Indie Game Analysis

Data-Driven Games Research

Indie Game Analysis is a research instrument: 26 independent games, each broken down across the same 35 standardized dimensions — from earliest playable form and original design thesis to who likely split revenue, nepotism assessment, and luck / happy accident component. Compare up to six games side by side, filter to only the dimensions where they differ, share any comparison as a URL. Sources cited on every claim, browsable with or without JavaScript.

Our manifesto says we question narratives — including our own. So the honest way to showcase the instrument is to aim it at itself. Below: entry #27, analyzed on its own dimensions.

Indie Game Analysis · analyzed across its own dimensions

Immediate origin story / spark
The studio was preparing to launch a competitive arcade sport and refused to do it on vibes. The spark: indie success stories are usually told as myth — the instrument exists to replace myth with comparable, sourced records before real money follows the narrative.
Sources: iga.outright.io outrightmental.com/manifesto

Original design thesis
Standardize the questions so the answers can't hide. Every game faces the identical 35 dimensions — the flattering ones (biggest commercial strength) and the uncomfortable ones (nepotism assessment, luck component, stakeholder recuperation likelihood). If a claim has no source, it doesn't ship.

Was the design aimed at TAM capture?
No. Built to inform one studio's one decision, then published because sourced records beat private hunches. A small, sharp tool — deliberately.

Meticulous decisions that mattered
Every comparison is a shareable URL, so an argument about games can be settled by sending a link. The catalog renders without JavaScript. Dimension slugs are stable. Sources are pinned per claim, not per page.

Luck / happy accident component
Low so far — and that's the point. The instrument's own thesis is that luck is real but overcredited as narrative; it gets a dedicated dimension precisely so it can't be quietly folded into “genius.”

One-sentence neutral verdict
A working research surface that trades hot takes for standardized, sourced comparison — and whose primary customer is the studio's own next launch.

Confidence / missing data caveats
Public-record limits apply everywhere: exact revenue splits and internal ownership are rarely disclosed, so the dataset says so instead of guessing. Confidence is a dimension, not a footnote.

What a profile looks like

Each game gets a full standardized breakdown. Here’s the top of Noita’s — included in the dataset because Noita is the study text for making physics itself generate endless marketing moments:

The Noita profile in Indie Game Analysis — every dimension, sourced

The adoption syllabus

The dataset doubles as the curriculum for Fever Tilt. Lethal League Blaze is the clearest study in making a dangerous object carry a whole competitive game. Duck Game is a compact lesson in turning chaos into shareable social memory. ROUNDS is the anti-snowball 1v1 case a score-race sport should take seriously. Videoball is the minimalist digital-sport cautionary tale. Twenty-six games in, patterns stop being anecdotes: the entries state why each game is included in Fever Tilt’s syllabus, right in the record.

Presence over avoidance applies to business reality too. It would be more comfortable to study only the wins, skip the luck audit, and assume the origin myths are true. The instrument looks directly — at demand evidence, at recoupment logic, at what actually made these games take hold — and proceeds anyway.

Commission the instrument

The instrument was built for one studio’s own decision: before real money followed an indie success story, it wanted to know what the record actually shows. Nothing about it stops there — the same 35 dimensions can be aimed at whatever titles and questions you are deciding about. So the instrument is now something you can commission.

RESEARCH BRIEF

$2,500

commissioned · per report

A comparison or diligence pass on the titles and questions you choose, run through the standardized 35 dimensions every entry faces — sources pinned to each claim, delivered as a shareable URL anyone on your side can open.

SPONSORSHIP

$500 / month

single slot · exclusions apply

One tasteful sponsor slot on iga.outright.io — a single association with rigorous, sourced indie-games research. One slot only, and the firewall below is a condition of it, not a footnote to it.

Commission a brief or sponsor a slot See the instrument

For publishers and funds, that is the entire value: diligence that answers “what does the record actually show?” before money follows narrative — the flattering dimensions and the uncomfortable ones, on the titles you are actually weighing. It was the tool’s founding purpose; commissioning simply points it at your decision instead of ours.

Methodology firewall

Neutrality is the whole product, so paying us cannot buy influence over it. The same rule governs the free instrument, commissioned briefs, and sponsorship alike. It is published here and mirrored on iga.outright.io:

Sponsors get no input into which dimensions exist, which games are analyzed, or what any profile concludes.
Companies whose games appear in the dataset are excluded from sponsorship — no one buys a slot beside their own analysis.
Commissioned briefs are marked as commissioned, in the open, on the artifact itself.
The rule that governs the free instrument governs paid work without exception: if a claim has no source, it doesn't ship.

If a commission’s honest answer is unflattering, that is the answer you paid for. An instrument that would soften the record for money is worthless to anyone doing diligence — which is exactly who this is for.

Proof: iga.outright.io — the analysis tool · all 26 games · all 35 dimensions