I honestly just browse steam...

I follow games publishing pretty closely. If something seems interesting, I add it to my wishlist and forget about it.

When I feel like actually buying a new game, I open up my wishlist and sort by discount. Once you have a couple hundred games wishlisted, something is always on sale. Sometimes the steam emails that something is on sale, awakens the itch to play a particular game, too.

I use a wide variety of stuff, for example:

• Reddit and lemmy threads
• Internet searches for "games like X"
• indie "best of" lists online
• friends and coworkers
• YouTube reviews of bigger titles, esp. the comments where people compare to other games
• bundle sales, like on Fanatical and Humble
• look up other games from devs who made other games I like

I don't use Steam recommendations or any of those "tools" for finding new games. I just find I get better results from the above than from any recommendation engine.

I'm afraid I'm a victim of algorithms because I pretty much only look at stuff from GOG and Steam front pages or games that are recommended as 'similar' over there. And of course youtube.

As a side note. I should even stop checking those because I just keep playing the same games nowadays instead of chipping away at my backlog.

Steam Discovery/New Releases Queue! I've found a tonne of cool games, both old and new and popular and niche, just by flicking through the queues when I wanted something new to play.

This sub, haha. I had never heard of Omori until someone mentioned it here, I looked it up and it had like all 10 out of 10 reviews in every category, I had to check it out and I am glad I started playing it (Not finished yet, don't spoil anything).

Unfortunately, Youtube is still easily the best. Like, even something as straightforward of a channel as Nintendo World Report gave me awareness of Paranormasight.

I'd love something more formally defined, but nah, the stream of consciousness that is a bunch of small creators making background content has been the better solution.

I do! I have recommendations! I use this site myself, meaning it is not something I have heard about from my cousin thrice-removed. I use https://gg.deals to find good game bargains. They include all of the official stores and for those who want to, also keyshops. On the site note, GG.deals has a sister site in Poland for those who speak Polish and don't speak English, it is https://lowcygier.pl.

https://m.youtube.com/user/ssethtzeentach

Some of the games I've spent the most time on are games I've discovered through his channel (Dwarf Fortress, Caves Of Qud, Hardspace Shipbreaker, HighFleet, Synthetik, etc...).

I also like to browse grey market aggregators to snatch cheap stuff on discount.

Other than that, Steam sales popup, GamePass, Lemmy PatientGamers.

Something I did was create a list on How Long to Beat of games I don't want to play, sort by most popular, and filter out those games and ones in your Want to Play list too. It's not really recommendations at all but it was a good way to look at new games you havent seen before. In terms of getting recommendations, finding a YouTuber with similar taste in games as you could be a good way to do it.

I sometimes use WhatToPlay.com's game finder

I've got a couple of Youtube channels I follow, ChristopherOdd and Splattercatgaming, who seem to mostly charge through a lot of indy content, giving it a whirl so you can check it out. So that helps to surface anything interesting happening outside AAA studios.

That and just waiting for recs to come from word of mouth.

I use my backlog.