Valve’s attempts to identify ‘fake’ games on Steam through automated metrics may have backfired, hurting the developers of some excellent games in the process. As brought up by Wandersong developer Greg Lobanov on Twitter yesterday, the well-reviewed, multi-award-winning game was flagged as an unknown quantity on the store. Until Steam somehow learnt more about the game through users interactions with it, it wouldn’t be eligible for full Steam store perks such as offering trading cards, but nothing seemed to be budging even months after launch.

After raising awareness of the issue on Twitter, Lobanov has since been contacted directly by Valve, who say that this was a bug that Wandersong and “many other games” were permanently restricted by, and that the problem is only now being addressed five months later. Wandersong is now free of restrictions, some other games appear stuck in this bizarre ‘not quite real’ limbo state.

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I’ve felt like I’ve been drowning in good games all year. Monster Hunter: World, Hitman 2, Red Dead, God Of War and now Smash Ultimate are all easy to lose dozens of hours to, and are masterfully crafted. But none of the year’s blockbusters really resonated with me.

Here’s five smaller games that did (plus some bonus mentions) which sent me running to Twitter to wildly gush over and try to convince people to try them. Four of the five are very systems-driven games, but all have hidden depths; the deeper you dig, the better they get. In no particular order…

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