46
votes
Steam Summer Sale 2026: Hidden gems
Inspired by the recurring topic every Steam sale over at /r/GameDealsMeta:
-
What are some lesser-known or overlooked 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)
| Category | Maximum Review Count |
|---|---|
| Shockingly Overlooked | 20 |
| Under the Radar | 50 |
| Buried Treasure | 150 |
| Underrated Great | 500 |
| Cult Classic | 1000 |
| Gem Graduate | 1000+ |
Note to future kfwyre: please see this comment about changes to the Hidden Gems topic when you come back to this one in six months.
Yes I Know I Play a Lot of Roguelites:
More Shooting Things but Not Scrolling Shmups:
Now Some Scrolling Shmups:
Maybe A Little Less Shooting:
Some Always-Cheap Mentionables that Tend to Skip Sales and are Unsurprisingly Not Discounted this Time Either (aka Oh Look There were More Shooting Things After All):
Love the list. In particular I have some shooters to dig through now!
With this I have found yet another reason to mention Elasto Mania (which isn't currently on sale, though). It's a bit more open-ended than I remember Trials being with levels going in any and all directions and the skill ceiling is out of this world.
Quite rare that I do anything more than window-shop in these threads, but Nidus looks super interesting! Thanks for recommending.
Thanks for letting me know. Always glad to hear I helped a game find another owner.
Thank you very much.
Just mining your list :)
My preferred genre is Tower Defense games, have dozens.
Retired Men's Nude Beach Volleyball League: 17 Reviews at 94% Positive, now on sale for 69% off come on guys, not helping
Gamers like to talk a good talk when it comes to the appreciation of hidden gems, but they're not really serious. They don't want to make the effort to uncover something that is truly special.
And that's what Retired Men's Nude Beach Volleyball League is: a hidden gem that doesn't actually want to be found. Gamers put up all these conditions that must be met in order to gain their coveted inclusivity: good gameplay, good graphics, some fan service, and if there happens to be a single player story to go along with its multiplayer, hey, that's the cherry on top. But these biases simply herd these tourists to the spectacle they crave. These perpetual out-of-town diners put more value in bathroom cleanliness than the food on the menu. They simply cannot appreciate the gem hidden in plain sight that is Retired Men's Nude Beach Volleyball League.
Your average gamer will take one look at this and pass. "Literally unplayable", they'll say with their mouths full of cotton candy, citing this game's poor graphics, terrible gameplay, oh and something about nude retired men being an instant turn-off to people of all demographics.
It's true. All of it. And one more thing: it's supposed to be that way.
Retired Men's Nude Beach Volleyball League is a heartfelt story masquerading as a poorly made, amateurish video game, a facade that its own trailer helps support. But if you were to put aside your gamer biases, you may realize that this is a visual novel disguised as a sports game, you may realize that winning is not a requirement for advancing its story, that its characters talk a lot during a competition.
But most gamers won't. And this game will remain the ultimate hidden gem, a true jewel that is too beautiful to be properly appreciated by jaundiced, prejudiced eyes.
If you are subscribed to Humble Bundle, you can play it for free as part of the Vault where it stands shoulder to shoulder with peers like indie giants A Short Hike and Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy. For more about this game, I wrote about it here.
I installed this via the Humble App, which is a blessing, because if I did it on Steam my friends would either think I was hacked or that I'm getting freaky on main.
I mean, you can also mark games as private so they don't show up normally in Steam these days.
I assumed that didn't work for family shares, but I just checked and it turns out it does.
That said, I'd still rather have questionable games live outside my Steam library than within it.
I want to say I'm sorry for being emotional. Anger is not a good look, and it doesn't make for good conversation. So thanks for responding; I didn't know if anyone was reading this.
When you play it, keep a really open mind. Leave your biases at the door. If you're like me, you will lose every volleyball round. Like, throw-your-controller-type of infuriating lose. But with your open mind, don't pay attention to that. Instead, pay attention to what its characters are saying.
I know. This seems like a joke, some kind of rickroll. But it isn't. Don't know where you are in your journey of Retired Men's Nude Beach Volleyball League, but I want to thank you for hearing me out and at least installing it.
No apologies needed! I love your game writeups. You have a unique perspective on games that I find really refreshing.
And I haven't started the game yet. Installing it was my way of "bookmarking" it to make sure that it actually does get played at some undetermined point in the future, especially because I'm pretty sure the Humble App won't be around much longer.
They definitely don't promote the Vault on their website. It's a shame it's disappearing because there are some awesome undie games on there. Woten is one I'm going through now, very neat puzzle platformer, and co-open is another neat one. I've bookmarked Heeey! Park-Boy for future consideration after seeing it get mentioned during the Backlog Burner; guess I better get a move on it.
I was convinced before that the IGN takeover of Humble Bundle was a tragedy for gamers. This cements it.
Please, Fanatical: Use your ill-gotten gains from your mystery bundles to start putting out competitively priced "monthly choices" that rival Humble.
EDIT: so many good games in the Humble Vault. Just checked, and they have:
and several dozens more. This should be a wake-up call to the rest of us to try out these free games before they're gone.
My sidequest during the Backlog Burner was to play all of the Humble App exclusive games (that is, only the ones I couldn't find available for release elsewhere).
I did a quick rundown here of my thoughts on all of them in case you're curious about what I found worth playing.
I figured so, because I thought they looked familiar which is why, based on your recommendation, I have Heeey! Park-Boy (spelled it right this time) queued up in the batter's box. Looking forward to that one.
Is Humble Vault really disappearing? I looked online and didn't find any news. It doesn't matter as much to me as I will likely let my Humble subscription lapse being the unserious hardcorer that I am, but it's still an important resource. Without it, many of the lesser known games will lose exposure. Like, "Humble Games" yo, you are a publisher, many of the games in the vault are your own games. It was said Humble Games (the publisher) was closing, and then it was said it was just restructuring. Make up your mind, it doesn't matter which pair of shoes match the best.
There's no official information on it going away, so me assuming it's not long for this world is entirely supposition. They shut down Humble Games a while ago, and they've stopped adding new games to it entirely,
Hopefully it at least persists in stasis for a while rather than being killed off.
Felt like I should add some more, so here are some suggestions that have absolutely anemic review counts and are criminally ignored by the gaming public:
Radical Relocation
Steam page 257 Reviews at 74% Positive, 80% Off at $2.59 CAD
I love this game. It pains me that it has not received the recognition it deserves. It further pains me that gamers are overly harsh on this game in reviews, complaining about poor physics and unfair gameplay.
Son: that's the whole point. Like, even 101-110% of the point, even. This is a ridiculous game with a terrible title that asks you to do the impossible with gratifying results.
In all fairness, this should have gotten the streamer attention given to stuff like Among Us and Hello Neighbor. Kids don't dig it as balancing ping-pong tables and grand pianos on top of moving sports cars require patience, so it's up to boomer to set things straight (for once).
Donut Dodo
Steam page 215 Reviews at 97% Very Positive, 20% Off at $11 CAD
This discount sucks, so maybe keep it mind for a sale down the line, but this game is absolutely everything great a Gen X remembers about arcade games. Fast, addictive action; compelling, bright designs; tough yet fair gameplay. The kicker? It's not from that era.
Donut Dodo is a 1:1 perfect recreation of what an awesome game from that time would be like. It's authentic pixel art jumps off the CRT screen, demanding your quarters. A real satisfying play.
Murtop
Steam page 58 Reviews at 98% Very Positive, 60% Off at $2.59 CAD
Murtop is the Dig Dug clone to Donut Dodo's knocking off of Donkey Kong. I didn't enjoy it as much as Donut Dodo, but still worth a shout out for another entry in the "new games that look old but play great" category.
Atmasphere
Steam page 212 Reviews at 83% Very Positive, 81% off at $0.94 CAD
Are you a Buddhist monk on the final stage to enlightenment? Put your patience to the test with this completely infuriating yet, at the very same time, very relaxing marble rolling game. 107 locked achievements await you.
pureya
Steam page 295 Reviews at 88% Very Positive, 75% off at $1.79 CAD
If zen is something that interests you, on the other hand, try zoning out with the mini-game menagerie of pureya. Never be frustrated again as you play a new mini-game every ten seconds. The pachinko gambling loop keeps you addicted, but the real attraction here is the game's ultra-simple UI, making for a game experience you just vibe with.
DopeNet
Steam page 13 Reviews at 100% Positive, 50% off at $3.24 CAD
Yup, it's Dope Wars all over again. Gamers describe it as a drug dealing simulator, but to everybody else you're staring at menus upon menus of numbers. And it's glorious. Because as much as it is about being good with prices and knowing when to buy or sell, this is a total vibe game that will have you trusting your gut over a spreadsheet. I mean, if you're gangster.
The real reason for recommending this underrated gem is a) for the community and its yuks and b) because it is a perfect simulator of the capitalist system. It has:
In an ideal world, this would be the perfect way to explain why the injustice of Elon Musk's existence is a pox on our world. But, we already have Monopoly, and it has become a celebrated family board game, so that's that.
If you want a game that weans you off Steam, this is it. Because you'll buy it on Steam, and then prefer to play it in your web browser on your phone. It features asynchronous multiplayer that lets you duel on your time and terms. Really, just a neat way to zone out while standing in line with a screen full of neon.
Is the Steam price of entry too rich for your blood? Play DopeNet for the low cost of free at DopeNet.io.
EDIT: I just realized that I am guilty of not leaving reviews for these hidden gems myself. I went and added reviews to them all, so just consider them +1 to all counts.
I unfortunately don't have as many recommendations this time as I normally do, and I also feel like they're not a super strong bunch.
In part this is because many of the games I recommend below are "treadmill games" that I played while quite literally walking on my treadmill. I needed something with simple inputs and constant gratification to distract my brain from the fact that I'm exercising.
I wouldn't necessarily recommend most of these types of games on their own, but as treadmill games, or as the background for podcasts/audiobooks, they're fantastic.
Shockingly Overlooked (≤20 reviews)
Acid Web
THE KULKA
Under the Radar (≤50 reviews))
Bouncy Cat
Buried Treasures (≤150 reviews)
Cosmic Collapse
Underrated Greats (≤500 reviews)
Fortified
Fruit Salad
I Am Legion: Stand Survivors
Cult Classics (≤1000 reviews)
DigDigDrill
Gem Graduates (>1000 reviews)
Dogwalk
The Farmer Was Replaced
Pizza Possum
Space Rock Breaker
Sunderfolk
Really appreciate the shout-out!
Picked up Acid Web based off the above req and while I'm terrible at it, I'm enjoying it. I hope you're still making games! Also, what did seagulls ever do to you?
Cool, I'm glad you're enjoying it! I've been considering adding an easier set of levels to the game because you're not the first to comment on the difficulty. Over the course of making the game I became too much of an expert to even tell, and I didn't send it out to that many people to playtest it... It would have been a real coin eater back in the day.
I've made some small (unreleased) games since, but I'm focusing most of my leisure development time on Pocket Acid. I do want to make another bigger game after that's feature complete, though.
As for seagulls, they are fine, perfectly decent birds that turn evil when they get too comfortable in an urban area. Waking up to their shrieks at 3:30 in the morning is a common occurrence in the summer here :D.
Yeah I'm sure it's a skill issue on my end. Like I kept dying to silly things on the first level because I was too aggressive so wasting a life right off the bat. If I had more time, I'm sure I would have gotten better and still plan to do so. You could also give an option to just start with more lives instead of making easier levels. Like 10 lives would give me more chance to learn on the same run as opposed to 3. Call it newb mode and have a different or no leaderboard. I say all that having no idea how hard that would be to add.
Your project looks cool but not for me. If you do get back into making more games and need more testers I would be happy to help down the road.
Thanks for the offer, I'll be in touch when I have a proper game going again :)
Those are some good ideas, too.
I ran into the same issue making my twin stick shooter lol. I have better appreciation of a good difficulty curve and find wonky ones funny, like, "yeah I can see how you got there"
The next time I will probably try to get more strangers involved in playtesting and ask them to record videos. I sent the game out to some friends and asked them to give me feedback. They had only nice things to say about the game itself (which I attribute to positivity bias among friends), and the one guy who had some more elaborate feedback was essentially designing his own game, not really getting what I was going for or giving me insight into the extent I'd achieved that.
My design process here was mostly to design a bunch of levels based around combinations of spawning patterns, weapons and bad guy pairings. Then when I had a hundred I liked, I ranked them in terms of difficulty over a couple of days. In hindsight, with that little time you have to account for warm-up time and skill variation given different conditions of the body during the day. Like, I would in my estimate perform much better on my own levels in the afternoons before dinner when I was slightly tired and hungry (and more warmed up than in the morning) than I would after lunch. And after playing through a thousand levels of Acid Web in a couple of days you end up being quite good at it.
Would love to hear about your game and how you approached balancing the difficulty curve.
I was thinking of my game Cave Creeps (discussed here), a much more simple twin stick shooter. It's more project than product so I mostly just tweaked stuff as I developed it based on what felt right. A big hidden element of the curve is from the potion spawns, I made it from a simple random potion every X seconds to capping move/shoot speed potions, increasing spawn time as you capped those, and a cap on total spawned at a given time. I also slightly tweaked various values like speeds and damages as I went along until they felt "good".
For my slime queen character, I just said to hell with a balanced curve -- her minions trivialize the mid game, but her lower fire rate and movement speed makes her late game harder than the zappy mage.
As far as how it felt for others, it really varied depending on the player's familiarity with the genre, device, and hand size. Playing mobile meant using on screen sticks that I had statically placed, this made it a struggle for some depending on their hand size relative to their device, but some folks weren't inclined to use their mouse and keyboard on desktop (fair), which is where I did most play and balancing. I think some skilled players hit my high scores, unskilled players struggled to get going.
So yeah not nearly as much work as you did balancing yours! I could fix controls and put limits on the queen's minions to help, but I'm not sure how much I'd enjoy doing so or how much other folks will ultimately care if I do -- I was happy to get it out as it was and got good feedback.
That was fun! I played Zap. I noticed a bump in difficulty as the enemies grow in numbers but before you get speed and shots going, so getting from 3000 to 7000 was perhaps easier to me than getting from 0 to 3000. But I think it just creates dramatic effect. You get to feel really powerful for a while as you zip across the level and can start herding bad guys by circling them, before they catch up.
It's interesting how this kind of design really creates a different kind of balancing problem altogether. For Acid Web, the waves are largely hand-made (barring some randomization of spawn points to prevent rote memorization) and I briefly considered a weapon upgrade system but decided against it because it makes balancing that much harder in such a design. But it also creates the level ranking conundrum. I want to try something more like your approach with continuously spawning enemies.
Thank you!! I really appreciate the feedback -- the randomness of potion spawning can really shake up how tough the start is, but that dramatic effect of feeling stronger after it starting to feel harder is exactly what I was going for!
I can see how balancing weapon upgrades with hand crafted levels would've made it far more complicated, I think you took a reasonable approach. I bet folks would enjoy an endless mode if you want to add it!
OMG a spider based shooter?! I am also picking that up!
Edit: Okay, this game is rad as fuck. Good work! I'm digging the music, but I also love the just "hop in" gameplay of a twin stick shooter like this!
Thanks for the buy and the kind words :)
I think that realistically most people who buy this are only going to play it for 15-30 minutes at a time and I designed it for that, so I'm glad you commented on the "hop in" quality.
Bouncy Cat is the exact kind of game I love. Some silly $1 fever dream that I can play on a Saturday morning and finish before most of my friends wake up and they’ll never believe me if I try to explain the game. I’m gonna pick that up.
Okay, I am NOT beating Bouncy Cat in a couple hours. WTF is this game?!
Right?! There's an entire WORLD in this game.
EDIT: Not to mention the skill ceiling...
For Cosmic Collapse I’d recommend getting it from the itch of the developer.
https://johanpeitz.itch.io/cosmic-collapse
The steam copy doesn’t come with the cartridge file in case you want to play it on a retro handheld or a Pico-8 port elsewhere.
Shout out for this one. I don't own it and have played it off of my nephew's account, and since then I guess achievements have been introduced (a large selling point for me when I haven't previously played). I love programming but suck at it, but this one is along those lines that I did enjoy. Granted, I last played March '25 and it's gone to version 1.0, but it's only 1$ more than before release.
I may have mentioned some of these the last time this thread happened, but I try not to.
Derelict Star (125 reviews) is a mechanically tight and difficult jetpacking platformer set in an open Metroid-like map where you aren't really gated by item-based abilities. Instead you just have to persevere and git gud.
Tunnet (682 reviews) is a network engineering simulator/horror game where you need to dig and spelunk through caves to connect computer systems using routers, switches and packet filters to create an efficient network. Packets arriving at their destinations generate income that you can spend on buying more tools and upgrades. I imagine that there is someone out there to whom this is a dream game.
Navicula Meatus (121 reviews) looks and at a surface level behaves a bit like old, grid-based 3D dungeon crawler games, but it's really a short puzzle adventure. It's set in a mysterious, creepy and disgusting world where the player (some kind of crab man) does odd jobs for other monsters and abominations. The puzzles are mostly basically fetch quests, but the atmosphere made me play it through to at least one ending.
KNIGHTS (769 review) is a chess puzzle where you have to move your knights into a given position. Very simple in concept, but the puzzles are real headscratchers.
SharpShooter3D (405 reviews) is a first person shooter/brawler, filled with what I imagine are slavic pop culture references and stereotypes. It's sprite-based, and most sprites look like photo collages. Lots of senseless violence and interesting levels.
Dream Swing (124 reviews) is a first person grappling hook time trial. You swing around an open arena picking up balls. Very meditative.
Heroes of a Broken Land (185 reviews) is kind of a HoMM meets, err... Might & Magic. Gather a party, send it out in the world, loot some dungeons, upgrade towns and get more party members and create new parties altogether, rinse and repeat. All set in a procedurally generated world. Strangely addictive game loop.
Aeon of Sands - The Trail (108 reviews) is a first person, grid-based blobber set in a post-apocalyptic future. The gameplay is reminiscent of games like Dungeon Master or Eye of the Beholder, but interspersed with CYOA style prompts. I love the art style, music and atmosphere of this more than anything else in it, but it's fun.
Silk (16 reviews) is another first person grid-based blobber where you and your caravan move around an open world based on the Silk Road. Aside from trade and dispatching robbers and wolves, you have to manage your party's beliefs and wnats in order to keep morale up
Crash Dive 2 (226 reviews) is an open-ended light sub sim set in the South Pacific during WWII. You take on a variety of mission types, from sinking merchant ships to airplane carriers, rescuing pilots, picking up spies, reconnaissance or attacking harbours and coastal bases. It's a bit more complicated than its prequel, but can be played very casually, usually enjoyable even if you only have 10 minutes to spend on it.
Frantic Dimension (18 reviews) plays like a mix of Robotron 2084 and Bezerk. You navigate a grid of rooms that open up as you clear them using WASD, aiming and shooting independently using the arrow keys. Really looks and feels like an 80s arcade game.
Desert Golfing (97 reviews) is a 2D, side view golf game with an endless number of courses, set in a desert. There's no winning or losing, just advancing to the next course seeing your statistics improve as you get better. Absolutely no nonense; it just throws you right into the game from the beginning and continues where you left it when you last quit it in rage.
Incredipede (152 reviews) is a physics-based puzzle platformer where you arrange the limbs of a grotesque but somehow cute-looking creature to barely traverse levels and get to the goal.
Snakebird (897 reviews) is a puzzle game where you move snakebirds on a grid so as to reach your goal, or fruit (which make the snakebirds longer). It's very difficult, so much that the developers decided to release a less demanding set of levels as Snakebird Primer
Morph King is another chess-based puzzle game. On each turn, you take the role of a new piece, seen in advance, and you have to plan your moves accordingly as you clear the board of waves of opponent pieces.
Fit For a King (71 reviews) looks like an old Ultima game, but is actually more of an open-ended puzzle adventure. In preparation for a summit with a rival king, you collect taxes and treasures to afford the most lavish displays of wealth. You do this by moving around the world and applying 26 different verbs to objects, people and animals, each action mapped to a letter key on the keyboard. It's absolutely hilarious at times, and weird command-object combinations work surprisingly often.
One Line (64 reviews) is a puzzle game where you have to produce a space-filling curve over grid-based levels. Some tiles are blocking or constrained in other ways (blocking in some directions, forcing turns etc.). It executes that concept very well.
Oh hey, I have something relevant to add here! A fanmade "demake" of Snakebird, named Snekburd has been released on the PICO-8 platform. If you already own PICO-8, you can find the game easily from SPLORE by its name. If not, the author has released it on itch.io as well. If you've already played the original game and would like some more or would like to see a preview of what it's like, you might want to check it out.
Community edit:
Frantic Dimension
Updated, thanks!
Can I plug one that's not on sale (because it's free) and has more than 1000 reviews, but still seems like it deserves to be better known?
Moonring
(2,062 reviews currently)
This game is basically a love letter to the Ultima, Wizardry, and the various other CRPG games of the 80's. Retro-inspired sprite work with stark vivid colors on a black background and a scanline effect, and turn-based with rather little handholding (and no quest markers)! On the other hand, it still does have some modern touches like a built in automatic notes systems, a rather forgiving penalty for death, the ability to respec., and so forth. It's a labor of love by one person, the co-creator of the Fable series. He's described his goal as wanting it to feel like the CRPGs of the 80's, but how you remember them instead of how they actually were.
It definitely has one of the stranger and more unique fantasy world backstories compared to other games that I've played: "Five hundred years ago, the land of Caldera was plunged into endless darkness. Decades later, five moons rose in the sky, bringing light to the world and strange Gods with it." And without spoilers, I'll just say the whole story line flows from this.
The game play is turn-based rogue-like. The overworld has a static, hand-crafted layout with encounters occasionally spawning. The dungeons are all procedurally generated. If you die on the overworld, you just respawn at the last town you exited. And if you die in a dungeon everything resets to just as it was right before you entered it (i.e., you get your consumables back), with the dungeon being re-randomized if you should enter it again. There's no XP or leveling system. Instead, as you do tasks for the gods you gain skill points to spend on abilities. Or you find better equipment. And that's all.
I mentioned it being free. It really is free, no strings attached. The developer explained: "Life is hard, COVID sucked, everyone's poor and stressed. I don't need the $300 this would make me: I'd rather take the goodwill." He later added an optional DLC with a 100 floor mega-dungeon for $5, mostly as a sort of tip jar for those whom requested a way to pay him something for the game.
I played and beat it entirely on my Steam Deck last year, so I vouch for its compatibility there. And being turn-based makes it a pretty good pick-up-and-set-down game.
Absolutely! The review counts are simply rough guidelines, and they don’t need to be on sale (although free is the best kind of sale!).
In fact, I’ve been mulling over changing the recurring hidden gem topics from being based on Steam and the Steam sale to just gaming hidden gems in general. I’m sure there are people out there wanting to give/get recommendations for the Switch, or itch.io, or the PS5, etc.
I am here to tell you about the Buried Treasure that is
ROBODUNK
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1557720/RoboDunk/
It's a arcade basketball roguelike (!) with co-op play (!!) and bizarrely deep and hilarious lore (!!!) that is super fun and was clearly made with a ton of love.
DUNK IS LIFE
It baffles me that this game didn't catch on anywhere. It's far more polished and stylish than I expected given its total lack of presence and solo developer. I've co-oped it with two different friends now and both of them loved it.
If you're someone who misses arcade sports games you have to check it out. You can dunk from space. SPACE! It rocks.
Okay, wow. It looks like NBA Jam mixed with Power Stone. This is an immediate buy.
Meta Announcement:
I'll be making two big changes to our Hidden Gems topics moving forward.
Want to talk about great underappreciated games on GOG? On the PS5? On Switch 2? On itch.io? On the Playdate? Well, these will all be not just allowed but encouraged! There will be no explicit platform focus for the topics moving forward.
I will still post the topics concurrent with the two main Steam sales for consistency and because a lot of people do get value out of them for that purpose, but they'll no longer be branded as "Steam Sale" gems topics and I will explicitly solicit recommendations for any and all platforms.
(This will also help make it clear that particular games do not have to be on sale to post.)
With thanks to @TyrianMollusk, we've changed up the (always optional) tiers for games on Steam. Here's the new set which is cleaner, has better titles, and scales more with current review data.
I'll also make more clear in the topic text that people are NOT limited to any number of reviews in order to post. A hidden gem is a vibes-based determination, not a data-based one, so if you think something's a hidden gem, then feel free to post it -- no justification needed!
I know these are totally arbitrary, but I always feel like those categorization tiers are a ways off, and also really underestimate the crushing obscurity of not being recent, which can leave a gem graduate practically unknown or a distant memory.
Anything decent with only double-digit-ish Steam reviews is pretty shockingly overlooked, for example, and it seems like most things under 500 fall a lot closer to 150, so I might go more like 100, 300, 800, 2000.
I genuinely happy you brought this up!
I feel the same, honestly. These tiers were "canon" in the sense that Steam once ran a Hidden Gem Sale and broke their list into these categories, so I simply stole them to use for this topic. I figured that whoever made them at Steam had more data than I did on making the cut points.
That was years ago though, so they could almost certainly use some updating. Plus, we of course don't have to do anything "officially" and can use our own metrics.
To me, there's not a lot of distinction between the first three categories, especially <20 and <50. And I definitely agree that the ceiling needs to be raised. Even 2000 feels a touch low to me now. Maybe 2500 or 3000?
On the naming front, it's always bothered me that "Buried Treasure" games have MORE reviews than "Under the Radar", when I feel it should be the other way around (admittedly, I'm making that call based solely on vibes). I also don't love the "Underrated Great" category because "underrated" to me isn't about the quantity of reviews but about the review scores/sentiments themselves coming in below what someone feels it should be.
So, I'm more than happy to adopt changes to the scale. If anyone has any additional thoughts, sound off so that we can get these updated for next time!
Haha, we feel almost the same right down to the label names :) I honestly didn't know those all came from Steam. Can't be surprised they leave a bit to be desired. There was a time I'd have assumed someone at Valve had some serious metrics to pull from... Not any more. They undoubtedly scribbled them on a napkin between hookers and blow, and once they were found passed out 30 minutes before going live, someone figured it was fine because who cares about those games anyway.
Alright, here's a draft of the new categories. I used your numbering system and changed the names around a bit. I'm completely open to edits as well, so if anyone feels we need to change anything, let me know.
200ish Less Known Games You Might Want To Play On The Steam Deck (a fine subjective assortment) posted by losersmanual to r/steamdeck
I'm pretty sure the summaries are AI-generated, but the list itself is good. (Also I'm pretty sure OP only added the summaries after the fact because people kept complaining in the comments.)
Let's see:
This technically true description of Paradise Killer does not spark joy.
That no one makes one reference to "AI" in the subreddit, despite being explicitly against the sub's rules, is why god is dead. Instead, they're sniping each other about lengths of lists and other BS.
But yes, the list is great.
The top comments being so critical and ungrateful were a nice reminder of why I don't spend a lot of time on reddit anymore.
And I agree: Paradise Killer, of all games, definitely deserves a description with some actual flavor to it!
New Heights (239 reviews)
Discount isn't the hugest, but I picked it up anyway since I'm a big fan of climbing games (Jusant, Cairn, Peaks of Yore) and this looked promising. Played it for a few hours last night and I like it a lot. It definitely gets quite janky, with the character sometimes going full ragdoll mode, or unable to figure out how to move one limb around another, but for me that hasn't gotten annoying enough (yet) to feel like any more than just part of its quirky charm. The climbing mechanic feels most similar to Cairn, where you move and place one limb at a time (though full body position and movement plays a bigger role here). Playing the actual game with a controller works fine for me so far, but the menus are kinda hit or miss where the controller seems limited to some subset of items and I need a mouse to hit others. If you liked Cairn for the climbing and just want more of that without any kind of story this will probably scratch that itch.