About IndieLoot
Hundreds of indie games launch on Steam every week, and most good ones get buried before anyone notices them. IndieLoot checks Steam's newly released indie games every day, looks at their review scores, review counts, player numbers and community tags, and picks out the ones worth your time. Each pick gets a short, honest review.
What counts as a hidden gem
Hidden gem: a recent indie release with a very high share of positive Steam reviews but a small audience so far. Players love it; not many players have found it yet.
Fast riser: a recent indie release whose review count and player numbers are climbing quickly from one day to the next while staying well rated. It is catching on, and you can be early.
How the numbers work
% positive is the share of Steam user reviews that recommend the game. Reviews is how many Steam user reviews it has in total.
Loot Score combines the two. A game with 100% positive from a handful of reviews has not proven as much as a game with 95% positive from a thousand, so the Loot Score pulls small-sample scores toward 50%. The fewer reviews a game has, the stronger the pull; as reviews pile up, the Loot Score moves closer to the real % positive. In short: games with more reviews earn more trust.
For example, a game at 100% positive from 10 reviews gets a Loot Score of 75.7%, while one at 95% positive from 1,000 reviews gets 89.4%. These are illustrative numbers, not real games.
Formula (the same one SteamDB uses for its rating): score = p − (p − 0.5) × 2−log10(n + 1), where p is the positive share and n is the total number of reviews.
All these numbers, plus current players and price, come from Steam's public store data and are refreshed automatically every few hours, so the Loot Score moves as new reviews come in. Each game shows when its stats were last updated. The review text itself is written once, when the game is picked. Follow the "View on Steam" link for up-to-the-minute figures.
Follow along
New reviews show up at the top of the front page. You can also subscribe to the RSS/Atom feed.
Rights & removals
Game names, header images, logos and other media shown on IndieLoot belong to their respective developers and publishers. We use official store artwork, unedited, only to identify the game being reviewed, and every review links back to the game's official Steam page.
IndieLoot is an independent fan project and is not affiliated with, endorsed or sponsored by Valve Corporation or Steam. Steam and the Steam logo are trademarks of Valve Corporation.
If you are a developer or publisher and would like an image or review changed or removed, we will honor that request promptly.