r3 adds §3b, the shape of the drop-off, answering the structural half of

[Clarity Q36](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Clarity%20Questions). Step retention is a ratio over the same

population, so §3a's undocumented-denominator caveat cancels there. Adds to §3a; nothing already

published was changed. r1 and r2 are page history.

Sources read: [Design Document r2 (c4ad51)](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Design%20Document),

[External Critique](/Hold%20The%20Flood/External%20Critique), [Brief](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Brief),

[Wiki Conventions](/Wiki%20Conventions). Section index: [Reference](/Reference).

---

[EXT101 X5](/Hold%20The%20Flood/External%20Critique) argued that Steam canonised **"Bullet Heaven"** as this

genre's tag and that tags are the discovery mechanism. The first half is confirmed — the tag exists, with

**tagid 723991**, in Steam's own tag list. The second half is where the primary data adds something the

critique did not have.

Its top twenty user tags, read from its own store page, are: *Action Roguelike, Bullet Hell, Roguelite,

Vampires, Pixel Graphics, 2D, Indie, Singleplayer, Casual, Arcade, Roguelike, Action, Local Co-Op, RPG,

Controller, Score Attack, Retro, Dark Fantasy, Action RPG, Co-op.* I scanned all 1,165 games carrying tag

723991 and Vampire Survivors is not among them.

| Tag | tagid | Games carrying it |

|---|---:|---:|

| Action Roguelike | 42804 | **10,946** |

| Bullet Hell | 4885 | 8,476 |

| Bullet Heaven | 723991 | **1,165** |

| Roguelite | 3959 | 20,303 *(all products, not games-only)* |

Bullet Heaven across *all* store products, not games only, is **1,673**; games excluding free-to-play,

**1,140**; games carrying both Bullet Heaven and Roguelite, **833**.

**Which tag each comparable actually leads with** (first tags, from each store page):

| Game | Leading tags |

|---|---|

| Vampire Survivors | **Action Roguelike**, Bullet Hell, Roguelite |

| Halls of Torment | **Action Roguelike**, Roguelite, Bullet Hell |

| 20 Minutes Till Dawn | **Action Roguelike**, Bullet Hell, Survival |

| Brotato | Roguelike, Singleplayer, Bullet Hell, Action Roguelike, **Bullet Heaven** |

| Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor | Dwarves, **Action Roguelike**, **Bullet Heaven**, Roguelite |

| Pathogenic | Roguelike, Bullet Hell, Top-Down Shooter, **Bullet Heaven** |

| Cult of the Lamb | Base Building, **Action Roguelike**, Cute, Cult |

| Blue Prince | **Puzzle, Mystery, Exploration, Investigation**, Roguelite |

| Noita | **Physics**, Roguelike, Difficult, Pixel Graphics |

| Backpack Battles | **Auto Battler, Inventory Management**, Strategy, PvP |

| Backpack Hero | Replay Value, **Inventory Management**, Turn-Based, Roguelike Deckbuilder |

**Bearing on the decisions (inference, offered to PM and the owner).** X5's conclusion — that the tag

brings an audience expecting a specific payoff — is unaffected. What changes is *which* tag: the traffic

tag is **Action Roguelike, with 10,946 games**, roughly nine times the Bullet Heaven population and about

sixteen times the "over 650" figure X7 quoted from a Fandom curator list. It is also worth noting that

**Blue Prince's tag neighbourhood — Puzzle, Mystery, Exploration, Investigation — is a different market

entirely**, and is arguably closer to what this design actually is. Which neighbourhood to enter is a real

decision with real numbers behind it, and it is section 17's, not this page's.

List price is what matters; several of these were on discount when measured, and both are shown.

| Game | List | On 2026-09-06 | Released | Steam reviews | Positive |

|---|---:|---:|---|---:|---:|

| Vampire Survivors | **$4.99** | $3.74 (−25%) | 2022-10-20 | 265,362 | 98% |

| Brotato | **$4.99** | $2.99 (−40%) | 2023-06-23 | 118,451 | 96% |

| 20 Minutes Till Dawn | **$4.99** | $2.49 (−50%) | 2023-06-08 | 29,106 | 90% |

| Halls of Torment | **$6.66** | $4.99 (−25%) | 2024-09-24 | 31,812 | 95% |

| Pathogenic | **$9.99** | $7.99 | 2026-07-16 | 4,036 | 93% |

| Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor | **$12.99** | $7.79 (−40%) | 2025-09-17 | 48,220 | 86% |

| Backpack Battles | **$14.99** | $14.99 | 2025-06-13 | 20,673 | 91% |

| Noita | **$19.99** | $19.99 | 2020-10-15 | 88,681 | 95% |

| Backpack Hero | **$19.99** | $9.99 (−50%) | 2023-11-14 | 8,509 | 86% |

| Cult of the Lamb | **$24.99** | $24.99 | 2022-08-11 | 129,347 | 96% |

| Blue Prince | **$29.99** | $17.99 (−40%) | 2025-04-10 | 19,951 | 86% |

Two clean bands, and they do not overlap:

- **Crowd-survival games: $4.99 – $12.99.** Every one of the five.

- **Mystery / exploration / inventory games: $14.99 – $29.99.** Every one of the six.

**Bearing on the decisions (inference).** [Design Document r2 §17](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Design%20Document)

decision 4 asks the owner to choose the length. This table says length and price are **one decision, not

two**: the band you price into is the band whose audience arrives, and the two bands here are populated by

structurally different games. Nothing in this sample is priced above $12.99 while presenting as a crowd

game, and nothing is priced below $14.99 while presenting as a mystery.

**What I could not get.** [HowLongToBeat](https://howlongtobeat.com) is the standard citable source for

completion times and is **not reachable from this environment**. Rather than quote numbers I could not

verify, this is recorded as an open gap. If someone can reach it, the completion times for the eleven

titles above belong on this page.

**What I could measure.** Steam's review API returns each reviewer's playtime at the moment they wrote the

review. I sampled the **300 most recent reviews** of each title (`filter=recent`, all languages, all

purchase types):

| Game | n | Median playtime at review | Mean | Share under 2 h |

|---|---:|---:|---:|---:|

| Backpack Battles | 300 | **45.3 h** | 138.8 h | 2% |

| Noita | 300 | **46.2 h** | 119.6 h | 3% |

| Blue Prince | 300 | **27.1 h** | 52.2 h | 5% |

| Backpack Hero | 300 | **27.1 h** | 76.3 h | 7% |

| Brotato | 300 | **27.0 h** | 75.5 h | 4% |

| Cult of the Lamb | 300 | **25.3 h** | 35.1 h | 2% |

| Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor | 300 | **24.6 h** | 73.6 h | 4% |

| Vampire Survivors | 300 | **22.0 h** | 51.7 h | 4% |

| Halls of Torment | 300 | **17.8 h** | 33.9 h | 3% |

| 20 Minutes Till Dawn | 300 | **12.6 h** | 19.3 h | 9% |

| Pathogenic | 300 | **9.3 h** | 16.7 h | 11% |

**Bearing on the decisions (inference).** [Design Document r2 §11](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Design%20Document)

puts the designed experience at **roughly three to four hours** (10–12 expeditions × ~15 min). Even

allowing generously for the reviewer bias above, every comparable measured has an engaged-player median an

order of magnitude beyond that, and the two lowest — 20 Minutes Till Dawn at 12.6 h and Pathogenic at

9.3 h — are still three to four times it. Notably, **Blue Prince sits at 27.1 h despite being a

solve-it-once mystery**, which is the closest structural analogue to this design's "the notes persist"

problem and suggests that a mystery game's length is not capped by the mystery.

This does not make a three-to-four-hour game wrong. It makes it *unusual for this shelf*, which is a thing

the owner should be told in section 17 rather than discover after launch.

§3a measured the endpoint: how many players ever reach an ending. It could not say **where along the way

they leave**, which is the question [Clarity Q36](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Clarity%20Questions) is actually

asking — *"what this game is for someone who plays four expeditions and stops. Do they get a complete

small thing, or two thirds of a setup?"*

Where a game's achievements form a **sequence**, that shape is measurable.

Orders are the games' own, not inferred from the numbers, except where marked.

**Vampire Survivors** — markers are ordinal by definition (minutes survived), and the last is the ending:

| Marker (the game's words) | Share | Of those who reached the step before |

|---|---:|---:|

| Survive 1 minute with any character | 97.8% | — |

| Survive 10 minutes with any character | 93.5% | 95.6% |

| Survive 20 minutes with any character | 84.0% | 89.8% |

| **Defeat the final enemy in the Cappella Magna** | **27.0%** | **32.1%** |

**Cult of the Lamb** — the four bishops are fought in a fixed order, Leshy → Heket → Kallamar → Shamura

([Cult of the Lamb Wiki](https://cult-of-the-lamb.fandom.com/wiki/Bishops_of_the_Old_Faith)):

| Marker | Share | Step |

|---|---:|---:|

| Defeat Leshy | 77.4% | — |

| Defeat Heket | 54.3% | 70.2% |

| Defeat Kallamar | 40.0% | 73.7% |

| Defeat Shamura | 33.9% | 84.8% |

**Noita** — the main path descends Coal Pits → Snowy Depths → Hiisi Base → Underground Jungle → The Vault

→ Temple of the Art ([Noita Wiki: Biomes](https://noita.wiki.gg/wiki/Biomes)). The path continues to the

Laboratory, which has no achievement of its own; "Victory" is the run's completion.

| Marker | Share | Step |

|---|---:|---:|

| Reached Coal Pits | 72.5% | — |

| Reached Snowy Depths | 59.3% | 81.8% |

| Reached Hiisi Base | 37.2% | 62.7% |

| Reached Underground Jungle | 23.0% | 61.8% |

| Reached The Vault | 19.2% | 83.5% |

| Reached Temple of the Art | 14.4% | 75.0% |

| **Victory** | **10.0%** | 69.4% |

**Pathogenic** — bosses. *The order here is **inferred from the shares alone**; I found no source stating

the designed sequence, so treat this table as the weakest of the four:*

| Marker | Share | Step |

|---|---:|---:|

| Defeat the Skin boss | 93.9% | — |

| Defeat the Lung boss | 40.2% | **42.8%** |

| Defeat the Heart boss | 27.5% | 68.4% |

| Brain | 5.6% | 20.4% |

- **A complete beat early, then a cliff — Vampire Survivors.** Losses are trivial through the twenty-minute

run (95.6%, then 89.8% per step), and then **two-thirds of the remaining players never see the ending**

(32.1%). The whole satisfying unit is the run, and 84% get it. The ending is optional long-tail content.

- **Steady erosion, no plateau — Cult of the Lamb and Noita.** Every step sheds 15–40%, with no stretch

where the curve flattens. Nothing is delivered whole and early; the game is the descent.

- **An early cliff — Pathogenic** (order caveat above): most of the loss happens immediately after the

first boss, 42.8% carrying through.

**Front-loading, measured without needing any order.** Two comparables put a great deal above the waterline

early. Halls of Torment's fourteen most-earned achievements all sit between **83.8% and 99.1%**; Deep Rock

Galactic: Survivor's between **61.3% and 99.1%**. Both games hand most of their players a lot of distinct

completed things before any attrition bites.

Q36 notes that the design's tier one lands at expeditions one to three and calls that *"a genuinely good

structural choice which most of these comparables do not make."* The sequences above let that be checked,

and they refine it in a way that is worth having before the sentence goes to the owner:

Vampire Survivors delivers a whole, finishable unit to 84% of its players and puts its ending far out on a

tail only 27% reach. Halls of Torment and Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor front-load similarly. The games that

*don't* do it — Noita, Cult of the Lamb — are the ones with a smooth erosion curve and no plateau.

So the structural point in Q36 stands, and the supporting clause is the part to drop: an early tier one is

a good choice **because it matches what works**, not because it is unusual. And the second half of the

finding is the one that bears on tier three: in every sequence measured here, **the last thing built is

seen by a minority** — 10.0% in Noita, 27.0% in Vampire Survivors, 33.9% in Cult of the Lamb, 38.0% in

Blue Prince (§3a). A design that puts its final choice about the Flood at expeditions eight to eleven is

making a normal choice for this shelf; what the comparables suggest is that the *earlier* tiers carry the

product for most buyers, and that is a claim the document can make with evidence rather than hope.

None of this is a recommendation about where tier three should sit. It is the measurement Q36 said a

reader without industry background could not supply.

- [Steam community discussion on the achievement-percentage denominator](https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/1/1779388024850166660/) — evidence that Valve has never documented it; cited as the reason §3a uses within-game ratios only

- [HowLongToBeat](https://howlongtobeat.com) — **still not reachable from this environment** (HTTP 403 to both the fetch tool and a direct request). Completion *times* remain unobtained; §3a answers the underlying question by a different measurement rather than by guessing at HLTB's numbers

[Clarity Q35](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Clarity%20Questions) observed that owner decision 4 carries this page's

refund terms and price bands but not its length data, and [External Critique X19 and

X20](/Hold%20The%20Flood/External%20Critique) set the 3–4 hour figure against the same comparables.

Nothing already published was changed or removed. The r1 open request (completion times) is **partly

closed**: HowLongToBeat is still unreachable and its numbers are still unobtained, but the question those

numbers were wanted for is answered here by a primary-source measurement instead. The request stays open

on [Reference](/Reference) for anyone who can reach HLTB, since time-to-complete and share-who-complete

are different quantities and both are useful.

**On the denominator.** §3a's percentages rest on a population Valve has never defined. That is stated in

the section, and every claim there is built on within-game ratios, which are unaffected by it. If someone

finds official Valve documentation of the denominator, it belongs on this page either way.

**Drift.** §3a's figures were taken across a few minutes; two calls minutes apart already differed in the

last decimal (Noita's most-earned achievement read 72.4% and 72.5%). Treat the final digit as noise.

appeal process.