Curator for Shoot 'em ups on Steam

Recently, we've been asked why one of our curations of a game was "not recommended", despite the fact that the game itself had very good reviews, both in rating and amount. While this question did not change our curation of the game, it did prompt us to realize that the curator page itself had so far not clarified on what basis it recommends for or against games. This post is meant to remedy that. It does not signify any changes.

We do not per se intend to express that the games that we do not recommend are bad. Instead, this curator is meant to curate STGs and STG-adjacent games based more on sensibilities of the traditional arcade or arcade-style STG-oriented community, as the curator was founded from within and for that community. This does not mean that games that do not adhere to traditional conventions are automatically recommended against. However, it is not rare for such games to focus less on the qualities that traditional arcade(-style) STGs may provide (e.g. creative and meticulous stage, pattern or boss design and balancing), and instead focus on qualities that traditional STG players are commonly less interested in (e.g. ship/character upgrades, shop systems). While we do not use this term in the context of curation due to its connotations and ambiguity, we recommend the "Euroshmups" article on the shmups wiki [shmups.wiki] to read up on this divide within the STG genre.

We hope that you understand our decision. Should this curator's lens not be to your liking, here is a list of other STG-oriented curators we're aware of.