Summary
A week following its release, a new indie game calledPocoboasts an immense 92% approval rating onSteam, while also being completely free to play, with no hidden costs. AlthoughPocohas already generated some decent traction on Valve’s storefront, the small team behind thisSteamrelease says there are no plans to monetize the game.
Pocois a point-and-click adventure with a circus theme and extremely accessible hardware requirements. Over a two-month period ending April 15, the game raised $2,618 from 88 backers on Kickstarter. Nevertheless, characterizingPocoas aKickstarter success storywouldn’t be accurate, as the team of students behind the game always intended to release it, and merely turned to the crowdfunding platform to cover some additional expenses like festival submissions at a point when the project was already nearing completion.
A month following the end of its Kickstarter campaign,Pocolaunched via Steamon May 20. Over the course of the next seven days, the game amassed north of 600 player reviews, with 92.43% of them being favorable, placing its overall user impressions in the storefront’s “Overwhelmingly Positive” category. According to a 2023 study by GameDiscoverCo, only a small fraction ofSteam usersleave reviews, which would suggest thatPocohas likely already been downloaded thousands of times, potentially exceeding 10,000 installs.
What Kind of Game Is Poco?
The game itself puts players in the tiny shoes of the titular Poco, the world’s smallest clown, who is banished from his circus and sent to the Below World. There, he plots his escape by building a rocket, enlisting the help of a cast of colorful characters. Gameplay features exploration, puzzle-solving, dialogue, and mini-games. The art direction evokesclassic point-and-click adventures, combining animated 3D character models with hand-painted 2D backgrounds.
Poco Developers Made it to Graduate
The team of students behind the game, which includesThe Multi-MediumandBirdGutdeveloper Micah Boursier, has no plans to monetizePoco, having said as much on the project’s Kickstarter page. The lack of a business model stems from the game being a university thesis project, with its release date aligned with the developers’ graduation deadline.
Twitch Streamers Possibly Boosted Poco
Poco’s recent momentum on Steam may be tied to the streamer attention it received in late May 2025. Over the past few days, several mid-sized Twitch creators—including Ezekiel_III, Lexy, and Varidetta, who collectively have more than 300,000 followers on the platform—spent several hours streaming the indie point-and-click adventure, generating over 2,000 hours watched, according to Streams Charts data. Given the game’s free-to-play model, that visibility may have been enough to significantly boost its popularity, possibly resulting in a higher-than-usual viewer-to-player conversion rate.
