Is your game about to repeat a mistake players already punished?
Pick your genre and answer what you have actually seen in playtests. You get the critical risks, the areas you have not tested yet, and the flawed hit your game resembles, each backed by counts and quotes from real Steam reviews.
Pick your genre
Souls-like
24 questions, about five minutes. 19 of them are release blockers.
Start the check →
Action RPG (indie)
28 questions, about five minutes. 22 of them are release blockers.
Start the check →
Psychological horror (indie)
24 questions, about five minutes. 20 of them are release blockers.
Start the check →
Not sure what you get? See an example result (souls-like)
My genre is not here
Each genre needs its own pass over thousands of reviews, so we add them one at a time. Requests decide which one is next.
What this check is
Each checklist was derived from Steam reviews, not from opinion: structured extraction of recent reviews of the genre, plus post-mortems of flawed hits, the games that sold and still ended up with a mixed score. Every item carries the evidence behind it, and every genre page states its sample next to its numbers. The flawed hits have a page of their own: the games that sold and still disappointed.
The questions ask what you observed, never what you think of your own game. If you have not tested something, say so: that answer becomes your list of things to test before launch, and it is the most useful output of the tool.
It is not a forecast. The checklists say themselves that their thresholds have not been calibrated against real scores, so nothing here predicts reviews or sales. It tells you whether you are about to repeat a documented mistake. Every game in the data found an audience, so a clean result does not get a game noticed either. That part is your store page.
Genre Readiness Check questions
What does the Genre Readiness Check tell me?
Whether your game is about to repeat a mistake that players of your genre have already punished in Steam reviews. You answer questions about what you have observed in playtests, and the result lists the critical risks, the critical areas you have not tested yet, and any documented flawed-hit pattern your answers resemble. It does not tell you whether the game is good or how it will sell.
Where do the checklists come from?
From Steam reviews. Across the 3 genres covered so far (Souls-like, Action RPG (indie) and Psychological horror (indie)), the checklists draw on structured extraction of 26,383 reviews of 89 recently released games, plus post-mortems of 30 flawed hits: games that sold but sit at a mixed review score. Each genre page states its own sample next to its numbers.
Why does it ask what I observed instead of what I think?
Developers rate their own game generously, and a question like "are your controls good?" gets a yes from almost everyone. So every question asks about something a playtest can show: whether a player outside the team said a dodge did not register, how many of your last sessions hit a crash. "Not tested yet" is a first-class answer, and it becomes your list of things to test before launch.
Is the score a prediction of my reviews?
No. The points total is shown as checklist coverage and nothing more. The source checklists state that their thresholds have not been calibrated against real scores, so this tool does not turn them into a forecast. The one rule it carries over needs no calibration: a Critical item that fails means the game is not ready, whatever the total.
Does a clean result mean my game will succeed?
No. Every game in the data found an audience, including the flawed hits, so the checklists describe what players punish in games they actually bought. A clean result means you are not repeating a documented mistake. It does not get a game noticed.
My genre is not listed. Can you add it?
Use the request form on this page. Each genre takes a fresh pass over its reviews, so requests decide which one is analysed next.
Are the review quotes real?
Yes. Every quote was checked word for word against the review text before it was used, and quotes are never paraphrased inside quotation marks. They are anonymous: the tool names games, never reviewers.
A game that avoids every mistake on the list still has to be found. Check the page that has to sell it.