The best indie games are amazing these days, but they hide a long tail of disappointed developers.
To potential game developers: Do not despair based on reports of a difficult market, despair based upon games you have personally looked at that failed.
Personally, for almost every failed game I can see a good reason why it failed. Sometimes games succeed and I don't understand why, but so far I haven't seen a game that failed and I don't understand why.
If what I'm saying is true, then to succeed you simply need to build a game that does none of the things that lead to failure.
I don't think success/failure should be framed in any other way than "did the game break even for the dev/publisher" and that's beyond what any player perceives. Because crossing that line will send devs into despair, as you mentioned, it's just not sane.
The claim is: Make a solid game - a solid story, solid mechanics, solid graphics, no bugs, etc., and the game will succeed.
And that's an easy claim to refute -- point out just one game that was at least "solid" on all those fronts which nonetheless failed. He's asking you to show him one, so that he can update his beliefs.
"They didn't spend $500k promoting it" doesn't seem like a "good reason why it failed".
For one other example I know of because friends made it is Phantom Spark: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1924180/Phantom_Spark/
Making a good game is table stakes for success not a guarantee.
I should clarify that by "success" I mean the game had a good amount of attention and enough sales to potentially make a profit. This is what I care about as a potential game developer. Does the market still give decent games a decent shot at being profitable? Regions of Ruin is a decent game and had a decent shot at being profitable.
I looked at Phantom Spark. It's a simple F-Zero style racer through nice looking 3D stages. It's fairly minimal, only one type of racing vehicle with some color variations. The main draw of the game is improving your time trial times. There's some characters that put text on the screen, but their style doesn't really fit the game. Overall, the characters don't appear to contribute to a story or anything. I'm guessing there's maybe like a dozen tracks? This game was reviewed by several gaming sites, including IGN and received decent scores. One website estimated it made $80,000 in revenue.
Everyone will have to judge for themselves whether or not those two games had a shot at success. Judge for yourself the state of the gaming market.
Both are rated Very Positive on Steam so clearly both are good games in the opinion of the gaming population at large.
The thesis that all you need to find success is a good game is clearly not sufficient.
FWIW I think Regions of Ruin was most definitely a commercial success and that estimated revenue figure is probably very low for the review count they have.
This indie dev (who has made millions themselves) agrees with you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCzhyUsDHPE
This is true but it’s also equally true that no plan survives contact with the enemy. No one can perfectly predict the future.
The market isn’t static and everyone else is also trying to avoid doing things that will lead to failure. In some senses trying too hard is also a cause of failure because it leads to homogenization and you enter the market at the same time as everyone else with the same ideas. Games is a place where innovation can be key to success but that is also where the risk lies because it’s not clearly understandable until after the fact. This in part is why AAA seems pretty stagnant.
"It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness, that is life."
- Jean-Luc Picard
I'd wager a lot of them are money grabs from someone who followed a tutorial on how to make a certain type of game in Unity, swapped a few assets, and put it out there hoping to make a few dollars?
Video here (fun watch!): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6_qbe26m9E
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Though I'll summarize what she played that was released on August 4th, 2025, of what she chose to buy:
* "The Last Mage" was a game produced very cheaply by apparently a lone gal (the videographer found the dev diary) that was a fan of K-pop, levered heavily on existing assets, to produce a campy idea as best she could.
* "You Suck at Football" levered existing "viral game" ideas like "Only Up". Very much someone's early attempts.
* "Velocity Racing 1000" was a racing game that appeared like someone's early attempts. Very wonky controls and physics.
* "Potato Cop" is a simple action game in an deliberately "amateur style", likely produced very quickly and cheaply. She had fun with it though.
* "Escape from Amazonia" is an horror game with a quirky plot premise that did elicit some actual screams. Again, produced very quickly and cheaply, but she had some fun with it.
* "Descent" was a horror game with some genuine attempts on the presentation side, and again elicited some screams. Some clear effort there. Someone was on to something with this one, and it's a shame they didn't refine it further.
* "Agu" is a crude, early access, challenging platformer. This won't go anywhere, but the videographer made the best of it and had some fun with the sheer difficulty of overcoming the physics.
* "Bee Simulator: The Hive" had some FANTASTIC presentation and assets. Localized for 14 languages. Great voiceover. Somewhat educational. It's apparently a re-release of a previous game which is why it has poor reviews. Some quirks and bugs, but some might really enjoy it.
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So are you really "competing" with 50 other games if you put out something extremely high quality and polished? No. You might be competing with 5... at most. If you put out a genuine banger and took the time to market it in advance, you should get noticed.
Steam's algorithms clearly are doing a good job and ensuring most of this stuff isn't getting much visibility outside of release. Though it's there to find if you deliberately look to unearth all of it.
The emphasized part of this quote is probably far more important than you give credit for.
I imagine a lot of solo game devs simply don't have the money to pay for marketing, and with many communities having rules against self-promotion, combined with the latest Discord phishing scam being "Hey can you try my game?" and delivering a trojan, it can be hard to get your game in front of people. Even if you're in a community for game devs, most of members are there to get people to play their game, not someone looking for a game to try.
I bet there are some real diamonds out there, hidden in obscurity, lost in the landfill of early attempts at making a game.