One thing that I found rare on the internet are sites dedicated to providing reviews for true indie games, that is games developed by a truly small team or even single developers.
Do you know of any?
So far all that I can find are sites that feature and review the same games that major publications already covered, and these are most often games from comparatively large studios that like to call themselves indie.
"indie" or "true indie" is not the point here. It is success. For successful games you can find reviews on sites like https://www.metacritic.com/game/
There are literally hundreds of new games each day on Itch. How to select which games to review? Why select a game that does not even have comments or ratings on the platform it was released? Such a review site would essentially be no different then a famous youtuber showcasing random games. And the followers are not there for the reviews.
Imho, one either seeks information about a game one is interested in. Or one seeks recommendations from a trusted source. An unknown review site reviewing unknown games fulfills neither. So you have review sites reviewing all the popular games which include those you consider not true indie. And you have some recommendation sites with curators.
If you seek random reviews, try https://itch.io/feed?filter=ratings But those are also prefilterd by the frequency in which games get reviews, so another popularity hurdle.
"indie" or "true indie" is not the point here
It is.
Why select a game that does not even have comments or ratings on the platform it was released?
It is just my opinion, but I think you should be a lot nicer to these guys. What you describe makes up probably more than 96% of your site's content. Though they never get seen, they are the reason people come here.
I re-read my post several times. To whom do you think I was "not nice"? And what statement do you think was "not nice"?
If you are referring to the quoted statement, it still makes no sense. It was not me that did not gave the games no comment or rating. There are literally several hundreds of games released each day on Itch. And almost all of them would qualify for your true indie attribute. So how do you select the games you review? How does anyone do it? Does a reviewer select games that have no reviews and no comments or are games with a little bit of attention the ones that get more attention?
I was explaining my opinion why the thing you seek is hard to find. There is no incentive to review games for reviewing's sake that no one plays. No one plays those games I am talking about, evidently, by the lack of ratings and comments.
So imagine that site you seek. Reviewing "true indie" games. How many? Which ones? Is the site a hobby or is it generating money? A hobby site might review one day's worth of new Itch releases in a year. That is the order of magnitude. What I am saying, it is not rewarding for a hobby or a commercial site to create reviews for unpopular games. There are too many of them.
It gets better if you select a nieche with special interest. But that interest cannot be true indie. Go for retro pixel graphics rpg set in the future or whatever. https://itch.io/games/genre-rpg/tag-retro/tag-science-fiction That is less than 200 games. A hobby site can review those. But not a category that has 500 new games each day.
Though they never get seen, they are the reason people come here.
They are seen. And easily dismissed. Or how many games did you not visit, because you saw the cover image and the title and decided to try another game.
Also, users here are notorious for not commenting or rating. You can expect maybe 10 ratings for 100 followers. And only one of those ratings will have a review text. The fact that reviews are not attached to a game and viewable, as they are on Steam, might contribute to that situation.
There are many, if you dig around. One of the problems is that websites that review indie games can be very much like indie games themselves in that they're usually small, specialist, hard to find and- because they exist 'for the love', they often come and go very quickly.
Often the best place to go to is websites specific to a genre or region. Our upcoming adventure game, for instance, has had coverage in Adventure Game Hotspot, przygodomania.pl and Quest Time (a Russian site). Also, there are individual reviewers such as FutureCopLGF who posts videos of the best Newgrounds games each month, there are microbloggers, forums, small collectives who enjoy playing indie games with friends, sites that enjoy indie games and do something different to promote them (like your own website! Thank you for covering Five Day Detective by the way ;) ), there are podcasts like Save Your Game with Pushing Up Roses, or the Adventure Games Podcast, there are thousands of individual Twitch streamers and Youtubers.
Essentially, there's a tonne of great indie stuff out there and the scene's alive and well, but it often takes some finding. I'd love for websites like itchio to do more to help give a platform for people who cover their games- maybe a specific forum? As this helps us all :)
Those are some good links there, got any more? I haven't had much luck finding sites that post text reviews of real indie games. I have found a number of real indie blogs that post reviews of big releases, but even those are difficult to find. I will look into a genre-specific search, like you suggested.
I'd love for websites like itchio to do more to help give a platform for people who cover their games
That would have been fantastic.
The best thing to do- I find- is to google games of the level of indieness you want and see where they appear. For instance, if you search Dragonsweeper (which is a simple but very addictive browser game released on Newgrounds), you'll get sites like Rock, Paper, Shotgun, Kotaku, daily.dev and Thinky Games.
There’s Arcane Cache. I only know about it because my game happened to get reviewed, though.
I've had my games reviewed by random people or added to sites like vn database with reviews. It's not like it doesn't exist, it's just more niche? If it's indie, it's going to be niche lol you're not going to find a gaming publication for AAA games reviewing indie games. You gotta look for more obscure websites, zines, etc.
not really "reviews" but there's the guy who did my interview:
https://indiegamenews.github.io/IndieGameNews/?Page=1
I think he's pretty exclusive to the indie gaming sphere (although his content is a little mixed),
I hope he sticks with it, gaming journalism is pretty messed up right now and he's one of the few people who were willing to cover any indiedev adjacent content.
The ones I have found covering indie titles below. Looking at them, most game they cover are polished. They probably pick & choose the best they. The trick I think is to prepare a good press-kit (website with video, screenshots, etc). It's like a portfolio you would present a game company to get hired, do your best:
IndieGamesPlus
Website: https://indiegamesplus.com/
Alpha Beta Gamer
Website: https://www.alphabetagamer.com/
Indie Game Buzz
Website: https://indiegamebuzz.com/
GameIfYouAre
Website: https://gameifyouare.com/
Indie Game Reviewer
Website: https://indiegamereviewer.com/
Big Indie Beat
Website: https://bigindiebeat.com/
IndieWatch
Website: https://indiewatch.net/
IndieGames.com
Website: https://www.indiegames.com/
GameDeveloper.com
Website: https://www.gamedeveloper.com/
PressEngine
Website: https://pressengine.net/
