After the recent changes to the way review scores are calculated, I became aware of a weird quirk in the way games are sorted on Steam. I'm not sure of the details, but as far as I understand games with a positive average but less than 50 reviews are displayed after games with mixed and negative averages, but with more players in the various filters on Steam. It's sort of a catch 22 for games that flop on release, since in order to get more reviews they need more sales, and they're not getting more sales because customers have to flip through 5+ pages to find them.

I'm not going anywhere in particular with this, and as far as I know, it was like this before the recent changes too. It just makes me want to take a closer look at games with few reviews and see if there might be some gems hiding there that we have missed.

Yeah, I think that's completely fine and I'd appreciate it. :) It definitely deserves more attention (to quote our description).

Starting with SilasMortimer's recommendation of Syder Arcade, I've raised the all-time peak requirement to max 250 players for now, and will update the first post in this thread to reflect that change. As always, I welcome any feedback.

This change also allowed me to include Toki Tori 2+ and The Tiny Bang Story among our recommended games.

Thanks! :)

Nice, thanks. :)

It can only be 152 characters though, but something like this would work:

"Slickly crafted 2D bullet-hell space shooter that does everything it's supposed to do. Four ships to choose from, beautiful graphics and a great OST."

I figure the second sentence is mostly flavor text, so you don't lose much information about why you're recommending it by removing it. If you have a full review of the game (no must), feel free to link to it in the allotted space. I'll give you the required permissions to post it yourself.

Maybe hold off on TCHT for a while. I'd prefer if it was officially supported, and I've sent them a tweet asking about the status. If it works without any major issues, BlaXpirit might be interested in recommending it for his group:

https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/groups/linuxqo

Thanks for the suggestions, SilasMortimer. :)

I was actually keeping tabs on The Charnel House Trilogy for a while after the Linux announcement in April of last year. Didn't know anything came of it. I might reach out to the developer again to see if they're having any issues that keep them from making it official.

Syder Arcade looks like a good one, and I think we should definitely loosen up on the guidelines at some point. Maybe when we get to 100 recommendations? Or if you want to write up a recommendation of it now, I wouldn't really mind including it now, come to think about it. I've not made as many recommendations lately as I would have liked, but I'll try to write up a few myself soon.

Hot Guns is also on my list, but it's still in Early Access and might be a bit light on content so far. What I like about it is that it's not just a straight-up run 'n' gun platformer, but running speed and jump height/length depend on how many (up to two) weapons you're carrying, which makes for some interesting platforming vs. action challenges.

If anyone has played anything good recently that would be a good fit, don't hesitate to let me know about it. I'm hoping to pop up a few more recommendations by the end of the summer sale.

I'm planning to write recommendations for Zenge and On Rusty Trails, and maybe Evo Explores, but that one barely fits and is a bit rough technically.

Thanks. :)