Game recommendations: how to find games like the ones you love

Most game recommendations fail for the same reason: they match the label on a game instead of the thing you actually enjoyed. "You liked an open-world RPG, here are ten more open-world RPGs" is how you end up with a library of games you played for an hour. Better recommendations start with a small bit of self-diagnosis. Here is a method for finding similar games that you will actually finish.

Step 1 — Name what you loved, not the genre

Take the last game you could not put down and ask which of these layers hooked you. Usually it is one or two, not all of them:

• The core loop — the thing you did minute to minute: fighting, building, farming, exploring, solving
• The structure — a map that slowly opens up, short runs you replay, a long story, a sandbox with no ending
• The difficulty — hard and fair, relaxed with no fail state, or tense but forgiving
• The tone and world — cozy, grim, funny, eerie, a setting you wanted to live in
• The session shape — twenty-minute bursts or four-hour evenings
• Who you played with — solo, couch co-op, online friends

Write the answer as one sentence: "I loved Hollow Knight for the map I slowly unlocked" is a very different request from "I loved Hollow Knight for the hard, fair bosses". The first points to other metroidvanias; the second to soulslikes.

Step 2 — Translate that into a search

Once you know the layer, you can search for it directly. Some common translations:

• Loved Stardew Valley's daily rhythm? Look at farming and life sims — the usual comparison is Stardew Valley vs Coral Island, or vs Animal Crossing if you care more about decorating than farming.
• Loved Minecraft's open building? Terraria keeps the dig-and-build loop in 2D with far more bosses; Valheim trades blocks for Viking survival with friends.
• Loved Hades' "one more run"? That is a roguelite loop — Dead Cells is the classic head-to-head, with more precise platforming.
• Loved Elden Ring's bosses? Dark Souls III is the tighter, more linear take on the same combat.
• Loved Baldur's Gate 3's party and choices? Divinity: Original Sin 2 comes from the same studio and the same turn-based tradition.

Notice that each pick comes with a because. That is the test for any recommendation, from a friend, a list or an app.

Step 3 — Judge the recommendation source

Not all "similar games" lists are equal. A useful one:

• Gives a reason for every pick, so you can skip the ones that match the wrong layer.
• Mixes close and far picks — one obvious sequel-alike, a couple of sideways steps, and a hidden gem.
• Does not pad with the same franchise. If you loved the game you probably already know it has a sequel.
• Is written by someone who played them. Store "players also bought" rows mostly reflect what is popular, not what is similar.

Step 4 — Down to two? Compare them head to head

Once the shortlist is two games, another review of each rarely helps. A direct comparison does: which one is fun sooner, which is harder, which is longer, and what each does that the other does not. Hollow Knight vs Ori, Red Dead Redemption 2 vs GTA V and Cyberpunk 2077 vs The Witcher 3 are classic "which should I play first?" questions for exactly this reason.

Step 5 — Explore by genre or console when you have no starting game

Sometimes there is no favourite to start from — you just want something new. Then pick a genre (metroidvania, JRPG, soulslike, kart racer, survival horror, cozy life sim), an era, and whether you want a crowd-pleaser or a hidden gem. For older hardware, "best of" lists by console are a quick way to find the games people still replay.

Step 6 — Keep the list somewhere

Good recommendations pile up faster than evenings do. Keep a backlog with a status on each game — Backlog, Playing, Completed, Dropped or Wishlist — and a note on why it was recommended, so that when you come back to it in six months you still know what it was supposed to scratch. For choosing tonight's game from that pile, see what game should I play?

Our app: JustLikeGames

JustLikeGames is our free game finder, built around this method. Type any game — it understands what people actually type, like "bg3", "botw" or "gta 5" — and get a ranked list of similar games, each with a reason. It carries 186 hand-written "games like" lists from justlikegames.com, 57 head-to-heads that give a straight answer on which to play, and 15 genre guides, plus a "Find Me a Game" shortlist by genre, era and style. The whole catalogue of 10,700+ games ships inside the app, so it works offline with no account, and a backlog tracker keeps your picks in one place.

It is free on Google Play, with ads that a one-time purchase removes. Want something to play right now in a browser? See our best free browser games.

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