Hey everyone,

Like many of you, I’ve spent more time hunting for my next game than actually playing. I’m frustrated with recommenders that just push popular titles, ignoring what makes my taste unique.

That’s why I’ve been building Gamescovery (games discovery!).

What is it?

Gamescovery is a new recommendation system designed specifically for games. The goal is simple: use your ratings from the games you’ve played to find hidden gems and perfect matches you’d otherwise miss.

Why it’s different:

  • It’s not a generic engine. It’s being built from the ground up to understand what you love about games.
  • Future updates will let you fine-tune recommendations based on what matters most to you (genre, mood, developer, etc.).
  • We start by focusing on the incredible world of itch.io indie games to help you uncover amazing projects that big algorithms overlook.

This is where you come in.

The alpha is now live, and it’s very much an early build. I’m not a big company, I’m a solo developer who wants to build something the community actually finds useful. That’s why your feedback is crucial.

As an alpha tester, you’ll get:

  • Early access to a tool designed to beat the “recommendation paradox.”
  • A direct line to the developer to shape project’s future.
  • The chance to help build a non-biased, community-driven platform.

Ready to try it out?

👉 Sign up for the alpha and start getting recommendations here: https://gamescovery.com/

Want to chat, suggest features, or report bugs? 🎮 Join our Discord community: https://discord.gg/brr7aYezMc

This project has and will always have a free tier. The dream is to support all major platforms, but we’re starting with itch.io to prove the concept.

Thanks for your time, and I’m excited to hear what you think!

  • artyom@piefed.socialEnglish
    61·
    5 days ago

    Let me know when you figure out how to do this without an account and without Discord.

    • YUART@feddit.orgOPEnglish
      3·
      5 days ago

      Hi, can you please elaborate?

      without an account - do you mean without itch.io account (Steam, Epic, GOG etc. in the future)? If yes - would you prefer to register a new account on the Gamescovery webpage that is specific to Gamescovery?

      without Discord - do you mean that you don’t like Discord and would like to communicate with developers/users on another platform? If yes - what platform suits you best in your opinion?

      • artyom@piefed.socialEnglish
        72·
        5 days ago

        do you mean without itch.io account (Steam, Epic, GOG

        Yes.

        would you prefer to register a new account on the Gamescovery webpage that is specific to Gamescovery?

        No I would prefer not to have an account at all.

        what platform suits you best in your opinion?

        Lemmy/PieFed/Threadiverse. Or really anything open source, not corporate controlled, and not full of ads.

        • YUART@feddit.orgOPEnglish
          5·
          5 days ago

          Thanks for the clarification.

          Yes, I agree that the project should have something more than just Discord. I just thought Discord is quite popular among gamers. I will think about Matrix or Lemmy in the future.

          About the account - well, I need an account to be able to record what games you rated and what recommendations you currently have. Otherwise, I have no idea for now how I can show correct data to correct people. I decided to allow people to register with game store accounts because that’s easier for me to implement.

          Theoretically, I can allow users to be in the “offline” mode, so all their data is stored locally. Data will be lost if you, well, remove it by yourself, or your computer drive dies. The only note is that the recommendation algorithm is not open-source, so you still need to send your data to the server to get new recommendations…

          Anyway, thanks for the idea, I will think about it 👍

          • artyom@piefed.socialEnglish
            22·
            5 days ago

            I just thought Discord is quite popular among gamers

            It is, and like most things that are popular, it’s horrendous.

            I need an account to be able to record what games you rated and what recommendations you currently have

            You can allow for manual entry.

            • YUART@feddit.orgOPEnglish
              3·
              5 days ago

              Well, currently, you must enter every game you played manually. I don’t read games from users’ account because I don’t want to deal with private data for now. I only ask the game store that the user chose to give me the user avatar and public name, and confirm that “yes, this user is registered on our platform and account valid”.

              After that, I use id that the store gave me to connect you to what games you manually rated on Gamescovery and what games were recommended to you by Gamescovery.

                • YUART@feddit.orgOPEnglish
                  2·
                  5 days ago

                  Because it’s easier for me to ask game stores for an account than to build an authentication and validation system by myself.

                  Most of the game stores has official way that allows me to use an account, registered on their platform, in the Gamescovery app, for authentication reasons.

                  Since I don’t need to store any user data besides rated and recommended games, it’s a win situation for me, because:

                  • Your personal data, login, email, password, etc., are stored on the servers of the game store, so I don’t need to worry about securing this data and other legal stuff.
                  • Game store already validated your account, so I don’t need to build a defence system to protect Gamescovery from bots.
                  • Most gamers already have an account in one or more popular game stores, so they don’t need to register one more.

                  It’s the same mechanism when you go to any new webpage/app and they propose to use your existing Google/Apple account instead of creating a new one.

                  So yeah, answering your question “why do you need to connect your game store account on Gamescovery?” - the answer is “to save money and development time”.

                  • artyom@piefed.socialEnglish
                    12·
                    5 days ago

                    authentication and validation system by myself.

                    Why is this necessary at all?

                    Your personal data, login, email, password, etc., are stored on the servers of the game store, so I don’t need to worry about securing this data and other legal stuff.

                    Most gamers already have an account in one or more popular game stores, so they don’t need to register one more.

                    You also don’t need to worry about this if there’s no account to speak of.

                    Connecting my account to your site gives you access to large amounts of personal information, even if you’re not using it. And I’m not okay with that.