Game additions

Overview

We use a system of forum posts to add new games to our database or make changes to them. These suggestions are managed through our Discord server.

The following sections are an expanded ruling of what you would find in the forum.

IMPORTANT

Only users on C rank and above can make recommendation posts.

It is very difficult to be able to talk about values properly when you lack enough reference points, which is why we require C rank to prevent minimal flood. Thread discussions, however, are open to everyone, and when making a thread for anything you should be prepared for this.

Not everyone is going to always agree with your suggestions or assessment of a games difficulty. It is ultimately up to the mods/reps what happens with recommendations and they will more than likely ask you several clarifying questions before making a decision, as well as pinging other people who may have also played the game in the group, referencing clear times of other people, etc.

Behavior notes (global)

These apply for EVERY type of thread that you can make.

• Check if the game wasn't talked about already. You could be repeating past history.
• Be sure to reply to any questions regarding the game if you know the answer.
• The post will likely need to be active for at least one full day before any action is taken on your recommendation to allow some time for others to contribute. Do not hurry the mods, they're all volunteers and doing their best to curate a good addition/change. If it has been a full week without activity you may bump it up again if needed.
• While discussing (and this applies to all post members), try to not deviate the theme of the thread too much. Focus on discussion and don't turn it into a sticker flood or simple progress thread.
• Mods reserve the right to lock and ignore threads if needed.

What can be suggested

You may want to...

• Suggest that a game could be challenging enough for the site (a potential).
• Suggest a game to be added (a game addition).
• Suggest some aspects of the game or an objective to be added, changed, buffed or nerfed (an adjustment).
• • If these changes are purely aesthetical (icons, typos, wording, etc), move it to #aesthetic-feedback, which is directly below the recommendations forum It also has more relaxed rules.
• Suggest a removal of a game from the site (a removal).

Potentials

Everything starts from somewhere. There are tens of thousands of games on Steam and not everyone knows what secrets they hide in-between. If you see any game that has hints of being challenging enough for our site (either because you tried it, or it has low% achievements, or there are secrets you saw in a stream, or whatever else) and wasn't added to the site yet, you can suggest it as a potential for someone else to check it.

You just have to list the achievements or in-game feats the game has, which would make it a decent candidate for inclusion.

Other notes

• Check that the game isn't listed already as a potential (Potential list)
• Check that the game isn't rejected because of anything (Rejection list)

Game additions

This is the basis from the site is built upon.

A game is a candidate for being added as long as the game presents enough challenge to meet at least the Tier 1 threshold

include the tier, category, and point estimate for the game along with the suggested objectives and which achievements / in game feats should be included. Optionally, you're free to include a suggested name and icon along with each objective.

Details to consider

• You must have completed ALL or AT LEAST ONE relevant challenge/objective in the game for your suggestion to be valid. This is meant both as a confirmation that you know about the game and its value, and because otherwise it's no different than suggesting it for potentials.
• Check that the game isn't in the rejected list (Rejection list). If it is, then check its rejection date and the reason. If you're confident that the circumstances have changed or it's been wrongly classified, you may proceed.

Games that WILL be rejected

Regardless of difficulty, we don't allow these games:

• Asset spams (definition up to the staff);
• Ludicrously expensive games (>200 USD on base game alone, for example, or if thousands of pricey DLCs);
• Delisted games (exceptions made if keys are easily available);
• Games with terrible performance (frequent crashes for everyone);
• Direct duplicates (unless replacing delisted games);
• Games existing outside of the paradigm of what's accepted by the categories (puzzles, PvP games, idlers, etc.);
• Games where the challenge can be hidden between thousands of hours of casual gameplay.
• Games that don't meet our quality guidelines.

Games on Early Access are subject to some scrutiny. It'd be better if their core gameplay loop is finished or abandoned, otherwise they may be left on hold.

Games that have online-only content are allowed too, but your points are not guaranteed to stay if they're taken down.

Extras

If you are recommending a low Tier 1 game (5 points total), consider trying one of the free games from the respective category as a point of comparison. These games are free and generally at the lower end of the point of entry for a game on the list. Make sure you are confident the game you are suggesting is harder than the ones listed below.

Flem (platformer) | Laserboy (action) | Neon Boost (First Person) | Prologue for a Vacant Kingdom (Bullet Hell) | Project Rhombus (Arcade) | Peggle Extreme (Strategy)

Some other well known titles that are low tier entry point comparisons would be: Heads Run, Hotline Miami, Clustertruck, Marimoth, oO, Boson X.

Adjustments

An "adjustment" is a broad term which includes any kind of non-aesthetic changes to a game that already exists on the site, excluding removals which have a separate category.

There are several reasons you would want to make an adjustment to a game. Some of the most common examples:

• A game has added challenging content in an update/DLC and you don't see it being included here;
• You think some achievements are unnecesary to have, or have been nerfed too much to be worth a challenge;
• An objective could have a different type of proof required due to any circumstances;
• You have a proposal regarding point values, etcetera.

The general rules still apply: talking about point values in any non-speculative manner would require you to clear a relevant objective for the game.

Removals

A removal is a term used to put a game into our Rejection list. It can be done for potential games, or for any random games you can find on Steam/RA. It's more commonly used to paramount for removing games from our site, though.

Removals sound scary. They're certainly not a positive thing to bring up in any case. And in the case of site removals, they're rather rare so it has to be justified.

There are various reasons to call for a site removal:

• The game has gone through a massive overhaul, and none of the available challenges are worth a minimum anymore;
• There's a core gameplay mechanic that's commonly used that trivializes all challenges present (this is subjective and may still be saved by "Tier 1 leniency" depending on the case);
• The game is extremely inconsistent for no reason and/or suffers from serious quality issues (random consistent crashes, extreme jank);
• The game is directly not playable anymore (do not confuse with delisted games, which are a separate matter).

You must have played through the game enough for your removal to be valid for analysis, otherwise it will be ignored.

Process for game removal

If a user feels strongly that a game listed on the site does not meet the difficulty threshold to be included on the site, the process to instigate a review is as follows.

Open a thread in ⁠#recommendations titled Removal: [GAME NAME], and link the CE game page in the initial post along with tagging the @Rep role. (TBD)

Include pertinent details as to why the game did not feel sufficiently difficult. In all cases, please provide an indication of play time, and then further commentary. For example:

• "The PO(s) took me 10h - the time spent was high, but there was effectively no difficulty"
• "Suggesting removal for quality reasons - the PO is only possible with a registry edit" [or other reasoning]
• "The game only took me an hour, and whilst there some level of challenge, it wasn't enough to be on the site imo"
• "The PO(s) took me 2h - An update was made to the game that rebalanced the game, making it too easy"

From there, the Rep(s) will seek further feedback, according to this general guidance:

• If there a low number of clearers, all clearers to be pinged and asked for input (hours, perspective on the level of challenge, etc)
• If there a high number of clearers, active users may be pinged for input initially. If there a general consensus, no further pings to be required.

The number of clearers to ping will be at the discretion of the Rep handling the matter, but shouldn't be less than 10-20% of the total number.

The next step will require a level of judgement, but may take one of several forms:

• Game removal/maintenance if there broad consensus on that outcome
• Seeking further input from clearers not pinged initially, if there a sufficient user base
• Application of the "Site Eligibility Under Dispute" information tag the game should there be limited available input, or conflicting viewpoints
  • The thread will remain open, and further input from new clearers will be required.
  • The number of new clearers' input should be informed by the user base (eg: a game with 3 clearers may only need 1 additional user's input, whilst a game with 50 might require 3)

Objective rules

Tier and Objective guidelines can be found in previous sections of this guide.

Quality Guidelines

The primary purpose of CE is to catalogue game challenges, and historically the system has been mostly agnostic to the quality of those games. The reason for this is that quality is a completely subjective metric that will differ between each person. What one person considers to be poorly made, another person might find charm in. Because of this, there hasn't been any kind of guidelines for what constitutes "bad enough" to be excluded from the system.

This post will outline some basic concepts to keep in mind when flagging a game OR objective for removal or not adding to the site based on quality.

In general, there are three similar, but slightly distinct concepts:

Poorly Coded

• The game suffers from frequent crashes that inhibit the player from completing the challenge, and the crashes are spontaneous and unavoidable. This needs to be independent of hardware limitations, and the crashes should be observable by two or more people.,
• The game suffers from various bugs that interfere with normal gameplay. Examples of this might include: frequently getting stuck in walls, falling through the floor, losing control of your character, mechanics not working properly or as intended often enough to be problematic, etc. If a bug occurs a handful of times, that may not be cause for concern, but if it rises to a level where it frequently interrupts a person's ability to play the game or complete a challenge, it may warrant removing the game.,

Poorly Designed

• The game has a myriad of exploits that result in the challenge being made trivial. This is indicative of lack of testing, and if the exploits are numerous enough, then the game was just not designed well. Exploits exist in many games, and the existence of a couple will not be an issue normally, we can just work around them for verification. However, if exploits are required or strongly recommended in being able to complete the challenge, or the game has so many that figuring out which to allow and which not to becomes a topic of discussion, the game is probably too complicated to be worthwhile. Quit to menu is a common enough oversight that it is not considered an exploit worth removing a game over, nor would save scumming.,
• The game has a challenge that is an obvious meme or was designed specifically to not be possible, or extremely unreasonable. An example of this might include a game where it is otherwise well made, but has a challenge to hit the same frame perfect jump every 10 seconds for an hour straight. In this case, if the game has other reasonable challenges, the one challenge in question may be excluded or made into a CO, and the rest of the challenges can be preserved.,

Low Effort

• The game is an obvious asset flip with barely any development put into it. The assets may be stock, the physics are poorly made or clunky, and the developer or series is well known for consistently pushing out similar quality games.,
• The game is identical to an already existing more popular game without adding in any kind of novelty. Getting Over It spawned a lot of clones, but in many cases, there are enough differences that they can be considered to have added enough novelty to be worthwhile. This will obviously be subject to context.,
• The game has little to no redeemable gameplay qualities. While this one is highly subjective, there are likely to be cases every so often where the game is just extremely bad all around despite being novel and coded properly. Let this point be reserved for admins and unanimous rep decision. A game simply not being fun is not nearly a justifiable enough reason for removing from the site.,

What to do

While the above are guidelines, the decision to remove or block a game OR objective from the site will still come down to a consensus among the reps for the category in which the game belongs. Judgment will still be necessary on a case by case basis. A game may also suffer from one or more of the above issues, and still be allowed on the site, again being a decision made by the reps or admins.

To initiate the process of removal:

• Make a thread pointing out the issues, and list which of the above categories it would fall under;
• Then either an admin or the reps (by majority) can decide on it;
• If an admin disagrees on the decision of the reps, or vice versa, the decision can be blocked.