Microgenre Report: Computer Use
Deep dive beyond the hits including Her Story, NEEDY STREAMER OVERLOAD, and Hypnospace Outlaw
9000 Dimensions provides independent research and analysis specializing in the Steam market. This is the second of my in-depth reports analyzing emerging microgenres on Steam. Read my first report on Anomaly Horror games.
Some games have you outrunning the cops to pull off your next big drug deal (Schedule 1), others have you fighting your way from humble beginnings to knighthood in medieval Bohemia (Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2), and still others drop you half-naked into the wilderness to build a fortress against online rivals (Rust). A rare few have you sitting at a desk… using a computer.
This Microgenre Report covers a microgenre I’m calling Computer Use1, which includes games stripped down to a tautological state where the core gameplay takes place solely within a computer interface. They range from job sims to idlers, visual novels, dating sims, hacking sims, horror games, and detective games.
Most tap into a 90s or Y2K nostalgia, whether you’re interacting with a riff on the Microsoft digital assistant Clippy in KinitoPet or browsing geocities-like websites in Hypnospace Outlaw. In the bestselling Computer Use game, NEEDY STREAMER OVERLOAD, the player manages the life and career of a Twitch streamer, but even its interface is reminiscent of Windows 2000, an operating system released 10 years before the live streaming service spun off from Justin.tv.
While most of the Computer Use games are contained to a flat UI, I found the amped up-atmosphere of recent releases s.p.l.i.t. and Dead Letter Dept. particularly appealing with their minimal rooms and first person perspective. The microgenre is well suited for horror and detective/mystery games. Enough time has passed that just the look and feel of a 90s computer interface boasts a similar eeriness to VHS filters and camcorders, common tropes in the analog horror genre.
These games rely on especially strong narrative and thematic direction. Although the visual interfaces can be fairly simple, (the developers of FACEMINER credit a publicly available css library, at least in part, for their UI design) they rely heavily on thoughtful atmosphere and sometimes fully voice-acted dialogue as is the case in Home Safety Hotline.
Shutter Story catches my eye among the yet-to-be-released games. It draws inspiration from the Home Safety Hotline inspection format, presenting players with a photo editing interface to uncover clues about the entity haunting a family. The gameplay is also reminiscent of I’m on Observation Duty, which I wrote about in my previous report.
In contrast to The Exit 8, the top-selling game in my last report, which broke through the bounds of Steam and into Hollywood (or at least the film festival circuit), games in the Computer Use microgenre seem to have a more niche appeal. But, upon closer inspection, some have found relatively massive commercial success, with the top title earning more than eight times The Exit 8’s revenue. In my assessment, these games are much more likely to be adequately priced with many of the games included listed at $9.99 or more.
I would argue this microgenre traces back to 1985 with the aptly named hacking simulator Hacker. Later games like Uplink (2001) further explored the hacker angle. Game designer Christine Love brought the games to the BBS age with Digital: A Love Story (2009). The timeline for my report starts in 2015 with Her Story and Hacknet. I do not include games like SUPERHOT or Buddy Simulator 1984 where the game is only narratively framed as being played inside an in-world computer. I limited my analysis to games that involve the player directly interacting with a computer interface using a keyboard and/or mouse.
Let’s dive in…
GENRE OVERVIEW - COMPUTER USE
Games Included: 17
Estimated Total Market Volume: $37M
Estimated Median Gross Revenue: $1M
Median Review Score: 92%
Average Length: 3.8 hours
Meidan Price: $9.99An important note on revenue estimates: Actual gross revenue figures on Steam are not publicly available. The revenue estimates in this report are sourced from GameDiscoverCo and may differ significantly from real earnings. I include them, along with revenue-based tiers, to give a rough "squint test" of each game's relative success.
Top-Tier Hits
Games that made over $1M in estimated gross revenue
NEEDY STREAMER OVERLOAD is a life-sim, visual novel, and psychological horror game with connections to the character-raising sim subgenre including the Princess Maker series, Chinese Parents, Long Live The Queen and more recently Volcano Princess. You manage Ame (streamer name: KAngel) for 30 days, moderating her streams, raising her follower count, and juggling her stress, affection, and mental darkness levels. The game features 25 possible endings based on the choices players make throughout 30 in-game days. It explores social media addiction, fame-chasing, and the extremes of parasocial relationships (see also Parasocial). NEEDY STREAMER OVERLOAD sold extremely well (it was a blind spot for me until doing this research) and offers one of the clearest design templates for character-raising sims built around a computer interface.
RELEASE INFO
January 22, 2022
Average Length: 3 hours
Price: $15.99
RANKINGS
1 - Gross Revenue
3 - All Time High Concurrent Users (ATH CCU)
5 - All Time High Monthly Twitch Viewers (ATH MTV)
STATS
Gross Revenue: $16.6M
Reviews: 45,344
Review Score: 94%
ATH CCU: 3,674
ATH MTV: 52,486
A realistic hacking simulator that uses actual UNIX commands. Since its release in 2015, many other hacking games have drawn inspiration from Hacknet, and there is even a dedicated hacking tag on Steam. Due to the subgenre’s visibility, I have included only a couple notable examples in this report. You can find many more on the tag page, including CaseCracker, Anonymous Hacker Simulator, Grey Hack, and Hacker Simulator. See also the programming tag on Steam.
RELEASE INFO
August 8, 2015
Average Length: 7 hours
Price: $9.99
RANKINGS
2 - Gross Revenue
2 - All Time High Concurrent Users (ATH CCU)
12 - All Time High Monthly Twitch Viewers (ATH MTV)
STATS
Gross Revenue: $10M
Reviews: 16,187
Review Score: 93%
ATH CCU: 127,640
ATH MTV: 5,676
An investigation job sim where you must gather data using comprehensive surveillance tools to figure out who was responsible for a terrorist bombing in a fictionalized country called The Nation. You read news articles, emails, texts, and transcribed phone calls and attempt to make connections between people seen at the site of the bombing. The game successfully translates the core appeal of detective games into a modern political context. The sequel, Orwell: Ignorance is Strength, uses a similar sleek, faux government agency computer interface and expands on the political sim aspects.
RELEASE INFO
October 27, 2016
Average Length: 4.5
Price: $9.99
RANKINGS
3 - Gross Revenue
1 - All Time High Concurrent Users (ATH CCU)
6 - All Time High Monthly Twitch Viewers (ATH MTV)
STATS
Gross Revenue: $2M
Reviews: 8,497
Review Score: 90%
ATH CCU: 154,375
ATH MTV: 32,777
It’s 1999 and you’re surfing the underbelly of the world wide web. Browse geocities-style websites to find evidence of illicit activities including weapons assembly, malware distribution, use of copy-written material, multi-level marketing schemes, and more. The websites themselves are super varied and filled with all the crunchy jpgs, animated gifs, and stylized text you’d expect from the early Angelfire era. Hypnospace Outlaw succeeds by embracing the surreal and disjointed aesthetic of the late 90s internet and is especially visually distinct among the other games in the microgenre.
RELEASE INFO
March 12, 2019
Average Length: 6 hours
Price: $19.99
RANKINGS
4 - Gross Revenue
10 - All Time High Concurrent Users (ATH CCU)
3 - All Time High Monthly Twitch Viewers (ATH MTV)
STATS
Gross Revenue: $1.9M
Reviews: 4,262
Review Score: 96%
ATH CCU: 169
ATH MTV: 65,776
A psychological horror game set within a distorted version of your own desktop, styled after Windows XP. It was played by many popular streamers including xQc. KinitoPet is one of two Computer Use games that explore the computer virus as a core narrative and gameplay element (see also Winion Virus). The game has some really interesting experimental perspective shifts and surprises and is best played spoiler-free. It’s by far one of the weirdest games in the genre and cool to see how well it sold.
RELEASE INFO
January 9, 2024
Average Length: 1.5 hours
Price: $5.99
RANKINGS
5 - Gross Revenue
6 - All Time High Concurrent Users (ATH CCU)
2 - All Time High Monthly Twitch Viewers (ATH MTV)
STATS
Gross Revenue: $1.4M
Reviews: 11,587
Review Score: 93%
ATH CCU: 655
ATH MTV: 74,565
Her Story is a FMV murder mystery game that kicked off the microgenre (according to my modern timeline) in 2015. The game involves the player browsing a police database viewing videos of a woman being interrogated in connection to her husband’s murder. The core gameplay mechanic is simple, search for keywords to find new videos and gather clues. You’ll spend the most of the game watching the interviews and jotting down notes. The game performed well considering it’s situated in a very niche genre (FMV). Sam Barlow’s follow up Telling Lies, follows a similar format.
See also The Roottrees Are Dead, which features the use of a computer, but which I omitted from this report as its core gameplay takes place primarily among manila folders of documents and an investigation corkboard.
RELEASE INFO
June 24, 2015
Average Length: ???
Average Price: $9.99
RANKINGS
6 - Gross Revenue
14 - All Time High Concurrent Users (ATH CCU)
9 - All Time High Monthly Twitch Viewers (ATH MTV)
STATS
Gross Revenue: $1.3M
Reviews: 7,873
Review Score: 89%
ATH CCU: 64
ATH MTV: 22,818
A narrative-driven detective sim where you play as an agent of the “FDI,” tasked with finding clues, piecing together evidence, and solving puzzles. The core gameplay, reminiscent of the Orwell series, involves sifting through a vast trove of information to uncover hidden connections.
RELEASE INFO
January 22, 2024
Average Length: 3.5 hours
Average Price: $13.99
RANKINGS
7 - Gross Revenue
4 - All Time High Concurrent Users (ATH CCU)
8 - All Time High Monthly Twitch Viewers (ATH MTV)
STATS
Gross Revenue: $1.2M
Reviews: 6,373
Review Score: 92%
ATH CCU: 1,326
ATH MTV: 24,028
Your job is to answer calls from concerned homeowners and browse the home safety database to figure out what their household hazard is ranging from bed bugs, carbon monoxide, termites, and mice. The game quickly takes an unsettling turn as callers start to inform you of bizarre issues that include things like “false beets” which are described as “harmless unless eaten by a human, at which point they will take root in the human’s stomach, feeding off its nutrients for its lifetime”. The game is well paced with increasingly disturbing calls interrupted by prank calls, emails from corporate, and public access-style videos that appear on your desktop. A simple Windows 95-esque interface combined with an excellent concept and narrative go a long way.
RELEASE INFO
January 16, 2024
Average Length: 2.5 hours
Price: $14.99
RANKINGS
8 - Gross Revenue
7 - All Time High Concurrent Users (ATH CCU)
4 - All Time High Monthly Twitch Viewers (ATH MTV)
STATS
Gross Revenue: $1M
Reviews: 2,198
Review Score: 91%
ATH CCU: 359
ATH MTV: 65,420Mid-Tier Successes
Games that made $250K – $1M in estimated gross revenue
Emily is Away <3 is the third game in a series by developer Kyle Seeley that includes Emily is Away and Emily is Away Too. The game takes place entirely in a recreation of the early Facebook interface. You play as a high school kid messaging friends and crushes as you pick from one of three dialogue choices to push the story forward.
RELEASE INFO
April 16, 2021
Average Length: 4.5
Price: $9.99
RANKINGS
9 - Gross Revenue
11 - All Time High Concurrent Users (ATH CCU)
1 - All Time High Monthly Twitch Viewers (ATH MTV)
STATS
Gross Revenue: $843K
Reviews: 5,601
Review Score: 92%
ATH CCU: 152
ATH MTV: 251,419
S4U: CITYPUNK 2011 AND LOVE PUNCH
You dig through chat logs and recordings using a desktop computer from the early 2000s with a cozy pixel-art style. S4U is one of the more character-driven and narrative heavy games of the bunch. You play as Miki who is a “mouthpiece”, an apparently real-world job where you chat on behalf of clients who have difficulty having challenging conversations. The game takes place across 9 days with dialogue choices impacting how the narrative unfolds. This is one of a few games in the microgenre that involves typing on the keyboard to fill out prescripted dialogue lines, which I found a little odd at first but eventually satisfying.
RELEASE INFO
January 8, 2025
Average Length: 6.5
Price: $13.99
RANKINGS
10 - Gross Revenue
5 - All Time High Concurrent Users (ATH CCU)
13 - All Time High Monthly Twitch Viewers (ATH MTV)
STATS
Gross Revenue: $464K
Reviews: 1,804
Review Score: 90%
ATH CCU: 1,036
ATH MTV: 2,855Low-Tier Sleepers
Games that made $25K – $250K in estimated gross revenue
An incremental job sim with resource management elements similar to Universal Paperclips. As with Home Safety Hotline mentioned above, the “It’s the 90s and I’m sitting at a desk just doing my job” concept is well implemented with believable Windows 95 styling and regular emails from your coworker and manager. As the job sim subgenre continues to fracture in really interesting ways, FACEMINER could serve as strong inspiration for developers looking to further expand on the reductionist Computer Use at the office variety.
RELEASE INFO
February 27, 2025
Average Length: 2.5 hours
Price: $7.99
RANKINGS
11 - Gross Revenue
9 - All Time High Concurrent Users (ATH CCU)
10 - All Time High Monthly Twitch Viewers (ATH MTV)
STATS
Gross Revenue: $193K
Reviews: 666
Review Score: 91%
ATH CCU: 257
ATH MTV: 17,807
DEAD LETTER DEPT. is a super stylized and slightly eerie job sim typing game. The game has a high contrast analog horror art style with heavy post processing similar to Buckshot Roulette or R.E.P.O. I liked the use of the first person character controller. Walking into the office from your apartment, sitting down at the computer, and concentrating on the CRT monitor sitting on an empty desk in front of a closed window gave me a strong sense of uneasiness. I would encourage developers to consider a similar first person framework especially if you’re setting out to make a horror game within the genre (see also s.p.l.i.t. below).
RELEASE INFO
January 30, 2025
Average Length: 2.5 hours
Price: $14.99
RANKINGS
12 - Gross Revenue
12 - All Time High Concurrent Users (ATH CCU)
7 - All Time High Monthly Twitch Viewers (ATH MTV)
STATS
Gross Revenue: $162K
Reviews: 859
Review Score: 96%
ATH CCU: 149
ATH MTV: 26,525
A visual-novel horror game where you interact with and care for sentient desktop virtual pets called Winions. It balances cute pixel-art nostalgia with unsettling digital horror. The game has found some success in Korea but has remained niche since its release late last year. The pairing of a child-like aesthetic with horror is unique for the genre. The relatively low sales for Winion Virus illustrates the importance of relatable specificity when it comes to defining the core fantasy of game. When glancing at the screenshots for the game it’s not immediately clear what the concept is, especially when compared to similar desktop horror games like KinitoPet.
RELEASE INFO
December 26, 2024
Average Length: 7 hours
Price: $10.99
RANKINGS
13 - Gross Revenue
13 - All Time High Concurrent Users (ATH CCU)
14 - All Time High Monthly Twitch Viewers (ATH MTV)
STATS
Gross Revenue: $82K
Reviews: 740
Review Score: 95%
ATH CCU: 101
ATH MTV: 158
A recently released hacking simulator from Buckshot Roulette developer Mike Klubnika. The game tasks the player, along with a small crew, with navigating a Unix-like command line accessing files and running programs. s.p.l.i.t. really “makes you feel like a hacker” and has a satisfying multi-monitor interaction with a first person perspective. As with Buckshot, the game is, in my opinion, drastically underpriced, but sales in the first few weeks have been solid.
RELEASE INFO
July 24, 2025
Average Length: 1 hour
Price: $2.99
RANKINGS
14 - Gross Revenue
8 - All Time High Concurrent Users (ATH CCU)
11 - All Time High Monthly Twitch Viewers (ATH MTV)
STATS
Gross Revenue: $80K
Reviews: 1,362
Review Score: 92%
ATH CCU: 334
ATH MTV: 14,863Bottom-Tier Misses
Games that made under $25K in estimated gross revenue. Detailed game stats are not included for this tier.
Upcoming Releases
A few yet-to-be released Computer Use games that I’m keeping an eye on
No Players Online
DECRYPTO Project
Shutter Story
Aster Initiative
Un-Usual Hotline
lily's world XD
Desktop Explorer
Borrowed from the term used by AI companies to describe when an AI model simulates a user’s interaction with a computer to perform tasks.