// PC GAMER — GAMING
Steam Week in Review: Great, haystack slop is a thing now
All the interesting Steam facts for the week ending September 27.
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Clones have been a fixture in the games industry forever. For every Mario Bros there's a Giana Sisters, for every Stardew Valley there's a Fields of Mistria, and for every Needle In A Haystack Simulator there's a A Needle In a Haystack, or Needle in a Haystack, or Needle In A Haystack, or Needle In A Haystack - A Time For Goats, or Story of The Needle In a Haystack.
The total slopification of Steam continues apace and the recent spray of haystack games is the purest manifestation of this phenomenon. The first—as far as I can tell—was Needle In A Haystack Simulator, which is scheduled for release in Q4 2026. According to developers Studio Bitdot, a playtest in August attracted around 23,000 players, which is an astonishing figure for a game about finding a needle in a haystack.
I'm not surprised that Needle In A Haystack Simulator is popular, mind you. Games about meaningless and repetitive labour are all the rage. Needle In A Haystack Simulator hybridises sorting and incremental games: the player must manually sift through hay to find the needle, but sifting will also unearth items that can be sold for profit, all the better to invest in more efficient hay sorting technology. It sounds arduous and annoying, but there is, regrettably, a market for it.
At least two needle in a haystack games have beaten Studio Bitdot to release. Needle In A Haystack - A Time For Goats released on September 19 and, according to developer Red Key Games, had sold a thousand copies by September 26. Upon release, the studio wrote in an update that it was aware of the sudden onslaught of needle in haystack games. "We decided to set out and make this game and are very aware that since then, multiple hay games have surfaced and tweets have gotten super popular," the studio wrote.
"We want to let everyone know that this is a crazy coincidence and not us copying ideas. We were already months into production when this all happened". The studio goes on to share its SteamDB data as proof. Then, just yesterday, the studio added a bizarre new first-person shooter endgame, presumably to differentiate it from other haystack games. ("Dude, what are you thinking??" wrote user djcassar in response to this free expansion. "It is a completely different play style to what people are buying the game are intending to experience. Get rid of it!")
The other already-released haystack games came out on September 25 and is called, creatively, A Needle In A Haystack: Sorting Game. According to Steam reviews it is a substandard piece of software and I am not surprised.
But Needle In A Haystack Simulator has very many other competitors on the horizon: the demo for Needle In A Haystack, which releases in full on September 30, apparently attracted 20,000 players. Elsewhere, Story of The Needle In a Haystack is scheduled to release on November 28 and has a live demo.
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