In that case I'll not mention it on the curator page... but should I remove the informational one for Zombie Admin? I posted it some time ago and did so without thinking - I just saw the option and used it.

I made a negative review on Baalzebub - I'm not fond of it. I saw Baleful accepting 2nd copy, I think we were offered 4. I'm curious if any one else played it and agrees with my opinion. Criticism welcome, of course. I don't feel like recommending it on the curator page and I don't want to bash it either (we never do negative recommendations, do we?) but maybe informational? Other than my negative review it has 2 positive ones, don't know if those are real.

Originally posted by Zyro:

[...] BTW, I don't see it in the curator offers anyway...

Sneaky_Koala accepted it already. :)

Crap. We've received My Brother Lives in a Canyon curator offer:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1641020/my_brother_lives_in_a_canyon/

I don't want to accept it because I know the game already. Can someone else try it out and give it an honest opinion? It'd be shame if it went without mention because it's another title adhering to the "Linux First Initiative" (a.k.a. "Made On Linux For Linux").

IMHO It isn't bad at all, heavily inspired by Firewatch but less interactions with the world - next to none, really - you just walk and hear the story unravel, from time to time look at an interesting object and read the description, very simple graphics but kind of nice, whole thing is basically hearing to a one ~20 minutes long dialogue wile looking at 3d trees... For ~€4. I don't want to tell the dev I don't find it worth €4 content-wise. If it was 2+ hours gameplay - maybe - but even then only because I like that he does everything on Linux, uses Godot and open-sourced the game itself.

Originally posted by flesk:

[...] Very nice that the game is GPL and developed on Linux too.

I fully agree. "Linux First Initiative" (a.k.a. "On Linux For Linux") is something I can stand behind. I wish there was some international organisation that supports developers like Bearded Giant Games and Sonejo Studios. I even tried to start one few years back but it was only able to support domestic studios and there's not many (being frank, 6 out of 7 questioned businesses pretended to develop games on Linux and tried to take the grand for nothing and I got bullshit lawsuit by 2 of them on top).

So... It turned out to be overpriced point&click adventure with grammar issues (or poor translation), simple graphics and bad UI. I don't know what to do with it now. It's certainly not worth the price - for €1 I'd say go for it because it has potential but for €10... Nope. Story is the only thing it has to offer and it's mediocre, bad English doesn't help. I'm not going to recommend it on Hidden Linux Games curator page, that's for sure. Should I give it a negative personal review? I kind of feel obligated to do so to warn people (and maybe hint on areas to improve). But it might kill it. It has only 2 reviews: 1x bad, 1x good.

[edit] Wrote a negative review after all.

[edit2] I changed the review to positive after the game got a few updates - dev is actively expanding it and fixing issues. It turned out to be quite nice little adventure (flesk, thanks for reminding me to post this update).

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1511240/SpaceNET/

I followed the development a bit some time ago and I found it an interesting concept - a crossover between Duskers, Faster Than Light and a choose-your-own-adventure kind of book. It is, however, clearly made for mobiles (the UI for example is very touchscreen-friendly and clunky by PC standards) and as such might not be considered a Linux gem. I'd like to have a fresh look at it tonight and write a review ASAP, i.e. while it's still discounted (-20% since yesterday, we got the copy before that). If nobody objects I'll post it somewhere in next 7 hours.

Originally posted by Zyro:

The criteria were
* all-time peak limit below 250 at https://steamcharts.com (hidden)
[...] I'd be for raising the "hidden" bar a bit again. [...]

250... I don't know. I think "peak" numbers are coincidental and don't really scale with number of players. For example AI War 2 is estimated to be owned by anything between 20 and 50k people and it hit its all time peak of 310 one time in October 2019 during sale. Lately its average peaks are 6x smaller (~50 people) and it is now - when everybody's playing everything. Does this value increase a chance of game being recommended to people by Steam store or something?

If you look for player to reviews conversion[forums.rpgmakerweb.com] you'll see it's rarely above 1% so maybe 1 review per 100 players. A game needs 10 positive reviews to get a rating tag. So technically game can sell a 500 copies in one day, everyone tries it the same or the next day, it gets 250 peak and doesn't even get ranked.

Maybe some other metric could be considered? I tried to google[www.google.com] the "game title" "steam" "game" and see the number of results on the last page - it doesn't say much, though. I got 94 results for AI War 2 and 173 results for Witcher 3. Maybe number of Steam reviews would be better, can't tell. Maybe number of discussions on game's community page.

What I'm trying to say is I neither agree nor disagree with the idea of rising the 250 all-time peak limit because it's really hard to understand how relevant it is. If we had statistics on how many times the game was promoted on the main Steam store page or how many users have visited its store page, then I'd have some opinion. That'd translate to "hidden" for me.

Originally posted by Zyro:

* Metacritic score of at least 80 or 80% or more positive user reviews on Steam (gem)
[...] Children of Apollo of Apollo has troubles with the gem category, maybe because it is too hidden. [...]

Children of apollo has 9 reviews and 2 of those are negative. That's 77.(7)% percent positive. I'll take a look at it and decide whether I like it or not. If it turns out I do and I write a review, then it'll be 80% positive.

Since we all have a bit more time on our hands lately I can finally get more familiar with the games I accepted from curator offers and write reviews. Are all of those okay to post a recommendation (provided I find them worth it):

• AI War 2
  
• Children of Apollo
  
• Clea / 克莉
  
• Death and Taxes

Uh... You see I'm trying to review the games I accepted but at the same time I'm not "in the loop" and forgot there are rules. You're right, I should've asked whether publishing a recommendation is a good idea first. If it doesn't qualify as a gem, feel free to remove it. I posted to Linux Users Exclusively curator page as well just in case.

P.s. I enjoy your listing of adventure games!