How we pick your game
In a nutshell: we compare what you tell us about your moment (time, energy, what you feel like and who you're playing with) with a profile of each game, drop what doesn't fit and rank the rest. No magic and no artificial intelligence during your visit: just rules you can read here.
What we know about each game
- Our game profile. Every game in the catalogue is scored by the experience it offers: how relaxing or tense it is, how much thinking it takes, how hard it is, whether a short session feels worthwhile or it needs hours, whether it shines solo or with others… We put it together from several sources (the Steam page, reviews and the game's website) and it goes through a quality check before it's published.
- Public Steam data. Game modes (single-player, co-op, same screen), Steam Deck and controller support, languages, reviews and the tags the community votes for (that's where things like ‘Scary’, ‘RPG’ or whether a game is played in self-contained runs come from).
Step 1: out with what you don't want
Before scoring, we remove what makes no sense to recommend to you:
- Whatever you tick in ‘Anything you're not in the mood for today?’: horror, hard games or games that demand a lot of thinking.
- Games that don't support the mode you ask for (co-op, for example), according to what the game itself states on Steam. If very few were left, instead of removing them we push them far down the list.
- On Steam Deck, the ones Steam marks as unsupported.
- The ones you've already turned down with ‘Give me another’.
If a piece of data doesn't exist, we don't assume anything: a game with no information on a feature is neither ruled out for it nor described as having it.
Step 2: how well each game fits
Each game gets a score on four aspects. They don't all weigh the same:
- What you feel like doing40%
Exploring, relaxing, getting scared…
- How much time you have30%
Whether a session fits your window
- How you're feeling20%
How much energy and reflexes it demands
- Who you're playing with10%
How well it works in that mode
And three nuances so the result makes sense:
- The weakest link counts. A game that's great on three aspects but very poor on one (say, very demanding when you're running on empty) loses points: one big miss isn't made up for by hits.
- The core matters more than ‘it also has’. If you ask to explore, a game built around exploring beats one that just has a bit of everything.
- If you choose two things, the game that delivers both wins, not the one that's perfect at one and weak at the other.
When two games tie, compatibility with your platform breaks the tie and, as a last resort, Steam reviews.
Step 3: variety
- The alternatives (‘Not convinced?’) are chosen to be different from the main pick, not three near-identical games.
- Games we've recommended to you recently drop a little, so we don't keep suggesting the same one.
- ‘Give me another’ drops the game for that search and looks for something different from the one that didn't convince you.
With your Steam library
If you connect Steam, we only choose among your games. What you've played (whether you started it, left it halfway or touched it recently) helps order games that fit similarly, but it never changes the percentage. In ‘Backlog’, we also prioritise what you haven't started or left halfway.
What the percentage means
It's how well the game fits what you said you're looking for now, from 0 to 100. It isn't the chance that you'll like it, nor a score for the game: a brilliant game can get 50% if today isn't its moment. That's why it comes with a label (‘Perfect fit’, ‘Very good fit’…).
Where the reasons come from
The ‘why it fits’ sentences are written by rules, not an AI: each one links something you asked for with a piece of the game's data, and only appears if that data backs it up. If you asked for little time but the game doesn't work well in short sessions, we won't tell you it does. So they don't always sound the same, each reason has several ways of being phrased.
What we don't do
- Nobody pays to appear or to rank higher in the results.
- We don't use artificial intelligence during your visit or build a profile of you: your answers stay in your browser.
- We don't look at your tastes from other websites: only what you tell us here and, if you want, your Steam library.
Something in a result doesn't add up? Tell us: it's the best way to fine-tune the recommender.