There is no shortage of recommendation sites, and almost none of them tell you how they arrive at their recommendations. I think that is the wrong way round. So here is the whole thing in the open: who runs this, where the data comes from, what I judge myself and what I take from others. Including the parts that are less flattering.
Who is behind this
Hi, I am Marv. This site is my project, entirely on my own. No editorial team, no agency, no network of freelance writers.
I have been gaming for close to forty years. It started at four or five years old on my father’s C64 and never really stopped. I am in my mid forties now and still the same person who sits in front of his own library in the evening unable to decide. That problem is exactly where this site came from.
Gaming is not just a hobby for me, it is also what I do publicly. I stream four to five times a week on Twitch, put videos on YouTube and write about games at marvolomania.de. If you want to know who is handing you these recommendations, go and have a look.
What is in the database
Currently over 1200 games. Each one is an entry with around twenty attributes: genre, release year, platforms, rough playtime, price bracket, difficulty, how much weight the story carries, whether you play alone or with others, what kind of world it is set in, what its general mood is.
Those attributes are the actual substance of this site. They are the reason the quiz can compute anything meaningful at all.
Where the facts come from
I am not going to pretend otherwise: release year, platforms and critic rating are pulled automatically from IGDB, an open game database. Those values are re-synced every month so they do not go stale.
So the rating is not a review of mine. It is the aggregated consensus of the games press. I only adopt it when at least three ratings exist, and I reject it when it deviates sharply from the previous value. Those outliers usually come from panned console ports and would drag a game down unfairly.
Why not every high score makes the best-of lists
A number says little when hardly anyone has given it. That is exactly what happened to me: a niche title sat at the top of a best-of list with 97 out of 100, except that 97 rested on all of thirteen votes. Statistically that means nothing. For the credibility of the list it means a great deal.
So since July 2026 the rule is: a game only enters a best-of list or gets its own profile page if it has at least forty ratings or I have classified it as a well-known title. The second condition is necessary because some classics point at a secondary entry in the source database, a re-release for instance, where the vote count formally sits at zero.
Affected games are not removed from the database. They still appear in the index and can come out of the quiz as a recommendation like any other. They simply no longer head up a ranking.
What I judge myself
Everything that cannot be measured comes from me. Which is exactly the set of fields that make the difference in the quiz: mood, how difficulty actually feels, how much the story matters, whether a game works in short sessions, whether the world invites you to get lost in it. Plus the description and the highlights for every entry.
Being straight with you here: I have not personally finished all 1200 games. No site of this size can honestly claim that. The assessments come from my own playing, from reviews, let’s plays, community discussion and player reports. For titles I have played myself the judgement is naturally more solid than for niche entries.
If something looks wrong to you, tell me. Fixing a single entry is quick, and I take it seriously.
Which games get their own profile page
Not every game in the database gets its own page, and that is deliberate. A profile page goes to titles with a critic rating of 90 or above. That is currently around 160 games.
The reasoning is simple: a profile should explain something that goes beyond one line in a list. Across a thousand titles that would turn into assembly-line filler fast. Every other game is in the full index, and all of them can show up as a quiz recommendation.
What the profile pages contain
The profiles deliberately carry things you will not get on Steam or Metacritic:
- What it costs you in time. Not just “40 hours”, but what that means in weeks if you play three evenings a week.
- Where the rating actually sits. A 90 sounds good but says little. You see what share of the database a title beats with it and where it ranks.
- Who it is not for. Almost every recommendation site only tells you why a game is great. I also write down when to leave it alone.
- What is genuinely similar. The suggestions are computed from the attributes, not from what sells best.
How the quiz works
You answer fifteen questions. Answers that act as hard filters, a platform you do not own for instance, remove games outright. Every other answer awards points against matching attributes. Three recommendations survive: the closest match, a well-known title as the safe pick, and a hidden gem off the mainstream.
Your answers stay in your browser. They are not sent to a server, not stored and not analysed. There is no account and there is nothing to track.
Why there are no screenshots here
It is noticeable, so here is the explanation: game screenshots and cover artwork are protected by copyright and belong to the respective publishers. Germany has no fair use doctrine, and the right to quote does not cover an ad-funded recommendation site.
I could take the material anyway, as plenty of sites do. I do not. Instead the site generates its own artwork for each game out of genre, mood and title. No third-party material, no grey area. All game titles and trademarks belong to their respective owners and are named here for identification only.
How I make money with this
Through ads and through affiliate links to Instant Gaming. If you buy through such a link I earn a small commission, and the price does not change for you.
The important part: commission does not influence the recommendations. The quiz has no idea what any commission is worth, best-of lists are ordered by rating, and no publisher can buy their way in. There is no paid placement. The longer version is on why ads.
How the site stays current
Once a month an automatic sync runs: new releases are found, ratings and platforms updated, worthwhile additions taken in. Whatever was added shows up on the new games page.
When I get something wrong
Then tell me. Across 1200-plus entries, errors are not an exception, they are a matter of time. An email to the address in the imprint is enough and I will fix the entry.