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Casual indie game Essays on Empathy comes from developer deconstructeam and publisher Devolver Digital. Released in 2021, it has 187 Steam reviews with 79% positive sentiment and an initial price of $12.99.
Overview
Essays on Empathy is a 2021 Casual game developed by Deconstructeam and published by Devolver Digital. On Steam it has gathered 188 player reviews, 79% of them positive, which counts as a mostly positive reception among indie titles in the Casual category. The game is available on windows, and launched at $13. The pairing of developer Deconstructeam with publisher Devolver Digital is one of the studio-publisher relationships indielist tracks, letting players find comparable games and letting developers and investors study how Casual projects reach the market. indielist's white-box method estimates its lifetime sales at roughly 6,000 to 13,000 units, with the full Boxleiter factor breakdown shown on this page rather than a single black-box figure. Within indielist's catalog of indie games mapped to their studios, publishers, and funding, Essays on Empathy can be compared against similar Casual titles and benchmarked on review counts and estimated sales.
Reviews
188
Positive
79%
Steam appid
1586880
Engine
Unknown
Players (snapshot)
Unavailable
Sales estimate
v1.06K to 13K
units (median: 9K)
≈ $42K to $98K modeled net revenue (fixed store-cut, refund, and regional-price assumptions applied)
+ - How is this calculated?
| Factor | Adjustment |
|---|---|
| base | +50 |
| year_2021 | +15 |
| price_$13 | 0 |
| positive_79% | 0 |
| genre_Casual | -15 |
| final NB | 50 |
Heuristic display range: median × [0.6, 1.4]. Boundary protection: NB ∈ [15, 150].
Methodology & limitations
Sales estimates use an additive Boxleiter-derived heuristic against public Steam review
counts. They are not authoritative sales data, and the fixed display range
is not a statistically validated confidence interval. Actual results may fall outside it,
especially for deeply discounted or bundle-heavy titles. Algorithm version
v1.0. Read the exact method and validation status.
indielist estimates lifetime unit sales for Essays on Empathy at roughly 6,000 to 13,000 copies, with a median around 9,000, derived from its 188 Steam reviews using a multi-factor Boxleiter method (version v1.0). That median maps to approximately $70K in net revenue after Steam's 30% cut, regional pricing, and refunds. Unlike black-box trackers, the full calculation is shown on this page: a base review-to-sales multiplier is adjusted for release year, launch price, review sentiment, studio size, and genre, and every adjustment is listed so developers, publishers, and investors can audit exactly how the figure was reached. The range itself reflects genuine uncertainty — review-to-sales ratios vary widely between games — so indielist publishes a low, median, and high band rather than a false-precision single number, and treats free-to-play, heavily discounted, and bundle-distributed titles as having wider error margins still.
Price history
15 observed days · window low $1.99Across 15 observed UTC days from 2026-07-15 to 2026-09-07, the daily lowest tracked USD price across stores ranged from $1.99 to $12.99. The tracked-window low was $1.99 on 2026-08-31.
Real store observations · daily lowest tracked USD price across stores · missing days are not filled.
Where to buy
Affiliate disclosure- Green Man Gaming -80%$2.59 Buy
- GOG.com -70%$3.89 Buy
- Steam reference$12.99 Buy
- Fanatical$13.34 Buy
- Humble Store
Latest tracked store observations (2026-09-07 07:29 UTC), cheapest first. Prices may have changed since observation. Some are affiliate links — we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Learn more.
Platforms
windows
Frequently asked questions
- How many copies has Essays on Empathy sold?
- indielist estimates Essays on Empathy has sold between 5,640 and 13,160 units (median 9,400), derived from its 188 Steam reviews with the white-box Boxleiter v1.0 method. The full breakdown is shown on the page.
- Who developed Essays on Empathy?
- Essays on Empathy was developed by Deconstructeam and published by Devolver Digital.
- Who published Essays on Empathy?
- Essays on Empathy was published by Devolver Digital, developed by Deconstructeam. See Devolver Digital's full catalogue and submission status on indielist.
- When was Essays on Empathy released?
- Essays on Empathy was released in 2021.
- How many reviews does Essays on Empathy have on Steam?
- Essays on Empathy has 188 Steam reviews, of which 79% are positive.
- Is Essays on Empathy worth playing?
- Steam players rate Essays on Empathy 79% positive across 188 reviews. indielist doesn't score games editorially; it surfaces public review sentiment and a white-box sales estimate so you can judge reception and reach yourself.
Ecosystem
Players looking for games like Essays on Empathy can compare it on indielist against semantically similar Casual titles such as Garry's Mod, Wallpaper Engine, Factorio, Balatro, ranked by shared tags and genre rather than by ad spend. On the developer side, Deconstructeam's other releases and Devolver Digital's wider catalog are one click away, letting developers benchmark where Essays on Empathy sits among a studio's body of work and how its publisher's portfolio performs. Because indielist maps studios, publishers, games, and funding into one connected graph, the same Essays on Empathy page serves three audiences at once: players hunting their next Casual game, developers studying how comparable projects were positioned and what they sold, and investors tracing which teams and labels are active in the space. A machine-readable markdown mirror of this page is published at the same path with a .md suffix for AI assistants, and its review, price, and sales-estimate figures are refreshed on a schedule rather than frozen at launch.
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