How We Dig Good Indies Out of the Store

People ask how we find the games we review, and the honest answer is that it's mostly slow, unglamorous digging. The store charts are dominated by whatever has the biggest marketing budget, so we rarely start there.

We follow small developers on forums and social feeds, we read release threads where people share obscure finds, and we pay attention when a game shows up in several unrelated recommendations. That overlap is usually a good signal.

Then comes the filtering. We install far more than we publish. A lot of promising screenshots turn into games stuffed with interruptions or buried under confusing menus. We give each one a fair shot, but if a game actively annoys us in the first twenty minutes, we move on.

The ones that survive get the full treatment: multiple sessions, different play styles, and a real attempt to reach the end. Only then does a review get written. It means our catalog grows slowly, but everything in it is something at least one of us genuinely enjoyed.

If you want to try this yourself, my best tip is to ignore the charts and chase recommendations from actual players. The word-of-mouth stuff is where the gems hide.