Steam Niche Index
23 Steam niches, counted game by game from the store on Sep 27, 2026: how fast each one is filling, how its games did, and how many pages are still waiting to launch. Pick your niche before you spend two years on it.
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Filling fastest
2026 releases so far vs the same weeks of 2025.
- Shop Keeper +634%
- Bullet Heaven* +406%
- Automation +170%
- Idler +150%
- Cozy +143%
Best odds
Share of the cohort that reached 1,000 reviews.
- Open World Survival Craft 28.3% (6.7× Steam)
- Colony Sim 13.7% (3.3× Steam)
- Bullet Heaven 13.1% (3.1× Steam)
- Cozy 11% (2.6× Steam)
- City Builder 10.5% (2.5× Steam)
Better odds, calmer growth
1.5× the Steam hit rate or more, growing slower than the median niche.
- Open World Survival Craft 6.7× Steam, +39%
- City Builder 2.5× Steam, +27%
- Souls-like 2.1× Steam, +18%
- Farming Sim 1.9× Steam, +37%
- Boomer Shooter 1.8× Steam, +28%
Every niche
Hit rate: share of games released Jan 1, 2024 to Jun 30, 2025 that reached 1,000 reviews (all of Steam: 4.2%). Unreleased: pages live on Steam that have not launched.
| Niche | 2025 releases | 2026 so far | Hit rate | Median reviews | Unreleased |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cozy & life sims | |||||
| Cozy | 632 | 1,041+143% | 11%2.6× | 50 | 2,730 |
| Farming Sim | 362 | 361+37% | 8%1.9× | 29 | 1,198 |
| Life Sim | 922 | 1,043+53% | 8.6%2.0× | 36 | 3,074 |
| Shop Keeper | 134 | 477+634% | 13.2%3.1× | 104 | 1,094 |
| Cooking | 333 | 365+64% | 7.9%1.9× | 22 | 1,261 |
| Creature Collector | 552 | 516+34% | 5.9%1.4× | 27 | 1,418 |
| Roguelikes | |||||
| Roguelike Deckbuilder | 224 | 316+93% | 7.8%1.9× | 52 | 905 |
| Action Roguelike | 1,384 | 1,505+57% | 3.5%0.8× | 11 | 4,856 |
| Bullet Heaven* | 103 | 329+406% | 13.1%3.1× | 75 | 753 |
| Action | |||||
| Metroidvania | 291 | 223+9% | 6.2%1.5× | 22 | 1,565 |
| Souls-like | 370 | 311+18% | 8.9%2.1× | 16 | 1,341 |
| Precision Platformer | 702 | 589+17% | 1.4%0.3× | under 10 | 1,428 |
| Boomer Shooter | 232 | 204+28% | 7.4%1.8× | 15 | 548 |
| Horror & survival | |||||
| Psychological Horror | 2,099 | 1,799+28% | 5.8%1.4× | 24 | 5,589 |
| Survival Horror | 1,106 | 861+17% | 5.1%1.2× | 14 | 3,255 |
| Open World Survival Craft | 90 | 90+39% | 28.3%6.7× | 149 | 468 |
| Strategy & management | |||||
| City Builder | 436 | 415+27% | 10.5%2.5× | 25 | 1,529 |
| Colony Sim | 221 | 251+53% | 13.7%3.3× | 45 | 1,079 |
| Automation | 450 | 822+170% | 8.4%2.0× | 27 | 1,858 |
| Tower Defense | 548 | 652+62% | 3.5%0.8× | under 10 | 1,819 |
| Idler | 940 | 1,566+150% | 5.6%1.3× | 22 | 2,625 |
| Tactical RPG | 423 | 393+21% | 5.4%1.3× | 15 | 1,566 |
| Story | |||||
| Visual Novel | 1,458 | 1,416+38% | 4%1.0× | 24 | 3,679 |
* Tag added by Steam in May 2026: part of its growth is developers adopting the label.
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Missing your niche?
The index covers 23 tags. Tell us which one you're making and it goes on the list for the next edition.
Suggest a niche →How the index is counted
- One Steam community tag per niche, looked up by tag id and read page by page from Steam's public store search (games only, US storefront, default content filters) on Sep 27, 2026. All of Steam is the same search with no tag: 54,392 games released since Jan 1, 2024.
- Hit rates use one fixed cohort, games released Jan 1, 2024 to Jun 30, 2025, so every game has had at least 14 months to collect reviews. Comparing this year's releases with last year's on reviews would measure age, not success.
- Review counts are what Steam's search shows a US visitor (possibly English-language reviews only). Delisted and age-restricted games are missing. Community tags follow popularity, which flatters narrow tags. Niches overlap: one game can count in several.
- The aggregate is public at /api/niches/data. Cite as "Steam Niche Index, Steam Page Analyzer, September 2026".