
I Hate Running Backwards is a never-ending adrenaline packed shoot'em down roguelite that puts the emphasis on destruction and fighting never ending waves of enemies while time traveling through procedurally generated worlds!
Modeled estimate, not a reported figure. How we estimate →
Prices
The United States storefront in every case, so this compares stores and not countries.
Discounts
Every price cut of more than 20% we have observed, in each market that quoted one, with this game's chart position on either side of it. These are episodes, not a model: a sale is one event, and one event cannot tell you what the next one will do.
Reviews, worldwide (the counter carries no country): 0/day in the week to Jul 30 → 0/day in the week after.
For scale, across Steam · Top Sellers · Brazil over the last 30 days: the 25 chart moves that followed a price cut of more than 20% went a median of 10 places towards #1, and the 2,413 moves with no price cut behind them went 2 away. One store, one chart, one country — it is the only place we have enough observations to say even that.
Prices outside the United States have been collected since 6 August 2026 and chart positions since 19 July 2026, so a cut older than that has no market to compare and a market that joined later has no history yet. Nothing here is converted between currencies.
About

Sums Steam only; PlayStation publishes no volume signal, so the true total is higher by an unknown amount.
| Store | Price | Audience | Score | Chart | Est. revenue |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
SteamYou are here | $14.99 | 245reviews | 75% | — | $77.5K |
| $14.99 | 84ratings | 81% | — | not modelled |
Matched by title — a reused name can pair the wrong games. * is a critic aggregate. Prices and positions are each store's United States storefront; Epic charts worldwide. Audience and Score too, except Steam's, which is worldwide.
Engagement
Reviews
Themes across 41 recent reviews and how positive each mention is. A keyword signal, not full sentiment analysis.
Reviews
It's a fun arcade top down run(albeit in opposition to the usual direction) and gun that's easy to pick up and play with another human being next to you so for a properly low sale price... give it a go why not.
[h1] Game set in Serious Sam universe obviously so expect "aaaaa" and some dope one liners. You run and shoot. As simple as it gets you have to worry about ammo and use special attacks reasonably. I was on the edge with this one... at one side it's a good arcade like shooter where you dodge enemies and environmental hazards. From the second side it's a bit tedious and requires a lot of repeating. There's some serious challenge here and I guarantee you will not get through the whole game on one go. Music is your typical well known SS soundtrack. I would consider this one as one of those good Serious Sam spin off games. [/h1]
Media

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Price dynamics, follower growth, revenue and sales trajectories with interactive tooltips
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Genres
Stats
All-time low is the lowest price we've recorded for this game since we started tracking it.
Languages: English*, French, Italian, German, Spanish - Spain, Dutch, Polish, Portuguese - Brazil, Russian, Simplified Chinese*languages with full audio support
Hours played at review time, across 41 reviews with recorded playtime.
positive critical· bar length = how often the theme comes up
[h1]Not very fun[/h1] Tried it in 2020 for a bit, did not like it. Tried it again in 2023: Still not very fun. It has potential but needs a lot more polishing. Weapons do not feel powerful
Хороший рогалик, но... Порт с мобилок в принципе удался. Интересный геймплей с мобами, улучшениями и боссами, прикольная стилистика. Множество оружий, персонажей с разных вселенных помогают разнообразить игру. Но играть долго не получится, по крайней мере я больше не хочу. Но игра хорошая.
I Hate Running Backwards is a really badly made 2D top down low poly arcade shoot'em up with a fricken massive world changing difference... instead of shoot 'em uping upwards, the game scrolls up but you shoot downwards. What a time to be alive. Yeah these guys thought inverting a basic Unity shmup template would turn them into game developers, regardless of how many (presumably asset flipped) low poly assets they shoved into their terrible Galaga ripoff. You can't make this up, this is what Steam Direct allowed onto Steam. They really want your money for this. On the upside, the game does feature customisable controls and resolution, so at least some of the basic, minimum requirements have been met. Unfortunately there's a number of other technical defects and shortcomings which contribute to the game being difficult to recommend to gamers. The game features lazy low-polygon "retro" assets, making this look like a barely functional 3D game from the 1990s. It's unclear why the developers weren't able to arrange high quality, high polygon count contemporary assets for the game, and also irrelevant... what matters is that this looks bad as a result of their decisions, a compromise PC gamers shouldn't have to put up with. Because this is designed for handheld/portable gaming appliances, it carries a number of deliberate design deficiencies. Compromises were made to cater to the low power handheld gaming appliances that the game was designed for. These are unfortunate compromises and limitations that PC gamers shouldn't be forced to accept, but it's evident that PC was a second thought for the mobile game developers. The game is deficient as a result of these choices, and would have been so much better without the handicaps that designing games for low power handhelds forces upon a game. While this might run well on a Steam Deck, we must remember the vast majority of gamers here are gaming on PC. These technical defects push this game below acceptable standards for any modern PC game. Reviewing SteamDB to check how popular this game was with players reveals a surprise... there's a modest spike in player counts for the game. But this only happened once, around the same time that trading cards were applied to the game... so this is just card idlers getting their cards and moving on. A closer look at the numbers shows the game just has a couple of players every week running up the game and idling it for cards, then deleting it. We must ask how it benefits gamers for there to be so many games like this, with no merit as a serious game, that only generate sales from people idling and selling the trading cards. So, should you buy this game? Is this one of the best of the 100,000+ games on Steam? I Hate Running Backwards has the almost unethical price of $15 USD, for which you could easily get any number of older AAA games. Given the defects and quality issues with the game, coupled with the unrealistic price, and the questionable ethical nature of the developer and/or their associates (as outlined above), this is impossible to recommend. For comparison, the $15 asking price for this game could get you games like "Wolfenstein - The New Order", "Hearts of Iron IV" or "Bioshock Infinite". Quality, professionally made games like those are frequently on sale cheaper than this.
It's very repetitive and feels more like a minigame than a full-fledged game like any of the other titles it references.
I hate running backwards too mate
[b]KAMGUSTA's mini Review[/b] It was made by a company who appears to run out of business as this is their first and only game. That said, I can understand why, as the gameplay is... lacking to say the least. Graphic is nice, but that's it. Running "backwards" feels not so out of the ordinary. There is a good reason nobody implemented it before: it's way less practical as bullets are harder to avoid. You'd think developers set difficulty accordly to that; they sadly didn't - game is almost unplayable. [b]Score 3,5/10[/b]
Fun for the first 30 minutes, than a nightmare. Impossible unlock lady death character, after 50 hours in the game the chest that you need to pick up to unlock the character never spawned.
more like i love blastin backwards lol holy crap this game is nuts in the best way. its like doom had a baby with geometry wars n timetravel graphics r old skool but in that cool retro way. enemies everywhere n stuff blowin up left n right gameplay loop is tight af. shoot, dodge, blow stuff up, repeat. sounds simple but its addictive as hell time travel stuff keeps it fresh. one min ur in wild west next ur in future. never gets old roguelite elements on point. each run feels different n kept me comin back for more music slaps harder than my drunk uncle at a wedding 9/10 cant stop playin send help. or more ammo. srsly tho buy this game if u like fun n hate sleep
Selling now
See how fast this game is selling right now — estimated copies and revenue per day from recent review growth.
Players by region
Where this game's players are, estimated from review languages.
Related
| Game | Estimated lifetime revenue | Reviews | Review score | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $437K | 4.9K | 97% | $4.99 | |
| $57.6K | 171 | 72% | $14.99 | |
| $10.6K | 71 | 72% | $9.99 | |
| $1.7M | 4.3K | 93% | $9.99 | |
| $721.6K | 2K | 82% | $14.99 | |
| $50.5K | 850 | 86% | $3.39 |
Related
| Game | Estimated lifetime revenue | Reviews | Review score | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $77.5K | 374 | 83% | $10.99 | |
| $77.6K | 178 | 71% | $5.99 | |
| $77.5K | 421 | 95% | $5.99 | |
| $77.6K | 2K | 79% | $2.24 | |
| $77.6K | 468 | 83% | $14.99 | |
| $77.6K | 142 | 95% | $12.99 |