When you look at the “Trending” tab on Steam or the screen where your Discord group is starting up, it’s hard to believe that this is still the world of high-end AAA games. It looks like some of the games on the front page are cursed.
Think survival sandboxes where you collect monsters, poker roguelikes, 10-minute co-op horror experiments, and games that feel like someone shipped the craziest idea from a late-night call.
The question isn’t whether weird games are happening. It’s about whether this is a one-time event or a sign of things to come.
From Steam to Casinos: the Fish Game Example
This line of thinking shows up in places that don’t look like Steam at all. Fish shooting games are one of the best examples of how real-money platforms have been trying out new game types that feel more like arcade chaos than standard slots.
In the past, fish tables were cabinets and back-room attractions in some parts of the US and Asia. Players would sit around a shared screen and shoot cannons at moving fish and other sea animals. Depending on what they hit, they would win money.
Now, the same idea has made its way online as “fish hunter” or “fish shooting” rooms. In some casinos, they sit next to slots and crash games. They are called “skill-based, real-time multiplayer shooters” by B2B suppliers, and they are meant to keep people tapping and moving instead of just spinning.
A lot of people are interested in how much “skill” they really have and how officials should handle them because they combine arcade-style play with casino economics. A good fish game casinos review breaks down the different types of games that are available, how the odds are set, and what the laws are in the US and other countries. People who run casinos want the same thing that independent developers do. That’s small, weird, repeatable forms that keep people in the loop.
Weird Games Keep Stealing the Spotlight
Most people don’t talk about huge sequels when they talk about big hits from the last couple of years. Palworld is the best early example. It’s a survival game like Pokémon, but with guns. It was made by a small Japanese company and sold a million copies in its first eight hours, eight million in six days, and now it has more than 30 million players on Steam and Xbox.
Then there’s Balatro, a roguelike deckbuilder game that looks almost on purpose low-tech. It’s based on poker. Around the end of 2024, it had sold over 5 million copies thanks to word of mouth and videos of crazy boosters melting health bars. It had sold over 1 million copies in less than a month.
As you go down the list, you’ll see that action roguelikes made by one person, like Shape of Dreams, sell over 500,000 copies in their first month, and chaos shooters that look like they were made for the PlayStation 1 (Megabonk reached 1 million copies in just two weeks). All of these ideas would not have made it through a AAA pitch meeting. In the year 2025, they’re the kind of thing that takes over your friends’ list for the whole weekend.
Small Teams, Huge Numbers
How small these projects are behind the scenes is what ties them all together. Palworld started out with a team that was more like a big independent game than a typical live-service giant. Balatro was mostly made by one worker with some help from a small group of people. Shape of Dreams began as a project for a small group of Korean college students.
Everything around them has changed too. It’s cheap to publish on Steam, and tools like Unity and Unreal are easy to get. TikTok, YouTube, and Twitch also make it easy for people to find your videos. Streamers no longer have to explain a 30-hour story arc. They just start a run, the strangeness is explained, and watchers decide in seconds if they want to buy it.
There is evidence for this. Roguelike deckbuilders like Balatro, Slay the Spire, and Inscryption got over 11.7 million hours of watch time on big streaming platforms in a single quarter, even though they were all “small” games in terms of budget.
That speed can’t be copied by big companies that are stuck in eight-year cycles like Starfield or ten-year gaps between Diablos. The big ship turns around when the trend it was following is already old. A playtest is the only place where small teams can change their minds, not a board meeting.
Why Strange Games Fit How We Play Now
Most players already have one or two “forever games” in rotation. It’s usually a MOBA, a tac-FPS, an MMO, and a card game. Those skyscraper titles quietly consume hundreds of hours a year. That leaves a narrow lane for anything new that demands 60 hours, a full squad, and nightly commitment.
Weird games slide into the gaps of that schedule. They’re short-session friendly but endlessly replayable, relying on systems, randomization, and wild synergies instead of a constant feed of new content.
Vampire Survivors proved people were happy to play something that looked like a forgotten Flash game if the dopamine loop hit right. Balatro swapped out bullets for cards and landed in the same space. Such runs feel meaningful even if you only have 20 minutes to spare.
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