Are great games being ignored? An investigation 

Niche games tend to be much more highly rated because those of us that know we aren't going to like them ignore them automatically. The rating is much more an indication of how accurate the games impression is to it's quality within its niche

This is a great video. Continue to make more!

"Mom, can I play Hollow Night?" "We have Hollow Knight at home" Hollow Knight at home: *Space Gladiators*

18:12 What have we learned? Abstract art requires viewers to value it, whereas basing in familiar concepts allows users to value it at a baseline of what they know that concept to be. A game where all is possible, yet all it is said to be, is a game of infinite possibilities. A game where all is possible, and is visualized via its ability to replicate the experience of other games, as well as indicating completely new experiences. TLDR: You're selling a product, a game, not an idea or reality. People are less likely to take an invite to a museum as compared to a restaurant. *NOTE*: To dabble in neutrality for a second, don't forget that sometimes people simply like to make art, and the success of that art is secondary to the experience or message they want it to present.

1:04 ultrakill on the top, cant believe it!

I think for marketing, a small edge could account for a larger gap in exposure, given that if you get even say 10 more "Superfans" which evangelize your game, that converts to 100s or even 1000s of people going "hmm, that sounds interesting, I'll try it", which itself converts to 1000s to 10000 more "impressions".

It’s a shame Levelhead wasn’t mentioned, given it was on the list of games narrowed down to. That game’s great and never got it’s chance to shine.

Great watch! In a future video you might consider zooming in to the top left part of the distribution too! Would be interesting to see horrible games with high revenue

Great information.. yes, it's primarily marketing, but you zoomed in a bit further in to what Marketing really means and how a gamers mind can work, at least for this specific genre of games.

I can actually give a word in about one of the games shown in this video (Recursed) and say that it is one of the coolest puzzle games I've played, even though it looks deceptively simple. Other than the superficial connection that its mechanics are largely analogous to many concepts in computer science (stacks, global variables, contexts, and pointers, among other things), it's exceptionally intricate (and difficult), with many of the later puzzles making me feel like I've expanded my brain to solve them. It's even managed to have a professional research paper published about its mechanical complexity. It's *definitely* niche, though. I only learned about the game through a personal recommendation, and I wouldn't be surprised if that's how most people who played it found out about it. I don't have too much to say on the subject of the video itself, but I did want to take this opportunity to attest to one game's quality.

Great video, nice breakdowns clearly Explained. Subbed 👍

I see you showed a touhou game under anime games. Those at least sell very well but outside of steam mostly through physical sales, so one thing to account for is that certain games just do not have steam or digital marketplaces in general as their primary platform of distribution.

There is an indie game called Post Void that is 2.99 on steam and like the 1993 DOOM on LSD. I have sunken many many hours into it and highly recommend it.

This is a fantastic video - the insights might not be earth shattering, but the fact that so much research has gone into it really makes it tangible. I would be very interested in seeing more investigations like this. The question I would pose is whether

This video actually gave me a lot of motivation, I wanted to make a Immersive RPG, but was afraid even if it was good it wouldn't get more than 2000, but considering good games here are making over 20k and still are considered to be performing badly i think i might have a chance

Answer: Mini Metro is like a slice of a city builder. Understandable and fun. Limelight is an abstract puzzle. Doesn’t scream “buy me. I’ll satisfy your needs.”

I wish point and click adventure games got more love, they're definitely a golden apple in a basket of regular apples. I love the Blackwell series and Wadjet eye games continue to create amazing games. I do like how Telltale games paved the way for story decision based games to get popular, but there still needs to be more of a push. I know it was a joke but it still hurt a little, the statement- " games aren't books", I feel like that's the driving force for why these games are so shadowed in the gaming community.

The wolf among us was pretty good.

There's definitely more conclusions to draw from this graph. It least I'd really want to see where the games I know are placed!

A game that I think that didn't get the recognition it deserved is Jet Lancer, it has solid game mechanics and a beautifull soundtrack plus the difficulty in completing all the chalanges

can you please publish an interactive version of the graph you made, so that we can just click anywhere and be taken to the game's corresponding steam page?

I would assume Mini Metro's more grounded premise, with the puzzles taking place in a city where you have to connect metro lines, makes it more approachable for most players. Besides that, I would also guess the randomness of the levels in Mini Metro, would help a lot with replayability, whereas the other seems to be a fixed puzzle, where when you complete one, there's nothing to replay when you already have the solution, would help a lot.

Minimetro looks much more colorful and more enticing than linelight.

I haven't even watched the video yet, but I've spent weeks just browsing the market both on steam and on switch, looking at game review sites and videos such as this, trying games when I thought I had found something decent only to return it 30mins later due to a lack of polish or bad choices. From what I've found, the main issue is; The market at the moment is just too saturated with indie titles, many of which are just simple low-effort knock-offs, use a game engine like RPG maker or Ren'Py with default values, or are low effort asset flips. Finding ones that are actually decent is extremely difficult unless they've managed to gain internet popularity. Compounded by; A- Many Dev's are younger and/or haven't been exposed to games that are in the genre they are making a game in. They may have played or seen a title played, but they have no concept of why ___ game works and theirs doesn't. (See the plethora of Metroidvania's that play like garbage.) B- Many games are only play tested by family/friends instead of random testers. The few that do, get games play-tested by random people on social media sites, where it's often taboo to be critical towards a game and/or their posts can be removed. C- Dev's releasing a half baked idea to Early Access, only for them to change the central gameplay loop(which was good) because they wanted to satisfy people leaving negative reviews. I feel like Indie Dev's are stuck in "Safe and Mediocre" mindset because of this, which is why there's such a plethora of Metroidvania's, Rogue-likes and Anime Visual Novels, but none of them want to put any effort behind them so they're forever stuck in a loop of mediocrity.

I think there's an issue with the idea that all games will have roughly the same number of people reviewing (and thus this can be used to estimate purchases). It would seem that more people would review the better/worse a game is, like a U shaped distribution

Wilmot's is a fucking BANGER. It fills a niche, it's well made and makes my game designer heart feel all warm and fuzzy. It's a great game. You can't just filter out *everything* until there is nothing left to disprove your point.

Pretty good video and data analysis, as a living breathing weeb i think most other weebs usually get their anime games on dl site, and the steam marketplace is usually filled with censorship which makes the games worse in some cases. That's why the weeb market is usually small, hope that explanation helps

good vid, good research, good method, good findings, good insights i give it a good rating ;)

Now I'm curious to know the top and bottom games of the graph

Great video! I admit, I was anticipating my own game published on steam to appear in the video in some way since it seemed like it hits all the sample criteria, but then I realized its in Early Access and the EA games were probably filtered too. Otherwise, the thing about "relatability of the concept" in my opinion plays the biggest part in Mini-Metro's success than others compared to Linelight. I am of course, biased being tied to my own impressions without analyzing them too deeply, but my initial reaction to both games was 1. I don't really understand what Linelight is supposed to be about and I'm not interested. compared to 2. Wow, is this a game about building the subway lines? Looks cool, I want to check it out. It really makes you think about how important "grounding" is. It is very difficult to make people care about new and abstract things, because you just can't connect them to the real world and your prior experinces. As a consequence, you don't really know what to expect, you don't understand what it's supposed to represent and this doesn't do good for your interest. Video games are "simulations" of the real world, fundamentally. At least this is how people seem to percieve them. And it makes sense, too. We play games to have an experince. And we can only desire things, including experinces, that we are to at least some degree familiar about. Anyway, again, great video. It's a pity there's so little content on this channel. I would galdly watch more of your videos.

Are great youtube videos being ignored? Sure seems like it.

Would be really curious to get your spreadsheet with all the games you included in the computation

I would like to know the equation you used to figure out how many people bought a game?

It’s interesting that this video came out when it did. I had just rewatched the GDC about Linelight, and had purchased it for iOS (since I was looking for a new puzzle game on the phone specifically) but hadn’t played it. From the description of the talk and the examples, it seemed like it was going to be an excellent game, and I knew that the developer didn’t want it to be on mobile so I was ready to take things with a grain of salt knowing I was getting the worse experience. I watch your video, and then played the game for the first time, and I think what you missed is that the general ambiance of Linelight feels off in some way. The game I had played right before Linelight on my phone happened to be Mini Metro, and that’s a game that works perfectly. It’s super minimalistic, the sounds are calming, and in general it’s exactly what I expected from looking at the screenshots. However, Linelight caught me off guard. I was expecting a different tone, can’t really say what, but the game isn’t what I expected. The puzzles are good, the mechanics are very clever, and in general I like the game, but I don’t think I’d really recommend Linelight where I would easily recommend Mini Metro. Obviously these observations were on mobile and are incredibly subjective, but I figured I’d chime in with my specific experience with the two games.

There’s a game called AI War that I’d rate extremely high, probably 10/10 if that was possible on Steam. It loosely falls under the 4X category. However, I can tell that the revenue from the game isn’t as high as the quality of the game might dictate. It’s a well-designed game that is very fun to play. However, it has a big learning curve. Once you understand it, it’s an awesome game, but you can’t just go and share it with friends because they’ll be quickly deterred by the complexity. So that’s my estimation for why it hasn’t blown up in popularity. The game even looks cool. The graphics are nice for a 2D game. The music is amazing. The sound quality is fine. But it’s tricky to learn how to play at first. So… yeah. That’s the only downside IMHO.

This is real good content! Subscribed

Something worth considering as well is that a lot of casual puzzle games are quicker/easier to develop and thus don't need a crazy amount of sales to be successful. Something your analysis is sorely lacking is the investments required to bring each game to market. If I spent a 1000 hours developing a casual puzzle game, my threshold for success is far lower than a AAA game that say took a large studio the better part of a million hours or more to make.

Amazing analysis, thanks

Very interesting analysis! Thanks

Mini metro is easier on the eyes and it is more relatable. You are playing with metro lines, so you kind of understand what you are doing. On linelight you just do some weird light stuff. It has replay value for it's randomized start. It's never 100% same game. Linelight has fixed levels and game is completely done after completion.

Because popular games 99% of the buyers never rate or review the game? Which allows dedicated trends to Inflate or deflate scores. Unpopular games draw in niche players who are more likely to review a game or give it a score just to give it more attention. A popular game, most people will not even bother as everyone already knows about it.

This video was very well put and A genuine investigation. 20 minutes Flew by so Fast

Honourable mention #1, Space Gladiators at 8:32 just looks like it’s mostly a Hollow Knight clone

Mini metro and mini motorways was in dunkeys best of video Which was seen by millions of people

I'd love a follow up video on the outliers. What game has the worst reviews but high revenue?

Mini Metro is brighter, bolder, reminiscent of Designers Republic works, and also more alive-looking than Linelight. It's minimalistic, but it *presents the concept it's trying to convey* very believably, while Linelight is a complete abstraction. People generally aren't that drawn to things they can't *touch*. That's the artstyle difference.

This was neat and interesting. I reckon it’d be cool to look at the opposite - what about the really poorly rated games which made a whole bunch of money on the top left side of the graph

Interesting video. I need more!!

Another thing to consider is that steam isn't the only game distribution service. Some games are also on steam but sell mainly on other platforms, hence their low income in steam.

I still think its a bigger problem than you think, look at Woodle Tree 2 Deluxe+ or Rainbow Billy Curse of the Leviathan, 2 VERY good games that collectively dont even break triple digit reviews.

Crosscode is a hidden gem i wish more people were aware of

The fact that you build things and it's yours... Makes perfect sense... Cities Skylines is the only AAA game made with Unity that truly stands out for me...

I worked at a company that made HOPA games and the overwhelming majority of the player base consists of US based stay at home moms and grandmas. No joke. That's probably why these point and click detective adventures don't do too well on Steam, whereas they do on other, more HOPA specialised platforms.

Hey on your graph there is a game that made an estimate revenue of 100, 000, 000 USD but was rated under 0.25, I was wondering what that game is, and why it sold so well?

Mini metro explains what it is in its title. What is a Line light? Also mini metro's steam art looks like a polaroid. Probably why many people clicked on it.

The most underrated game I’ve seen is “just shapes & beats”

"Games that look like shit" *shows Fight Knight* Now, listen here, boy!

Saying Fight Knight looks like shit is perhaps the single most offensive thing I've heard all month.

As soon as critters for sale flashed on the screen i opened steam to buy it lol

lol that menu system that allows you to delete your save game - ARE YOU SURE?! (cute box filling innocently) Boomerang X looks like Quake 2 CTF grapple hook SOLD!

My gut reaction to linelight vs mini metro is that linelight is more abstract and that could turn people off. Yes, both games are puzzles based on lines, but mini metro represents something that most of us are familiar with. I instantly opened up steam to check out mini metro when you mentioned it (partly because I love trains) but didn't get that intrigued looking at linelight cuz it's just too abstract. It may be a great game but it doesn't really inspire me to check it out.

limelight screens are too simple

high end youtubers doing lets plays have a huge impact on a games success.

Simple answer: There are around 8000 types of sports in the world but only a handful are extremely popular.

Basically games that are really niche only their extremely dedicated fans will buy the game and only their extremely dedicated fans will leave a review making their review scores extremely high.

Target audience size + presentation + general quality + fotm

Mini Metro appeals to me more than linelight because one is relatable and the other is abstract. To me, Mini Metro has a more meaningful concept

I learned about mini-metro though youtubers. I've never heard of linelight.

Mini Metro is an exemplary masterclass in indy game design. One glance is all it takes to grasp the concept. It’s presentation is flawless. Then when you play it, it plays exactly as you expected and the sound design is brilliantly relaxing. It’s production costs were probably minimal and simple to create. It made no mistakes at all. But overall it’s a perfect product, priced correctly. The game itself is unique. The world is tired of metroid-vanias and rogue-likes. It’s lazy cash grab game design chasing trends. So when a game is released that does something new well, it generally dies get recognition. Anyone can code and anyone can copy ideas. But not anyone can create a legitimately new gameplay concept. The maturity to think empathetically about your target audience will find its audience in general. But ultimately, Steam is overloaded with low effort cash grabs because it’s easy to release a game on there. So being a good game isn’t enough. The concept needs to be strong and unique in order to have value to the customer. Then the execution and presentation needs to be excellent. You don’t need marketing. There are so many bloggers looking for a game to rave about to get them views and cache that it won’t take long to surface from the trash if your game has merit and originality and charm. There is every level of execution and polish available on Stream from individuals to small teams. If there wasn’t the opportunity to make money, there wouldn’t be a thriving cottage industry supported by Steam. The problem with trying to correlate reviews and dividing by cost is that it doesn’t account for production cost, which is a stronger indicator of quality. Assuming a one man band is paying himself the average wage for their country times hours spent in development and costs incurred. The truth is that Steam is bloated but Valve decided to forego quality control a while ago and let the market decide. This resulted in a more dynamic/chaotic marketplace but did allow more experimental titles a shot, which might not have passed their checks and find a small audience them eventually a larger one. It’s inevitable that publishers will spend big money on games which were costly and find a wider audience but nobody is ruling out indy games when Minecraft is the top selling game ever by miles. I don’t think Mini Meteo has any marketing budget at all. The developers are just intelligent and talented and delivered a product that didn’t disrespect their audience by delivering an unpolished or derivative product. My advice to aspiring game developers is to target your audience. Make a game you would personally buy in a genre you enjoy. If it’s just you, you better be good at art and music and coding. Then find the bloggers that cover that genre and offer them a key and hope they cover it. If your idea is strong then you deserve success and you may well find it. There’s not much luck when it comes to Steam. If you make something worth celebrating then it will get picked up. But you can’t be big headed about how brilliant you think you are. You need to be realistic and empathetic and respectful.

Mini metros randomization also means if it gets streamed the audience still has a reason to buy it

Brett here! When I was making Linelight, I would often worry, "Why would anyone play this it's just a bunch of lines". There is a lot of love and heart in Linelight, way more than I expected when I started it, and I've gotta acknowledge I'm blessed to see it's received so warmly with audiences. My big takeaway here is a reminder of THE POWER OF THEMING. As is, Linelight presents great to the niche of minimalist puzzle game enthusiasts. Looking at Mini Metro, I think "I want to build a subway!" Linelight might be more like, "I have no frame of reference, let me read more up on it!" If I'd made it train-themed (or electricity, or anything really), it would 100% have captured a bigger audience. My pitch at conferences used to be a campy, "What do you think about LINES? here's a controller". Contrast that to a "What do you think about TRAINS? here's a controller". Themes are catchy, man. And it's a tough one as an artist, 'cause I think the lack of theme is what's made it so emotionally affecting for many folks, you kind of project yourself on the characters (there's a story that unfolds throughout the entire game.... it's easy to experience but difficult to describe). Most of the game is puzzles, though, and I don't think a theme would have been a detriment to them. So, without unpacking all the marketing/conferences/hustling/store-featuring, my current best hypothesis is this: In terms of sales for an abstract game like Linelight, a little theming can go a looong way. Thank you for this video, Nick! Very well researched, and very well assembled! Also, thank you for all your kind words about the game. I don't always know how to go about it, but I do know I'm here to bring y'all smiles and love and warmth. I'm gonna keep trying my best and learning as much as I can along the way!

Look at games published on Steam by year. 2013 early access for mini metro. 2017 release for limelight meant there were 10x as many games released that same year.

I should also add that I was a marketer for a publisher on Steam for several years (Degica was the publisher) and there isn't really a firm correlation between reviews and sales. The error bars for making any predictions are enormous. Think in terms of 1000's of percent error margins. For example we sold one cheap and easy game "Goats on a Bridge" that (at time of writing) had 47 reviews (overall positive) and sold less than 500 copies. A review rate of almost 10%. The game now has a new publisher I might add. We also sold RPG Maker MV which has around 5,100 reviews and has sold 1.6 million copies. A review rate of 0.3% roughly. Even lower A Train 9 V4 (also now with a new publisher) has 94 reviews and sold 22,714 copies at the point Degica stopped supporting it in very 2016 ( I know this one exactly) 0.041% review rate. The error bars for assuming sales based on reviews are enormous. Unfortunately that means that any assumptions made based on a sales to reviews ratio are pretty meaningless . Games that provoke an emotion, exceed or fail to live up to expectation. Have hype or even reward reviews (which many do) have a hugely higher chance of getting a review than those that don't Many many multiples higher. The other things that "dad's" who play hex based strategy games don't do? Is leave reviews on Steam. They watched a video from a sober, mature RU-vidr (maybe) went on a forum. Watched/read some AARs, bought a Steam key. and played what to them was already a known quantity before they even bought the game. That's what over 50's do. Emotionally they already knew more or less exactly what they were buying. How it played and their expectations are very rarely under or over achieved. Some of the games you assume have low sales I expect have many more than you think. Decisive Campaigns sold more than 12,000 copies on Steam - and is also available on other platforms where, although not as popular in "pop culture" as Steam, are much preferred by strategy gamers for not having any DRM. I don;t know how many copies it sold on those other platforms, but I know if you visit the games forums almost everyone there studiously avoided buying the Steam version of the game to avoid the need for always on DRM.

I love your disposition!🤣🤣

hey i made the game you said looks like crap at 7:23 ! lol great video though, it mirrors a lot of the thought process and conclusions i've gone through myself. Good on you for gathering up data to support your conclusions. Overall steam is very egalitarian, moreso than any other storefront i'm aware of. You can't even pay money to get to the front page ala appstore and others, it's purely based on metrics. So because of this, marketing and making something that truly interests people matters a lot

"GAMES AREN'T BOOKS" so true.

Great video! For me the differences in the success between the 2 are: - Genre: management vs puzzle - Player Fantasy: "Manage the subway system of a city" vs "Move a line"

A lot of the strategy games you showed as “dad games”, in fact possibly all of them, had been released on other platforms first. Sometimes years before. Matrix Games, Paradox (which had its own store front for years) and Slitherine (which sells or at least used to sell both direct and on Matrix) There are some really niche games that came over from platforms like Desura after years and years selling there. More still sell across different platforms like IOS etc. The port to Steam in some cases is a relatively simple job and just to get some extra easy cash that would otherwise be left on the table.

18:46 "Sharing how you've solved the puzzle kinda ruins it for everyone else." This applies tenfold to streams and let's plays: watching someone play Mini-Metro or Shapez makes you want to try the game yourself, while watching someone play a linear experience means you've already seen everything the game has to offer, even if through a proxy. Now the potential customer has to either stop watching, or come back a year later once you've forgot how the puzzles are solved, but how many people would do that? One extra problem with linear puzzles is that people watch streamers to turn their brains off. It's more comfy to just keep watching, rather than close the stream and go play yourself.

is it just me or is linelight boring af? just slow to execute obvious puzzles...?

This video was recommended to me by the youtube algorithm™, and damn. A really great breakdown! I hope youtube continues recommending smaller channels like this one in the future

so... minecraft was released in 2009 so... it doesn't count i guess

There is one problem with this analysis. There is no good definition for what is too niche and what isn't. Undertale, Vampire Survivors, Minecraft, Phasmophobia, Loop Hero looked like niche games and in many interviews authors of those games, believed that they are making a niche game. And yet...

In conclusion, niche games have high reviews and low sales. My question is what was the game up by 100 million but had less than 25% satisfaction? It's a dot all by itself in the top left of your graph.🤣

Im a visual novel fan and i think that the vns are there because of 3 reasons 1. its a niche genre, it easy to look at a visual novel and just think thats its like all the other crappy hentai games on steam if you're not in the know how 2. steam is the wrong platform for vns, if you think about it vns are essential​ly just audiobooks with some visuals. i reckon that most user on steams arent here for audio books. 3. most vn players just pirate the games, since legal sale of translated vns are a relatively new thing and most players are used to playing fan translations

Space Gladiators is underperforming because it's the most obvious Hollow Knight worship

that last category exclusion was a mistake. 'weird suff' may not sell well, but its also where a lot of gems reside and the weird of today can be the new overdone genre of tomorrow. Id go through those as well, as its a very heterogeneous category on itself and its performance cant be explained by just "genre x doesnt sell well"

Boomerang X had such a ridiculously high potential for becoming a rapid large scale platformer

9:26 & 10:50 I don't think the two games are undersold, but rather that steam is the wrong platform. Both games are more suitable for casual (console) gaming, so these games are also available on the Switch, where they were even shown in a Nintendo Indie Direct. 17:15 If there's a free demo or prototype, that's really good and getting people interested. You don't have anything to lose if it's not fun or you don't like it. I've found countless games, e.g. KSP, Slipways, Raft, Timberborn, Terra Nil,... 20:15 Can you post the list of games? It would be really interesting to see where some games are and whether they get too much or too little attention. Exactly because of this problem, Steam now has a function to display games according to your own interests searched by a neural network. So you can find really niche games that you would never have found otherwise. You can find it in the Shop under laboratory and then the last result.

For me it's just that creative underdogs don't get recognition and a lot of mainstream games try to sit on many chairs. Recently I only play submissions for fascinating game jams (GWJ, GMTK, etc.), because feedback cycle there feels REAL and you get opportunities for contribution from time to time. It's a win-win, whereas with mainstream games I just feel like losing braincells.

Another factor for Mini Metro. It came out in 2014, the start of the indie boom. While casual relaxing games are avoided now, that wasn’t always the case. Thanks to minimalist games that came out of the indie boom of the mid 10s, people gained a resistance to those sorts of games popping up later. Mini Metro being earlier avoided that entirely.

I think there's one problem to steam that makes this graph form in the way that it does. Rating a game is based on a 50/50 system, Positive or Negative. There's no star rating system/numerical system where they can be more specific as to how good or how bad a game is, which causes a lot of those smaller games to be a false positive for the 5%. Even though they are positively rated, they aren't 10/10 per se or 5% worthy (like what you said when you mentioned that they felt below 10%). Edit: I'm mentioning this as another point to add to the current points made in the video.

I know a game that's underperforming that has Overwhelmingly Positive reviews that I have had a ton of fun on. It's called "The Coin Game". It contains many games you'd find at arcades such as claw machine's, coin pushers, ball drops, table hockey, key masters, pinball and even minigolf. Game was made by 1 developer so updates are slower to come out, but still really fun to play. I've played it on my channel a few times myself as well.

Nowadays indie game feel worth more than many AAA games

please make the graph public. i want to see that one low rated game that made $100,000,000

Something interesting I noticed is that two of the 30 or so games on the spreadsheet of underperforming games shown were Horizon's Gate and Voidspire Tactics. These games were both developed by Rad Codex, a 1 person development team. It just sucks to see someone have not just 1 but 2 games underperforming in this way. As someone who has over 100 hours in Horizon's Gate I can say that it is definitely worth a try.

Pretty cool that you got Elon Musk to narrate your video!

Re: Mini Metro vs Linelight. Though similar in appearance, the design philosophy is completely different between the two. Anyone who played OpenTTD / Transport Fever - or any transportation network management game - at least took a look at it if for no other reason than the subject implied by the name: "Metro". Most probably stuck with it since it's a casual non-linear take on the genre, which is novel. Former attempts at casual transport games by other developers were overt puzzle games with prescribed solutions, which the managerial audience strongly rejects because they're a group that thrives on discovering creative solutions for compounding simple problems. By stark contrast, Linelight is a puzzle game through and through. It unfortunately looks like an abstract, pretentious "game for the sake of game design" exercise, but yet has no underlying narrative like its predecessors (Flow and Thomas Was Alone). There's no story, it doesn't have a strong soundtrack, nor does it have a mascot or recognizable icon. It's flat, completely absent any appeal outside of its simplicity. In my opinion, it's amazing it performed as well as it did, and that may have been entirely due to marketing efforts.

as an artist I'll say this about linelight and minimetro. they might seem similar but artistically they are very different. yes they are both minimalistic, but linelight is abstract whereas mini metro is representational, it looks like a metro map, the human brain can imagine more because it recognizes the art.

15:00 I think the replay-ability and non-linear/rogue-like progression of Mini Metro (and Mini Motorway) makes these games more appealing and unique than Linelight which seems to have more of a "beat this level to progress to the next one" which is so common and boring. I haven't played Mini Metro or Linelight though, only Mini Motorway which surprised be with it's depth.