Profile updated
Protolife sits in the indie game space with a modest but strong Steam footprint: 469 reviews and 86% positive, rated Very Positive. Released in 2018 at an initial price of $11.99, it was developed and published by volcanic-giraffe, making it a self-published hidden gem candidate.
Overview
Protolife is a 2018 Indie game developed by Volcanic Giraffe and published by Volcanic Giraffe. On Steam it has gathered 446 player reviews, 86% of them positive, which counts as a very positive reception among indie titles in the Indie category. The game is available on mac, windows, and launched at $12. The pairing of developer Volcanic Giraffe with publisher Volcanic Giraffe is one of the studio-publisher relationships indielist tracks, letting players find comparable games and letting developers and investors study how Indie projects reach the market. indielist's white-box method estimates its lifetime sales at roughly 20,000 to 47,000 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, Protolife can be compared against similar Indie titles and benchmarked on review counts and estimated sales.
Reviews
446
Positive
86%
Steam appid
809440
Engine
Unknown
Players (snapshot)
Unavailable
Sales estimate
v1.020K to 47K
units (median: 33K)
≈ $137K to $321K modeled net revenue (fixed store-cut, refund, and regional-price assumptions applied)
+ - How is this calculated?
| Factor | Adjustment |
|---|---|
| base | +50 |
| year_2018 | +15 |
| price_$12 | 0 |
| positive_86% | +10 |
| final NB | 75 |
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 Protolife at roughly 20,000 to 47,000 copies, with a median around 33,000, derived from its 446 Steam reviews using a multi-factor Boxleiter method (version v1.0). That median maps to approximately $229K 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
12 observed days · window low $11.99Across 12 observed UTC days from 2026-07-17 to 2026-09-03, the daily lowest tracked USD price across stores ranged from $11.99 to $11.99. The tracked-window low was $11.99 on 2026-07-17.
Real store observations · daily lowest tracked USD price across stores · missing days are not filled.
Where to buy
Affiliate disclosure- Steam reference$11.99 Buy
- Green Man Gaming
- Fanatical
- Humble Store
- GOG.com
Latest tracked store observations (2026-09-03 06:02 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
macwindows
Genres
IndieStrategy
Frequently asked questions
- How many copies has Protolife sold?
- indielist estimates Protolife has sold between 20,070 and 46,830 units (median 33,450), derived from its 446 Steam reviews with the white-box Boxleiter v1.0 method. The full breakdown is shown on the page.
- Who developed Protolife?
- Protolife was developed by Volcanic Giraffe and published by Volcanic Giraffe.
- Who published Protolife?
- Protolife was published by Volcanic Giraffe, developed by Volcanic Giraffe. See Volcanic Giraffe's full catalogue and submission status on indielist.
- When was Protolife released?
- Protolife was released in 2018.
- How many reviews does Protolife have on Steam?
- Protolife has 446 Steam reviews, of which 86% are positive.
- Is Protolife worth playing?
- Steam players rate Protolife 86% positive across 446 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 Protolife can compare it on indielist against semantically similar Indie titles such as Stardew Valley, Euro Truck Simulator 2, Project Zomboid, Undertale, ranked by shared tags and genre rather than by ad spend. On the developer side, Volcanic Giraffe's other releases and Volcanic Giraffe's wider catalog are one click away, letting developers benchmark where Protolife 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 Protolife page serves three audiences at once: players hunting their next Indie 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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