Featured Image Credit: Nintendo / Valve
Steam users struggling to find their next game obsession can now put their fate into the hands of the algorithm.
You’ve heard of that age-old dilemma where building up a big gaming library results in you simply having too much choice in what to play.
The backlog ‘pile of shame’ is an unfortunate reality, but now this brand new app will turn your library of unplayed games into a Tinder-style game where you swipe left or right on what interests you.
The Dustpile app allows you to add your Steam profile, which will then pull from your library of unplayed games (or games you started but abandoned quite early on) and sort them into a queue where you can swipe left or right.
Advert
Swiping right indicates that you will play it, sorting the game into a smaller pile of games you can then check out later on, while swiping right says that you intend to skip that game for the time being.
The app also includes some features that will help you make a decision, with reviews from users showing whether they recommend or don’t recommend a certain game.
It also pulls some information such as developer and publisher, year released, Steam positive rating score, and an average time to beat. You’ve also got cover art, metacritic score, and whether it’s playable on Steam Deck to help your decision.
As someone with over 2500 games in their Steam library, I’ve definitely had that backlog problem of endless scrolling through my owned games, never really landing on something I fancy.
At that length too, you end up scrolling and sifting through store pages for quite some time before making a decision.
However, after a few minutes of use I’ve definitely found the Dustpile app to be quite useful. The very first thing it landed on was an indie point-and-click adventure from 2017 called Paradigm, which has a rather bizarre art style. I can’t say it didn’t pique my interest, though, so it’ll be something I’ll add to the weekend play pile.
It's also useful for discovering old retro favourites that you may have played when you were younger. Following this, I got recommended games like Hitman 2: Silent Assassin and Deus Ex: Invisible War, games which I’d already sunk a small amount of time into but hadn’t played on Steam enough to take it outside of the threshold Dustpile uses to build its algorithm.
I was also recommended Grand Theft Auto V Enhanced, the upgraded version of GTA V which I have 0 playtime in, despite playing the original PC version of GTA V for about 80 hours. So, the system isn’t perfect, but it works well enough.
Dustpile also gives you the opportunity to sort through games from your Steam wishlist, meaning that if you’re like me and have hundreds of unpurchased games you’re keeping an eye on, you should be able to sort through them a lot easier this way.
If that wasn’t enough, the app also breaks down some statistics of your Steam library, calling you out for how many unplayed games are sitting on your account, as well as breaking that down by genre and hours.
If you’d like to check out Dustpile, you can check it out on the website.
