We are in a peculiar situation - there are just too many games released every week and we can't know them all, find them all, and play them all.
First and foremost, I would like to ask everyone not to get hung up on their own view on what is a good game, what is shovelware, what is asset flip and what is just plain bad. People have different tastes and this thread is about trying to help to manage the flood of games and to find the gems that the individual person likes.
1. Steams own curation System - Curators.
What are curators? With steams own description:
Steam Curators are individuals or organizations that make recommendations to help others discover interesting games in the
Steam catalog. You can follow one or more
curators to see their recommendations appear on your
Steam home page and in your community activity feed.
- Just looking at the top curators can give you a good idea what they find are one of the best games on Steam right now (if they are active) But for most of the top curators you will find, that they recommend primarily known titles (if you also relative know what's up in the gaming world)
- specialized curators are your friends! Following a Curator that only highlights good games from a specific genre, will serve you more than a big curator that is broader in scope. So, it is more likely that you find a good 4X strategy game from someone who only has 1000 Followers but specializes in 4X games, than from a Curator that has 350.000 Followers and has no specialty.
- so, how to find the specialized Curator?
Gaming the system: Just open the Store-Page of a game from a genre you like and scroll down until you find the Curators. In that part of the page, all curators will be listed (after clicking it) that have recommended this game. Ignoring the generalist curators, you can find a specialized Curator quickly.
2. Hidden Gems. Our own @Wok has a github site (
https://gist.github.com/woctezuma) where he has several different breakdowns on hidden gems, best Publishers, most reliable Devs/Pubs, etc.
Wok has two repositories to try to discover or re-discover games, devs and publishers:
There are also closer looks at Steam releases, and Humble Monthly Bundles, over time;
3. Youtube.
Regardless of your stance or view on let's plays - Youtube Let's Player's are a great source for finding good games.
- make use of specialized let's players. Someone who primarily plays Racing games, probably will also - at least - make a video about a hot new racing game. Many Dev's and Publishers also actively seek out those specialized channels, because they know the Youtuber likes those types of games and more importantly, the audience of the Youtuber likes those games, they have more success with those little, specialized Youtubers than trying to get the big youtubers to play their game.
- your stance on Let's plays doesn't have to impair what you get out of the Youtuber. You don't need to watch his/her videos, you just need the visibility on what games the Youtuber is playing.
- more is better. Don't just follow one specialized Youtuber, you get a better picture with a bigger sample size. If 4 out of your 6 City-Builder specialized Youtubers are playing the same new game, it might be worth to take a look yourself.
- But all those Youtubers will spam my Subscription page!
Gaming the system: make a new Google account and just use it for those Youtubers.
4. Twitch.
- Just looking at Twitch's most viewed games can give you a good measure on what's currently popular.
- but Twitch is prone to games that are good for streaming, so not many genres have a big userbase on Twitch.
5. Discovery Queue and Tags.
- You can manage your discovery queue to exclude not yet released games, software, videos, early access, and specific tags.
- also clicking on any tag, will get you a list of every game that is tagged with that specific word.
6. Recommendations.
- Buying "trash" bundles and idling cards will fu** up your store recommendations for a while. The algorythm takes games bought and played into account. So idling cards from the last Visual novel Humble bundle will get your store recommendations and discovery queue spammed with Visual novels. Excluding the most common tag (like visual novel) for a while is advised.
