"Honest game recommendations from someone who actually plays them."
Games Genie is a one-person site. I’m Henk-Jan, a software architect based in the Netherlands. I built this because I kept spending twenty minutes looking for my next game and coming up empty. The roundups I found either didn’t match my situation or were clearly written by someone who plays games for a living and has no memory of what it’s like not to.
The site has two sides to it. The first is a recommendation engine that asks you a few questions about what you’re in the mood for and returns personalised suggestions from a database of thousands of titles. The second is a growing library of editorial articles: ranked lists, buying guides, and genre breakdowns written from actual playing experience.
Both exist for the same reason. Finding the right game shouldn’t take longer than actually playing one.
Every game that appears in a ranked list on this site is a game I have played. That is a hard requirement. I don’t rank games based on review aggregates or press releases. I rank them based on how they actually hold up when you sit down with them, alone or with a group of people with varying levels of interest and hardware.
My testing setup reflects how I actually play. PS5 on a QD-OLED in the living room for console coverage. A standard non-gaming laptop for low-end PC recommendations, because half my LAN group plays on exactly that kind of hardware and I want to know whether a game actually runs before I recommend it to them. A SteelSeries headset for online co-op sessions, where the communication layer is part of how the game works.
Articles are reviewed on a schedule and updated when rankings change, games leave a platform, or something I said turns out to be wrong. Every substantive update includes a summary of what changed. For the full picture of how content is produced and maintained, see the Editorial Policy.
The recommendation engine uses large language models to match your preferences against a database powered by RAWG, one of the largest game databases available. Tell it what you’re in the mood for and it returns suggestions based on genre, mechanics, platform, and play style rather than just popularity rankings.
It works best as a starting point. If a suggestion looks interesting, the editorial content on the site can usually give you a more grounded view of whether it’s actually worth your time.
Games Genie earns revenue through affiliate links and display advertising. Affiliate links mean that if you buy a game through a link on this site, I may receive a small commission at no cost to you. Display advertising is served by Google AdSense.
Neither has any influence over what gets recommended or how things are ranked. Games are not included because they have affiliate programs, and they are not excluded because they don’t. The full details are in the Editorial Policy, the Privacy Policy, and the Terms of Service.
Thirty years of gaming across every major platform. A LAN party group that plays on non-gaming laptops. A wife who completed exactly one game and whose opinion of it is more useful than most review scores. Two kids. A Swiss Shepherd with no interest in any of this.
The full version is on the author page.
Questions, corrections, or suggestions can go to the contact page or directly to legal@games-genie.com.