Vertical Slice: A Game Dev Story
Short description
From nobody to famous game producer in 3 years: that’s the journey you will live! Experience the trials and tribulations of game development in this life simulation game: live through the process of founding a small team and learning how to work together to develop a successful game.
- Developer
- DarkKnight
- Publisher
- 2P Games
- Release
- Thu, Jun 24, 2021
- Price
$9.99
$1.49
85%
best price ever- Reviews
- 288
- Positive
- 66%
- Followers
- 1,264
- Owners (estimated)
- 0 – 20K
- Concurrent players
- n/a
- Genres
- Indie, Simulation, Strategy
- Tags
Review count and SteamSpy's owner range agree well enough to narrow the estimate down to this band. Multiplied by $9.48, the average price these copies actually sold for — weighted from the price history rather than taken from the $9.99 launch price. That is 5% below list price on average. Before Steam's cut, VAT and refunds. How these numbers are calculated.
Waiting for Vertical Slice: A Game Dev Story to get cheaper? Name your price and we will email you when it gets there.
History
2 data points since Aug 19, 2026. Gaps mean nothing changed — the value carries forward.
The revenue curve is an estimate, not a measurement. It is the only calculated series here: each interval takes the review growth of that period, multiplies it by the sales-per-review factor and by the price actually charged at the time, and adds the result to the running total. That is why it climbs more slowly through discount periods than the review curve next to it. The last point is the same figure quoted above — gross, before Steam's cut, VAT and refunds. How these numbers are calculated.
The blurred area is the rest of the history. 159 further data points reach back to Feb 1, 2021 — your plan shows the last 90 days of it. How far each series in particular reaches is written on its own chart; not every one of them goes back that far. The shape in the blurred area is decoration, not data: the figures are not in this page at all. Plus unlocks the complete series.
Lowest recorded price: $1.49 on Oct 20, 2025. That is the current price.
Similar games that found an audience
Games sharing at least 3 of this title's leading tags, with enough reviews to have gone somewhere. Ranked by how much they overlap, not by how big they are. − missing and + extra mark the tags each one does not share with Vertical Slice: A Game Dev Story. Studio counts the titles that developer has released — the closest thing to production scale that public data allows. It is not a budget, and nobody publishes those.
| Image | Name | Studio | Shared | Tag difference | Price | Reviews | Positive | Released | Revenue (estimated) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Youtubers Life | UPLAY Online 11 titles | 4 | − Cute − Story Rich + Management + Character Customization | $19.99 | 13,746 | 78% | Thu, Feb 02, 2017 | $10.7m $8.7m – $17.3m |
|
Streamer Life Simulator | Cheesecake Dev 14 titles | 4 | − Cute − Story Rich + Nudity + Sexual Content | $19.99 | 7,057 | 78% | Fri, Aug 21, 2020 | $5.6m $3.5m – $8.8m |
|
School Days | 白雨工作室 2 titles | 4 | − Cute − Singleplayer + Early Access + RPG | $14.99 | 5,899 | 77% | Wed, Jan 28, 2026 | $2.2m $1.3m – $2.2m |
|
Cinnabunny | Reky Studios 3 titles | 4 | − Story Rich − Singleplayer + RPG + Family Friendly | $24.99 | 405 | 96% | Wed, Feb 19, 2025 | $440k $196k – $483k |
|
Tiny Life | Ellpeck Games 2 titles | 4 | − Cute − Story Rich + Relaxing + Sandbox | $11.24 25% best price ever |
340 | 88% | Wed, May 03, 2023 | $221k $98k – $289k |
There are more like this. Your plan shows the 5 closest neighbours; Plus and Pro show up to 100 — enough to see the shape of a niche instead of a sample of it.