Hello, I am Fachewachewa.

This is my documentation of Steam games I mostly find by going through all releases every week.

You can find me on

You can find my games on

Those lists are sorted by month. They are NOT exhaustive. This is *Steam Only*

This is a personal selection of what I find interesting.

It's not all unknown games, this includes major releases (less likely to be personal choices), and lesser known ones too.

If you find this useful, feel free to share, use, copy (please don't if you're paid, do your own work), improve, etc. A shoutout would be nice though.

And if you find something you like in there, let me know, it's always nice to hear!

Due to the amount of games (300+ per week?) I will miss stuff. I also ignore some types of games

What you wont find:

Horny games, DLCs, free Prologues (or Demos), untranslated games and low effort trend chasing

Because I like to look at the steam page and reviews to learn about the games, I tend to skip some genres (less my thing, more difficult to judge personally, or high % of low effort)

Less likely genres:

Survivor likes, Horror, Visual Novels, Point & Click, Farming, Crafting Survival, Platformers

There are exception, if I see one that seems special, has a clear hook, etc.

The Upcoming tab is a more personal selection of games releasing in the next months. (I don't think there's a easy way to find 1.0 releases though, so keep that in mind)

offers a bunch of sorting options like minimum followers or number or reviews, but I keep everything (only keeping "games" and excluding adult content)

I do a quick look at the upcoming week (or month, at the start of the month) and then go back to the week's previous releases.

I do this on sunday, because usually, only spam releases during the weekend (not always the case, but I think Valve doesn't recommend it)

Then a bunch of sorting through spam.

Those can take different form, for example:

default/tutorial projects, probably for the same devs

Thumbnails are either terrible default font on random landscapes, or cartoony font with a recognizable style

After that, I look at the Steam pages of the games that caught my attention. I try to understand how the game works (trailer/description) and what its hook is.

Finally, I look at the reviews to get a general feel of what people like or don't about it. (I love detailed negative reviews, they tend to be the most informative)

Some shoutouts, how I hear about games

Best Indie Games (YT)

Clemmy probably does the most exhaustive lists of upcoming and recent releases. Still has preferences, but you'll find most of everything with quick recaps.

@SteamReleases (twitter)

(or any similar account) Posts every(?) release in your feed (please use chronological order). A good amount of games get on my radar that way. [those have all kinda died? here's one on bsky]

Thinky Third Thursday

I love puzzles. This is a monthly curated list from Alan Hazelden. Goes through major releases, but also includes those sweet free itch games.

Thinky Games

An entire website dedicated to thinky games, puzzles & more. News, reviews, but the killer feature is a big curated database with recs and tags.

recent follow, they go through a bunch of projects they find interesting, sometimes going by theme, and looking at upcoming releases. good as a side channel.

RockPaperShotgun

If you want to read classic games press, this is it. For me it's the one place where every game gets treated the same way.

Not necessarily the most focused on discovery, but for general indie* game talk, it's a good, fun podcast

Knoebel (bsky/twitter)

Covers news in a pretty open and diverse way, doesn't push "deals" for 5% off AAAs with partnered links, and has handy news recap and releases schedules every week.

Jesse Guarascia (bsky)

Does big lists of demos during NextFest, usually looks at all kinds of games, and the only person I've heard talk about Can of Wormholes in a podcast!!

You Missed These Games

Dejobaan's weekly newsletter about recent Steam games with 100+ reviews >80% positive. Not the most obscure but still far from what you'll read about elsewhere.

Steam250's Hidden Gems

I rarely use this, but this is a good way to find relatively popular and very well recieved game that didn't get the usual kind of coverage. Rarely changes though.

Notable Releases (bsky)

Another selection of games that cut through the noise.

Game devs in general

Just follow people whose games you like, there's a good chance it'll lead you to more games you'll like (!!!)

How to read the spreadsheets

It should be easy enough, but just in case I'll go over some details.

Dev/Pub: I go by what's showed on steam. Sometimes there are multiple devs and I'll shorten it

Genre: This is just for ease of use, plus I'm french and some definitions vary. Don't look into this too much

Release: Since a lot of games tend to do Early Access, Standard is a normal release, while 1.0 is a release out of EA

Date: should be obvious in context, but this is day/month/year

Followers (release): I take this number on SteamDB's charts on the day before release, since it usually increases with release. Good representation of popularity. I think the ratio to get wishlist numbers is x12 on average

Review #: I go by Steam's number. For paid games, they don't count games received for free or from a 3rd party key seller. If a game changes pricing model, I show the total number with [] and count it for % of positive

(Useful for basic sale estimation, around x30, but it varies a lot, check this for more info)

https://gamalytic.com/

Day+ release: This is just the number of days between release and the moment I count reviews. Sometimes I update games laters, if they had next to no reviews

Head of it before: Mostly just another idea of the popularity and what I follow. I tend to play a lot of demos too, so I find a lot of games like that. "Prob Twitter" is just the general "heard of it somewhere I guess"

If I discover a game during my weekly or monthly check of upcoming release on SteamDB, I count it as a "Nope". Also: I might forget about games!!

Why the numbers?

Idk, I find it interesting. It also shows what kind of games get popular, and how some genre or specific catch can find a decent audience even if they're almost completely unknown before release.

While doing this document is time consuming, I don't think going through releases itself is especially long or hard work (especially with the right filters).

And even if all of this is personal picks, I think looking at how popular a game is before release vs its reception gives a good idea of how much potential is still untapped, and that a public exists for those games.

It's probably safe to assume games around and below 500 followers at release didn't have any kind of coverage.

Also of note, very low follower counts are usually an indication of Steam pages created not long before release.

Anyways, my point with this is: "There are too many games" has always been a lie. It's still possible to look at comercial releases and find interesting stuff you've never heard of before.

Don't give up before even trying just because people say 15 000 games release on Steam every year, this isn't a real number.

No one is expected to be exhaustive, stop looking for excuses. Games marketing is broken, and it won't fix itself.

Alright, now go find your next favourite game 😉😉😜

I really don't like that term, no one is able to define it, indie studios sometimes don't make indie games, some publicly traded publishers are still considered indie somehow, etc.

It really doesn't matter, games are games. To me the term is either used by bigger teams to get special treatment (shoutout to that recent trend of indie AAAs), or as a way to say "that's the games you can ignore"

And while you're at it, stop talking about IPs and stop acting like "tiple A" is a good thing that means anything more than "has a huge budget". Unless you have one of these boring job that requires you to do it (no, not games journalism), in that case I'm sorry.