Inspired by the recurring topic every Steam sale over at /r/GameDealsMeta:

• What are some lesser-known Steam games that you recommend?

• Are there any genres you’d like hidden gem recommendations for?

If you're interested in previous Hidden Gem topics, you can find them here.

For popular recommendations and general purpose sale discussion, please use the main Steam Sale topic.

Optional: Feel free to categorize your recommendations by number of reviews (as a proxy for popularity)

August 2025's Humble Choice is now available with the following eight Steam games.

Does anyone have experience with any of the games and, if so, would you recommend them? Is there anything in here that you're particularly excited to play?

July 2025's Humble Choice is now available with the following eight Steam games.

Does anyone have experience with any of the games and, if so, would you recommend them? Is there anything in here that you're particularly excited to play?

June 2025's Humble Choice is now available with the following eight Steam games.

Does anyone have experience with any of the games and, if so, would you recommend them? Is there anything in here that you're particularly excited to play?

The other day, I happened to stumble on a YouTube video where the creator explored the problem of “discoverability” of video games on platforms like app stores, Steam, and Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo’s shops. That’s something that has been bothering me for a long time about the Apple App Store.

By pure coincidence though, this morning, as I was browsing through the “You Might Also Like” section at the bottom of a game that I am interested in, I began to go down a rabbit hole where I ended up finding a good handful of games I had played on Steam that I wasn’t aware were available on iOS/iPadOS as well. It’s quite sad, because these are games that I really enjoyed, and I paid for them on Steam, a platform that Valve (understandingly) neglects on macOS, whereas I could have played them optimized for iOS/iPadOS.

The creator in the YouTube video didn’t really have a solution for this problem, and it seems to me that as the industry grows, and more and more “slop” begins to flood these platforms, it will only become harder and harder to discover the good indie games buried underneath it all.

I feel this intense urge inside me to start some kind of blog or website to provide short reviews so that at least some people will discover these games. We definitely need more human curation.

I’m also appalled that so many of these games on the Apple App Store have little to no ratings. No one makes an effort to leave behind a few words so that other people can get an idea of whether it’s worth to invest their money in a game.

I guess that there isn’t really anything that can be done about the issue of discoverability. As an indie developer and publisher, you just have to do the that best you can to market your game, and hope to redirect potential customers to your website or socials, where you should clearly list all the platforms that your game is available on (surprisingly, a lot of developers don’t do this). But that’s about all that you can do. The rest is luck.

May 2025's Humble Choice is now available with the following eight Steam games.

Does anyone have experience with any of the games and, if so, would you recommend them? Is there anything in here that you're particularly excited to play?

Company I work for has game nights (with prizes) as team building, mostly play free games, but occasionally a paid game as well. This week's game is paid and am looking for a place where I can buy about 20 Steam keys for the game that's legitimate.

Steam will only let you gift a game if you're friends with them on Steam, which complicates things and would be a pain.

Game is Move or Die in case that matters.

I believe a few of us have Steam Decks, thus I wanted to do this kinda public announcement.

TL;DR

• If your Steam Deck reports low battery health (low % of original capacity) drain the battery until it shuts down and then fully charge and check again
• Use your Steam Deck until it shuts down from time to time (say once every 6 months?) to keep your battery level indicator (and remaining time) precise

Long version

I have my Steam Deck since May 2022 and I put certainly over 1000 hours in gaming on it. I would believe if it was even approaching 2000 hours.

Lately I played demanding game and battery was discharging rather fast with remaining time on full charge being under 1:30 hours, which I wasn't used to just a few months ago when it lasted over 2 hours even in demanding games (I limit to 30 fps and I also limit TDP/power). This weekend I jumped into desktop mode and checked the battery life which showed me what I feared - 65% of original capacity.

I went on iFixit page and the price for new one is hefty 95€, but since Steam Deck got me so much enjoyment, I was ready to pay for it - if it was in stock, that is. I'm glad it wasn't!

Since I have a bit of electronics and software background (hobby level), I realized that the charging chip (or whatever keeps the info about state of charge) was running since day 1 on relative data. What I mean: I have never discharged my Steam Deck lower than 10% and most of the times charging anywhere between 30-80%. And since the charging chip likely measures last fully charged capacity (and thus battery health) based on, well, how much it was charged and discharged all over again, it probably skewed its measurements in those three years.

So I went on a "quest" to play until dead. And I was surprised when Steam Deck reached 3% battery and kept running for another hour (ligthweight game) until it was finally dead. Then I fully charged it and voila - battery health 90%!

I have already said how it likely happened, but once more and in short: the charging chip needs to reach both limits, 0% and 100% of battery, from time to time = You have to let it drain fully here and there if you want your battery level indicator (and remaining time) to be precise or if you want to get the real state of your battery.

A bit offtopic: I've had laptop that had 50% of original capacity. I have changed the battery cells inside the battery and let it fully discharge and charge again but the vendor locked the chip from "learning" the real capacity making the new cells useless because the chip still reported 50% thus telling me when I booted it up that the battery has to be changed and also telling me non-relevant remaining time based on this 50% battery health... I'm glad that Steam Deck is capable of re-learning this data and not playing dumb.

April 2025's Humble Choice is now available with the following eight Steam games.

Does anyone have experience with any of the games and, if so, would you recommend them? Is there anything in here that you're particularly excited to play?

March 2025's Humble Choice is now available with the following games (2 EA, 6 Steam).

Does anyone have experience with any of the games and, if so, would you recommend them? Is there anything in here that you're particularly excited to play?