The Game Census
The Children of Clay cover art

The Children of Clay

Balazs Ronyai · 2025-03-07

Steam

AdventureIndieSimulationFree To Play

Modes: Single player

Releases: Mar 07, 2025 (PC (Microsoft Windows))

The Children of Clay is a short stop motion archeology horror game, where you have to study an ancient artefact and discover its dark secret.

99%
positive of 4.1k reviews
Overwhelmingly Positive
steam's rating (official)
70/100
IGDB user rating (10 ratings)
platinum
deck/linux tier (ProtonDB)
Unknown
Steam Deck (Valve)
SteamOS: 0
Free
steam price (US)
The Children of Clay is a 2024 point-and-click horror game by Messier, the pseudonym of independent developer Balazs Ronyai. The game is a puzzle-based horror title in which the player inspects a cursed ancient artifact animated in stop motion. Upon release, The Children of Clay received a positive reception, with critics praising the game's atmosphere and visual presentation. A Steam version of the game was released in 2025.

Health check

Quietly active
  • · 152 reviews in the last 8 weeks (~19/week).
  • · Review velocity up 11% vs the prior 8 weeks.
  • · Top 6% of 29,211 Adventure games in the census by review count.

Review momentum

PositiveNegative
38938920252026Week of 2025-03-07: 242 positiveWeek of 2025-03-07: 3 negativeWeek of 2025-03-14: 223 positiveWeek of 2025-03-14: 3 negativeWeek of 2025-03-21: 389 positiveWeek of 2025-03-28: 179 positiveWeek of 2025-03-28: 2 negativeWeek of 2025-04-04: 131 positiveWeek of 2025-04-04: 1 negativeWeek of 2025-04-11: 78 positiveWeek of 2025-04-11: 1 negativeWeek of 2025-04-18: 125 positiveWeek of 2025-04-18: 1 negativeWeek of 2025-04-25: 62 positiveWeek of 2025-04-25: 1 negativeWeek of 2025-05-02: 67 positiveWeek of 2025-05-02: 2 negativeWeek of 2025-05-09: 55 positiveWeek of 2025-05-16: 67 positiveWeek of 2025-05-16: 2 negativeWeek of 2025-05-23: 68 positiveWeek of 2025-05-23: 1 negativeWeek of 2025-05-30: 62 positiveWeek of 2025-06-06: 48 positiveWeek of 2025-06-06: 1 negativeWeek of 2025-06-13: 46 positiveWeek of 2025-06-13: 1 negativeWeek of 2025-06-20: 41 positiveWeek of 2025-06-20: 2 negativeWeek of 2025-06-27: 38 positiveWeek of 2025-06-27: 2 negativeWeek of 2025-07-04: 40 positiveWeek of 2025-07-11: 37 positiveWeek of 2025-07-18: 34 positiveWeek of 2025-07-18: 2 negativeWeek of 2025-07-25: 56 positiveWeek of 2025-07-25: 2 negativeWeek of 2025-08-01: 42 positiveWeek of 2025-08-01: 1 negativeWeek of 2025-08-08: 38 positiveWeek of 2025-08-08: 1 negativeWeek of 2025-08-15: 117 positiveWeek of 2025-08-15: 1 negativeWeek of 2025-08-22: 65 positiveWeek of 2025-08-29: 65 positiveWeek of 2025-08-29: 1 negativeWeek of 2025-09-05: 61 positiveWeek of 2025-09-12: 40 positiveWeek of 2025-09-19: 47 positiveWeek of 2025-09-19: 1 negativeWeek of 2025-09-26: 38 positiveWeek of 2025-09-26: 2 negativeWeek of 2025-10-03: 32 positiveWeek of 2025-10-10: 40 positiveWeek of 2025-10-17: 41 positiveWeek of 2025-10-24: 36 positiveWeek of 2025-10-31: 60 positiveWeek of 2025-10-31: 2 negativeWeek of 2025-11-07: 45 positiveWeek of 2025-11-07: 1 negativeWeek of 2025-11-14: 37 positiveWeek of 2025-11-14: 1 negativeWeek of 2025-11-21: 133 positiveWeek of 2025-11-28: 51 positiveWeek of 2025-12-05: 30 positiveWeek of 2025-12-12: 36 positiveWeek of 2025-12-19: 23 positiveWeek of 2025-12-26: 40 positiveWeek of 2025-12-26: 1 negativeWeek of 2026-01-02: 35 positiveWeek of 2026-01-02: 1 negativeWeek of 2026-01-09: 48 positiveWeek of 2026-01-16: 36 positiveWeek of 2026-01-23: 41 positiveWeek of 2026-01-30: 27 positiveWeek of 2026-02-06: 20 positiveWeek of 2026-02-13: 38 positiveWeek of 2026-02-13: 1 negativeWeek of 2026-02-20: 23 positiveWeek of 2026-02-20: 2 negativeWeek of 2026-02-27: 27 positiveWeek of 2026-03-06: 22 positiveWeek of 2026-03-13: 31 positiveWeek of 2026-03-20: 27 positiveWeek of 2026-03-27: 25 positiveWeek of 2026-04-03: 22 positiveWeek of 2026-04-03: 2 negativeWeek of 2026-04-10: 32 positiveWeek of 2026-04-17: 12 positiveWeek of 2026-04-17: 1 negativeWeek of 2026-04-24: 14 positiveWeek of 2026-05-01: 21 positiveWeek of 2026-05-01: 1 negativeWeek of 2026-05-08: 24 positiveWeek of 2026-05-15: 25 positiveWeek of 2026-05-22: 20 positiveWeek of 2026-05-29: 15 positiveWeek of 2026-06-05: 24 positiveWeek of 2026-06-05: 1 negativeWeek of 2026-06-12: 19 positiveWeek of 2026-06-12: 1 negativeWeek of 2026-06-19: 18 positiveWeek of 2026-06-26: 15 positiveWeek of 2026-07-03: 11 positiveWeek of 2026-07-03: 1 negativeWeek of 2026-07-10: 21 positiveWeek of 2026-07-10: 1 negativeWeek of 2026-07-17: 17 positiveWeek of 2026-07-17: 1 negativeWeek of 2026-07-24: 11 positiveWeek of 2026-07-31: 21 positiveWeek of 2026-08-07: 17 positiveWeek of 2026-08-14: 13 positiveWeek of 2026-08-21: 19 positiveWeek of 2026-08-21: 1 negativeWeek of 2026-08-28: 12 positiveWeek of 2026-09-04: 23 positiveWeek of 2026-09-11: 30 positiveWeek of 2026-09-18: 19 positiveWeek of 2026-09-18: 1 negativeWeek of 2026-09-25: 17 positiveWeek of 2026-10-02: 2 positiveWeek of 2026-10-02: 1 negative
Weekly review counts (Steam review histogram). Positive above the line, negative below.

Attention

3352026-07-17 — 9 pageviews2026-07-20 — 19 pageviews2026-07-23 — 11 pageviews2026-07-26 — 9 pageviews2026-07-29 — 19 pageviews2026-08-01 — 7 pageviews2026-08-04 — 11 pageviews2026-08-07 — 6 pageviews2026-08-10 — 25 pageviews2026-08-13 — 20 pageviews2026-08-16 — 18 pageviews2026-08-19 — 12 pageviews2026-08-22 — 17 pageviews2026-08-25 — 14 pageviews2026-08-28 — 19 pageviews2026-08-31 — 17 pageviews2026-09-03 — 9 pageviews2026-09-06 — 12 pageviews2026-09-09 — 10 pageviews2026-09-12 — 33 pageviews2026-09-15 — 17 pageviews2026-09-18 — 10 pageviews2026-09-21 — 7 pageviews2026-09-24 — 14 pageviews2026-09-27 — 11 pageviews2026-09-30 — 13 pageviews2026-10-03 — 17 pageviews2026-10-06 — 21 pageviews2026-10-09 — 10 pageviews2026-10-12 — 7 pageviews2026-10-14 — 9 pageviews
Daily Wikipedia pageviews (attention proxy, census-recorded).

Completion

6
achievements tracked
84.1%
earned "Runologist"
78.4%
median achievement earned by

Global achievement rates from Steam.

Details

WindowsLinuxSingle-playerSteam AchievementsFamily Sharing1 DLC

8 supported languages: English, Spanish - Spain, Hungarian, Japanese, Portuguese - Brazil, Simplified Chinese, Korean, Catalan

Post-launch support: 1 DLC released, first 2025-03-07 (Steam store data)

Console footprint

PlatformPlayers trackedCompletionTrophies/achievements
Steam (Steam)1,54960%6

Players tracked by Exophase (achievement/trophy trackers) — a sample of the player base, not total sales.

Where its players are

Share of Steam reviews by language (top languages measured) — a proxy for where the player base lives.

Census log

Computed from census-recorded observations only — dates are observation dates.

Recent updates

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Similarity via IGDB.

Official site ↗Wikipedia ↗