If you tell us what games you like, the community could help you. A few of us have collections of other people's games that we think are cool (for example, I have several collections of casual games which you can see below my page).
Else browse the most recent games (not most popular) and you'll find a lot of variety.
There are many good and great games on the platform, and there are many more bad games that make the good games difficult to find. This is a common issue on platforms like this. If you dig hard, you will find some gems, eventually.
The trends are created by the game creators, and by the site's management, who feature the kind of games that they like. Game creators also notice what kind of games get featured, and then make more games like that in an effort to get featured. If you don't like these kind of games, I think that the people that run the site don't care about that. A feature to exclude multiple tags from listings is requested quite frequently, and it gets pretty much ignored every time. The closest to an official response you will likely get, is someone that likes to pop into the conversation and attempt to convince you that you don't really want this feature. Most people who don't share the site's ideology have given up, which is more bad behaviour.
There does not appear to be an easy fix to this problem. There is a hidden feature to exclude single tags, but there is more than one prolific tag filled with garbage. At the moment the solutions are limited to spending time digging through the aforementioned garbage, or to find some third party means to fix it, for example: Write a script to fix it, find another platform, or make your own platform. As you can see, there are no good solutions at the moment. I do suggest to those that disagree with the site's ideology not give in to apathy, and make their own opinions heard, even if it is just for the record. The world is in a bad place, and a lot of work and determination is required to fix it. Be part of the solution.
Hello I am new here because I heard it was like Steam
It is a platform where you can buy games. Some of them even come with a Steam key included.
https://itch.io/games/steam-key
A lot of other aspects that Steam has, are not here or are different.
but I can't find any good games.
How do you find good games on Steam? Itch has practically no AAA games from the big studios or big studio games at all. If you only like those games, you are out of luck here. It is small studios, indie developers and amateurs here.
It's all just 2D platformers and LGBT visual novels.
15% are platformers. 4% are visual novels. 0.3% are lgbt visual novels (actual numbers are higher, because of tagging inaccuracy)
If all you see are those, you need to look at a different place on Itch or with a different set of browse instructions. The recommendations are underdeveloped in comparison to Steam. You need to select tags that interest you. If you browse by popular, you will see mostly horror games on top, because of all the youtubers and their let's play videos.
Games that are not very visible on Steam have more apparant popularity on Itch. Also, since it is not big studios, the games here tend to be of a kind that can be created by one person. Like writing a visual novel or a platformer.
Why doesn't itch.io just hire people who actually like video games to make their games instead of following trends?
Uhhhm. While Steam is technically a child of Valve and Valve is a game studio and of course releases Games on Steam, the games on Steam are not made by Steam.
This is not like the olden Flash-Webgame sites that did hire people to create the games they host.
And one could say, trends are not followed on Itch, they are happening here. At least for indie games. There is of course a feedback loop, like with the horror games and everyone releasing one because they are so popular, but you can develop a game and publish it here without an entry bar. To release on Steam you need to take several hurdles.
but I can't find any good games.
It really depends on your definition of good games. If you're expecting games with 20 hours + of engaging gameplay, you're going to need help finding those games here (and also on Steam).
As mentioned above both here and Steam have so many games making it games to find games that you like or that you consider as good.
So I have two solutions for this:
1. Describe in detail what kind of games do you actually like or consider as good. We might be able to share any games which might fit those description.
2. We could share our game collections which have best or good games listed in them.
There are tonnes of great 3d games on itch though... Try this: https://adamgryu.itch.io/a-short-hike
I hope your blindness is cured. If you want to complain you can shut up and make a game. It costs $100 to release a game on steam, and for people whose income is partially donations from people like you (no heart; $0). Why don't you look with your eyes instead of your hollow head? If you want a good game, click here or here (That's why you don't mess with indie devs)
If you want more AAA style games, I reccomend checking out Studiohammergames
Lot Of Great Games And Lots Of Freaky Shit On This Site Just Have To Use The Right Tag Words
Just Look At What I Am Doning The One Above All - Devlogs - itch.io
I haven’t read much of the replies in this thread so someone has probably stated this already. Whoever told you Itch is the same as Steam is completely wrong. Steam has become a big high grossing video game platform that have triple A games by professional studios published on it. (Ex. GTA, Fallout, Halo) If you’re a total indie dev, there is a $100 fee if you want to publish any type of game and a lengthy phase in which it needs to get reviewed by Valve. Itch is an entirely indie and free platform where you can upload anything at anytime. This is why you see so many unfiltered horror games bc I guess that’s what the community likes making and playing on here. Saying Itch is the same as Steam is like comparing Youtube to Netflix. One is complete user-generated content and the other is expensive entertainment.
It's the YouTube effect, I guess. It's amazing to live in a time where it's become trivially easy for people to make and upload works, but the downside is that you'll have to wade through lots of... Perfectly ordinary content with a strong 'homemade' feel to it. I don't know if I can call this good or bad, first and foremost it's a result of creativity being really democratic, for lack of a better word.
Thinking about it, I think there's a niche for whoever interested to be a kind of 'curator' who plays games and makes videos or forum posts recommending games. Unless there are already, I wouldn't know, I haven't been here long.
I guess that "curator" nieche is mostly filled with streamers, like the ones on youtube.
But you do can find some users with public collections here https://itch.io/feed?filter=collections and on the left side of many browse pages, where it reads Related collections. I would pick some after selecting some tags, so the collections are more likely to suit your tastes.
Initially I also thought that the existing system looks like there should be such curators. People that do not publish games, but manage collections and have followers because of that. If there are, I do not notice them much. Maybe the problem is, that you cannot really interact with each other much. There is no private/direct messages and no place to comment on a collection or whatever. On a youtube video you can comment.
Also, there is the hand picked list on the front page, https://itch.io/games/new-and-popular/featured
(Oh, and theoretically there are some sections in the message board for this, but there is not much traffic and if there were, it would get abused a lot by self promotion. https://itch.io/board/13293/recommend-a-game)
It's absolutely clear that somebody came here not understanding the platform at all and moans about it, and the entire community gets in a state of an uproar.
I'd like to know who told you it was like Steam or if you understood them well. Of course, itch has client that allows you to easily install games get them automatically updated and so on, und so weiter, and yeah, I guess it's like Steam in that perspective. Yet the essence appears to be different on a few vital points. Steam aims from a more commercial perspective, making it easier for the game industry to sell games. Basically Steam replaces the old physical game store, were you used to buy games on diskettes and CD-ROMs. However since the internet made that obsolete, I guess Steam became that on-line replacement. Itch is more aiming to give smaller studios and hobbyists a platform. Then you shouldn't expect the technical extremes that some professional studios throw in these days (if the game really gets better by it, is a discussion on its own by the way).
Now when it comes to "hiring"... I'm not hired by itch to put my games on here. It's rather my own personal interest to use itch for that purpose. But if I were to put my games on Steam I wouldn't be hired either. Of course, if I'd sell my games here (which I don't) I would get money and itch sees to it that I get the money for games I sold, however, that's not hiring. Itch is then merely taking away the pain from me that handling money transactions over the internet can bring. I'm not an itch employee (nor do I have the ambition to be one).
And there's also something else. When I see posts like these, I can't help but the check the account used to post it, and a few things immediately caught my eye.
Of course, I've visited many games sites that disappointed me, or simply were not the kind of game site I was looking for, and that's alright, I guess we all have diferent needs and preferences, but normally I just leave such sites without leaving a single word. Here somebody actually took the trouble to create an account and to leave one single message no more, no less, and no response whatsoever on the replies of people. I wonder... Couldn't resist thinking it's cute to leave some negative "feedback" (which shows the point behind this site was completely missed), or is the poster of that message secretly reading all the replies laughing his/her ass off because he/she got this place in an uproar.
I'm curious.
