5 Short Indie Games that Made Way Over a Million Dollars
A list of five recent short-form games that made huge gains for their small teams.
Indie games are a viable business for developers who are willing to pour their heart into a concept. But a concept isn’t enough; it takes hard work on content, art, grit to keep going, and a solid marketing strategy to get the game out there.
In this article I’ll use Steam reviews as a way to measure the gross revenue of these games, where indies said that reviews typically account for 1–3% of the actual downloads of a game. I won’t account for sale prices or other platform revenue.
Let’s take a look at 5 games that were released in the last seven years.
A Short Hike (2019)
- Gameplay time: ~1.5 hours
- Steam reviews: 9636
- Price: 7.99
- Total revenue: $2,543,904
Sable (2021)
- Gameplay time: ~7.5 hours
- Steam reviews: 2515
- Price: 24.99
- Total revenue: $2,074,875
Undertale (2015)
- Gameplay time: ~6.5 hours
- Steam reviews: 162571!
- Price: 9.99
- Total revenue: $53,648,430
Celeste (2018)
- Gameplay time: ~8 hours
- Steam reviews: 54305
- Price: 19.99
- Total revenue: $35,841,300
Unpacking (2021)
- Gameplay time: ~5 hours
- Steam reviews: 13,643
- Price: 19.99
- Total revenue: $9,004,380
Pretty impressive for these small teams. Some of these were developed by only 1–2 people. It just goes to show that the hard work does pay off sometimes, and it doesn’t have to be a live service or platform to be a viable game or product.
