckOff

    Clear.

  • Changed recentlyOff

    Clear.

Lens checkAudience split. Standard: the base the others are compared with. West-facing view: moves the answer. Without the breakout: holds. Last 18 months: holds.

Standard, West-facing view, Without the breakout, Last 18 months. Lenses use all prices.

Earnings are estimated from store reviews, so the $100k line is soft: across the estimate's range, the share of all indie launches above it runs from about 5 to 8 in 100. Sales on Steam before Steam's cut; about 58% of it reaches the developer.

Indie paid launches 12 to 36 months old, measured 3 Oct 2026. Coming-soon counts from the store, 3 Oct 2026.

3What next

Monthly read

Free

A monthly read on Hack and Slash

Once a month we re-measure your odds at any price and tell you in plain words what changed.

  • Your odds, re-measured on the latest launches
  • How last month's launches with these tags did
  • Who is about to launch, highest on wishlists first
If the read went out today 3 Oct 2026
  1. Your odds11 in 100 earned $100k+ at any price, against 1 in 17 for all indie launches.
  2. EarningsTypical first year $766.
  3. Launches684 games of every kind with these tags in the last 12 months (528 the year before).
  4. Coming soon2,263 games; highest on wishlists Tides of Annihilation (#21).

One email a month. No spam, leave with one click.

Comparables

Lifetime

Top earners with these tags, est. lifetime salesFree until launch

Path of Exile 2launched 2024, 168,239 reviews$101.6M
1Path of Exile 2$101.6M2024
2Hades II$65.8M2024
3No Rest for the Wicked$46.8M2024
4Shape of Dreams$7.3M2025
5Dead as Disco$6.3M2026
Open free preview
ComparablesFree until launchClick to unlockLifetime top earners like yours

4Data notes

Odds and earnings
Figures of 3 Oct 2026: 26,280 indie paid launches 12 to 36 months old (majors, $40+, adult and free games out). A hit is an estimated first-year revenue of $100k or more. Earnings are sales on Steam after discounts and regional prices, before Steam's 30% cut, refunds and sales tax. About 58% of it reaches the developer. "Typical" is the median; "top quarter" is the 75th percentile and "top tenth" the 90th.
Tags and combinations
319 tags (genres and descriptors such as 2D and Casual), 4,634 tag pairs and 8,246 three-tag combinations. Pairs and triples are only in the data with 40 or more launches, so a missing one has fewer than 40; the exact count is not stored.
Price band rates
under $5: 1 in 219 (13,780 launches); $5 to $10: 1 in 30 (6,975 launches); $10 to $20: 18 in 100 (4,301 launches); $20 to $40: 40 in 100 (1,224 launches). All prices: 1 in 17. With "Any price", the comparison is all indie launches.
Gauges
Competition places the pick among combinations of the same size (single tags, pairs or triples) at the same price; coming soon places single tags and pairs among all genres and niches. The notch is the middle one. Earnings notches show every game at the price.
Lamps
One-hit market: one game holds over half the money. Audience split: the West-facing view (games mostly reviewed outside China) moves the chance more than a random cut of the same size would, with 5+ hits on both sides, or moves typical earnings over 25% with 100+ launches in the view. Review language is measured for games with 2,000+ reviews; for smaller games it is guessed from the name. Small sample: under 30 launches or 5 hits. May be luck: the gap to the base rate is small enough that chance alone could give it 95 times in 100. Changed recently: the same test as Audience split, on launches from the last 18 months. With fewer than 5 hits a lamp says too few to tell and stays grey.
Lens check
Computed on all-price figures (by-price lens figures are not computed yet). Standard is the base and is not counted. Three-tag combinations carry no lenses yet, so their pips stay grey.
Competition
Launches in the two-year sample. Coming-soon counts for tags and pairs come from the nightly niche rollup (3 Oct 2026); for three tags, from the coming-soon list, which stores only each game's top five tags, so the count is a floor. Named games are the highest on wishlists; adult-tagged games are left out.
Comparables
The top indie earners stored for these tags, with est. lifetime sales (not first year, and before Steam's cut). Three-tag combinations have none stored, so the card shows the most specific readable pair inside and says so. Matching by price and launch year is not computed yet.
Soft estimate
Revenue is reviews times a multiplier times price. Checked against 453 published sales figures: right for the typical game (31 to 35 real copies per review since 2020; we use 30), rough for any single game. Across the multiplier's range the overall base rate runs 4.8% to 8.4%, so every readout carries that note.
Releases

Ticker: 30 upcoming games dated within 90 days, with wishlist rank, release date and followers. The same list is on the Upcoming page.