Finding the 'secret new winners' of April on Steam...
Also: this week's Steam debuts and lots of news.
[The GameDiscoverCo game discovery newsletter is written by ‘how people find your game’ expert & company founder Simon Carless, and is a regular look at how people discover and buy video games in the 2020s.]
As the weekend looms, perhaps it’s time to stop concentrating on the most obvious mega-sellers on Steam? We’ll go back to last month’s new games for a look into what’s sneakily doing well, a few weeks after release. (That’s our lead story…)
Before we start, GDCo is sponsoring our local baseball superstars the Oakland Ballers for a second year (support yr local community!) And after the Itch game jam we did in 2025 starring their mascot Scrappy the Rally Possum, we’re doing another jam, ‘Scrappy Saves The Animals’, on June 24th-July 5th, with prizes/featuring. Jam with us…
[FREE DEMO OF GDCo PRO? You too can get a gratis demo of our GameDiscoverCo Pro company-wide ‘Steam deep dive’ & console data by contacting us today - >95 orgs have it. Or, signing up to GDCo Plus gets the rest of this newsletter and Discord access, plus more.]
Game discovery news: Forza, Subnautica 2 hit it…
OK, let’s wander through the remaining discovery & platform news for the week, which goes a bit like this:
Looking at ‘trad media’ mentions this week from Footprints.gg, it’s headed by Forza Horizon 6 (already at 6 million players & heading up!) and the well-received Subnautica 2, with GTA 6 (no pre-orders yet tho), Fortnite (Overwatch collab), and 007: First Light (out next week) also getting interest.
In a surprise move, infinite-scroll .PPT fan & investor/consultant Matthew Ball is joining Xbox as its chief strategy officer, as Asha Sharma continues to shake things up. Also: Xbox fans “want exclusives, more backward compatibility, and free online multiplayer”, according to a new Xbox Player Voice portal.
Circana put out its U.S. hardware/game estimates for April 2026, with hardware spending “[up] by 34%… to $261M. Spending on Nintendo Switch 2 hardware offset declines seen across Switch (-69% versus April 2025), Xbox Series (-43%) and PlayStation 5 (-30%).” PS5 is 2% ahead of PS4 (time-aligned), and Switch 2 up 11% vs. Switch.
Also notable on Circana’s data: ‘content spending’ inc. PC, console & mobile was up 2% to $3.8b. PC/console wise: Tomodachi Life was the best-seller at $41m, including physical and ‘projected digital spending’ (new for the company, more info here). with Pragmata at #2 and MLB: The Show at #3. (Americans love baseball!)
In adding a bunch of new monetization methods (custom power-ups, creator badge drops), Twitch is showing that gamification helps its game streamers earn. Even now: “More than a third of all viewer spending on Twitch currently goes toward Hype Trains”, intended to create a frenzy of viewer support.
PlayStation has increased PS+ subscription pricing by $1 to $11/month for the lowest Essential tier, needed for online gaming on PS4/PS5. Also: IGN points out that the announce phrasing (‘prices will start at’) semi-obscured $2 increases (to $17 and $20/month) for the higher-tier Extra and Premium tiers, too.
Valve has moved to dismiss its gambling lawsuit over Counter-Strike skins in New York, noting: “People enjoy surprises… Part of the appeal of many popular collectibles [like] baseball cards…. is the possibility of opening a sealed package and being surprised with a rare item.” tl:dr: Valve: ‘what, we banning Pokémon cards now?’
One of the final PC Epic Games Store exclusives has been partially unwound: “CI Games has successfully signed a termination agreement with Epic Games. The agreement releases the upcoming Lords of The Fallen 2 from its previous Epic Games Store exclusivity obligations.” (Why? CI had $ and Epic’s got Fortnite-scaling fish to fry.)
Inside Games has a long piece on best practices for showing your indie game at events, from unique booth decor (“baguette plushies and mini Eiffel Towers” worked) through having scannable QR codes, to ‘observing, not coaching’ players. (We think physical events can be low ROI. But if you do ‘em, you’ve got to do ‘em right.)
There’s a lot of official and unofficial Summer Game Fest-related streaming events, and Jordan Curtis has compiled all 46 (!) of them in a LinkedIn post, from State Of Play through Wholesome Direct to Xbox showcases to SGF itself. (And good news: trailer collator Gamesrecap.io has re-activated for SGF season, too.)
Discovery cosmonaut Ichiro Lambe has a good visualization: “That Burning Man map that went around recently inspired me to try laying out neighborhoods of Steam games like a little city. Here, each cell on the grid holds one game; contiguous cells with the same tag form a neighborhood.” Noms on which Steam game is ‘The Man’ effigy?
Microlinks: the latest Xbox Game Pass debuts include Forza Horizon 6 (see above), Escape Simulator, Jurassic World Evolution 3 & more; Friday: Bundler.games is a new site for indies to cross-promote via bundles, etc; Ken Levine (BioShock) says there’s “diminishing returns” with over-the-top graphics.
Finding the ‘secret new Steam winners’ of April…
So, it’s May 22nd, and we have a good idea of what new Steam titles are top-selling this month (duh, Subnautica 2 and Forza Horizon 6.) But, idea: let’s go back to April’s top new releases in the GameDiscoverCo Pro front-end, and sort by today’s top CCU.
Why would we do that? Most Steam games will be at <10% of their peak launch CCU (or less!) by now. But there are titles that launched a little more modestly and have maintained or increased interest over time. And lo and behold, we indeed found four ‘hidden semi-hits’ to talk about. Check out the chart:
We’ve talked about the majority of these titles in our weekly or end-of-month round-ups. But we see four that we’ve barely mentioned, all with $5-$15 pricing: Librarian: Tidy Up The Arcane Library! (400k units), Oaken Tower (92k units), Demon Lord: Just A Block (100k units), and Pratfall (210k units).
There’s obviously caveats: CCU isn’t always the best way to eval success. And even with impressive unit totals, the gross is often only $1-$2m so far, after regional pricing. (Tho they’re all small indie productions, and should eventually gross 3-5x that or more.) But, like: this is what’s hot! So let’s whistlestop analyze each of ‘em:
Librarian: Tidy Up The Arcane Library - it’s a tidying frenzy?
Well, we know about the ‘tidying’ subgenre of games - everything from A Little To The Left to Powerwash Simulator scratches that particular itch. But this title has a really good hook - you start with a trashed occult library & have to reshelf every book.
As this Steam player review explains, it’s not just a monumental task (tho it also is!): “It was a different feel from the other cleaner games [with] more thinking and more searching and pattern recognition… As you go along you get more and more [magical] tools… The level ups here will point to a shelf or allow you to fill it at a range, or make linked books glow.”
Why it’s doing well: it’s absolutely killing it in short-form video-land, and multiple reviews mention coming across it on Instagram. It being a familiar first-person simulator view & a good cozy/mystical blend helps, too. Big key: strong visual hook.
Oaken Tower: async autobattler brings the game loop…
Not sure everyone is familiar with this subgenre, so a reminder from the game’s description: “Oaken Tower is a synergy-heavy PvP auto battler where your tower of items fights other players. Build deadly combos and scale exponentially. Every decision matters.”
What’s clever about the PvP here is that it’s asynchronous, much like one of its inspirations, Backback Battles, which we covered in 2024: “You are battling other players’ builds, but there’s no time pressure or worries about interacting directly with them.” (The Bazaar is another much-referenced, if higher-budget autobattler.)
Why it’s doing well: it’s solo-dev, but the depth and complexity of build making is OOC, the game loop is tight, and there’s ‘number go up’ endorphins coursing through the game. Key influencers like NorthernLion have jumped on, why wouldn’t you?
Demon Lord: Just A Block - big in China, intriguing
Demon Lord: Just A Block is interesting: it’s a retro pixel art top-down ARPG with a lot of roguelite power-ups, but is ‘on demand’ turn-based. It reminds us a bit of Crypt Of The Necrodancer without the rhythm element, and the dev confirms that inspirado.
However, it’s not really performed in English language (only 79 of the 1,489 Overwhelmingly Positive reviews are in English), and we see 89% of the reviews in Chinese. (Which makes sense, since it’s a Chinese indie dev.) So: Asia-first success.
Why it’s doing well: a really well-crafted roguelite - this Steam review says “hands-down my favorite mystery dungeon-style game ever. It's simple, yet incredibly deep. It's got a great sense of humor, it's adorable, and it's fair.” But it hasn’t had giant Western pickup.
Pratfall: extremely ‘reverse Peak’, but still cute…
Pratfall is described on Steam as “a co-op game for 1-6+ players where you fall, dig, and explode your way down a dangerous cave system to find your lost dog”, and this top Steam player review is even more succinct: “It's literally bizarro Peak with Deep Rock Galactic style digging.”
Not much else to say, other than - digging holes has become a whole (ha ha) hot game mechanic, between games like Donkey Kong Bananza and A Game About Digging A Hole (and Minecraft, if we want to go way back.) So it makes sense for friendslop.
Why it’s doing well: it’s reverse Peak with digging in it. It’s reverse Peak with digging in it. It’s reverse Peak with digging in it. It’s reverse Peak with digging in it. It’s reverse Peak with digging in it. (It’s also wittily made, which isn’t always easy.)
New on Steam: Forza, Deep Rock, Batman excel…
And that’s last month’s surprise ‘long tail’-ers. Now, for GameDiscoverCo Pro & Plus subscribers, let’s end by looking at the top new games this week on Steam. Can you name all three again? (Bet you can do two…)