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

3 of 44 Arcade + Simulation launches at $10 to $20 earned $100k+ in their first year.

Chance of $100k+

3 of 44

3 of 44 launches: too few for a steady rate. Notch: 18 in 100 for all indie launches at $10 to $20.

Typical first year

$1,954

2% of the way to $100k. Half earned less. Notch: $8,234, every game at $10 to $20.

Competition

44 launches

At $10 to $20, in two years (about 22 a year). Busier than 85 in 100 tag pairs; the notch is the middle one.

Coming soon

699 games

Coming-soon games with these tags. More than 96 in 100 tag pairs. Highest on wishlists: Road Diner Simulator (#440), High Roller Penny (#1,340).

What launches like this earned in their first year

Even the top tenth falls short of $100k.

Typical launchHalf earned less$1,9542% of the way to $100k.

Top quarter1 in 4 earned at least$9,96010% of the way to $100k.

Top tenth1 in 10 earned at least$26,99827% of the way to $100k.

Arcade + Simulation at $10 to $20 past the $100k line (squeezed to fit, not to scale) every game at $10 to $20

Warning lamps

3 of 5 lit

One-hit marketLit
REMATCH earned 87% of all the money. Read the typical figure, not the hits.
Audience splitOff
Clear.
Small sampleLit
Only 3 hits in 44 launches at $10 to $20. A few games either way would move this a lot.
May be luckLit
Reads worse than the 18 in 100 for all indie launches at $10 to $20, but with 44 launches a gap this size often comes from chance alone.
Changed recentlyOff
Clear.

Lens checkOne-hit market. Standard: the base the others are compared with. West-facing view: holds. Without the breakout: moves the answer. 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 Arcade + Simulation

Once a month we re-measure your odds at $10 to $20 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

Your odds3 of 44 earned $100k+ at $10 to $20, against 18 in 100 for all indie launches at $10 to $20.
EarningsTypical first year $1,954; 1 in 10 earned $26,998 or more.
Launches426 games of every kind with these tags in the last 12 months (266 the year before).
Coming soon699 games; highest on wishlists Road Diner Simulator (#440).

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

Comparables

Lifetime

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

REMATCHlaunched 2025, 41,292 reviews$24.9M

1REMATCH$24.9M2025

2Scritchy Scratchy$2.2M2026

3NASCAR 25$1.4M2025

4Shelldiver$1.4M2025

5Nodebuster$840k2024

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.