The Search To Play Blog

Hey gamers, Happy beginning of the summer ☀️ I am back with an overview of the updates I shipped to the Search to Play during the last month. [Search to Play development update June 2025] Mass syncing and Steam integrations After shipping Xbox and PlayStation syncing integration in April, I continued tweaking and improving it in May. I made it possible to sync all the games from one platform with just a click of a button. This approach has downsides as you’re missing out on rating and reviewing each game individually, but if you just want to quickly import your library, it should work well. [Mass sync button] In addition, I shipped the last platform I planned - Steam. It works the same way as PSN / Xbox syncing. [Steam sync] If you haven't tried the feature yet, you can find it inside your "Settings -> Integration" menu. Also check out the video instruction. Syncing feature currently only works one time. We don’t have any mechanism for automatically re-syncing the games after a while. That’s something I have on my roadmap. Added game series You can now see the new section on the game page where you can find all the games from the same series. [Game series section] By default, it shows 6 games, but you can click on the “Other games in series” link and see the full page with all the games from the same universe. [Doom game series page] It makes it way easier to discover sequels and spin-offs for games. Rating games without logging and game stats You can now rate games without the need to “Log or review...” the game. It makes it easier to quickly rate the games you’ve played. You'll also see a new section under the game poster: stats. It displays how many people have rated the game, added it to their backlog, or included it in lists. [Quick rate the game and stats section] Popular games sorting I’ve added a popularity algorithm to the project that uses a variety of metrics and weights from different sources. It turned out it’s quite hard to nail it as there is no fixed definition of what’s considered popular. I will continue to tweak it and hopefully add more data from the searchtoplay.com itself once we get more data. You can already see the trending games section on the landing page and your dashboard (the page you see when you log in). [Trending game section on the Dashboard] But you can also use the new “Most popular” sorting option on the games page. I think it’s better than “Recently released,” so I made it selected by default. [Most popular sorting option] I only recentely started populating this data, so it currently has around ~450 games, but eventually it'll be added to most of the games. Using decimal points in hours when logging the game This one was asked a few times, so I’ve added the ability to add fractional hours, (e.g. 10.5 hours) when you log the game. It also feels more consistent with platform syncing, as many platforms like PSN and Steam use this system too.  I was thinking about adding minutes instead, but it creates more complications, so I’ve settled on decimals for now, but it might change in the future. [Decimal point hours on game logging] Profile badges As a token of gratitude to our early adopters, all first 300 users now have a "Pioneer" badge on their profiles. I am planning to extend those badges for other future uses to reward active members. I am also looking at more places where to show them in addition to profile pages. [Pioneer badge on user's profile] Added websites to game pages Each game page now has related websites such as the official game website, wiki page, fandom page (or other fan-related wiki), and social media (X, YouTube, Instagram, Reddit, Facebook, and Discord). [Links on the game page] Other improvements On the game page, I organised reviews and playthroughs a bit better. “Review” is something with text and a rating, and “Playthrough” is other game logs. Each game now has separate sections to show both. On the game page, by default, we show only 5 recent reviews and playthroughs. But you can also click on either "Recent Playthroughs” and “Recent Reviews” to see dedicated pages for each. Sign up and sign in pages were improved and redesigned to make them a bit more nice and modern. Fix the star rating selection when reviewing the game; now it should feel much more responsive and accurate. A bunch of internal improvements, optimisations, and performance tweaks, so the project would continue working well. Content Alongside with the product I am trying to create gaming content, and currently experiment a lot with various formats.  If you’re curious, I am posting short and long-format videos on YouTube, short-form videos on Instagram, and talk about gaming news and recent highlights on X. I'm introducing a new type of content that's partly a blog post and partly a platform feature. It's called "Similar Games," and in May, I published posts for "Stardew Valley" and "Vampire Survivors." You can also find links to these posts directly on their respective game pages. In the future, I hope to automate this, creating a seamless game recommendation feature. If you have more content ideas, please share them! I’m considering launching a weekly gaming news newsletter for the platform members. What’s next I had planned a few things for May that I couldn't implement, so these will be the goals for June: • Introduce Premium subscriptions to help cover the platform's increasing costs and support future development. • Enhance the library section with sorting options and more data for completed games, such as ratings and platforms. • Adding likes (and possibly comments) to the review pages • Implement quick actions for games in various places of the platform, like adding to the backlog or rating. • Start building the MVP of the iOS application. Stay in touch Thank you so much for reading this. As usual, join the project’s Discord server or subreddit. It’s where I post most updates during the month. Also, follow me on social media at X, Instagram, and YouTube.  If you want to send feedback or report some issues, the best way is to use this form. 

Looking for more chaotic, fast-paced bullet hell roguelite games like Vampire Survivors? This genre has exploded in popularity over the past few years, since Poncle released their indie hit, and now there’s a wide range of titles offering fast-paced, wave-based combat with addictive roguelite progression. If you’re craving the dopamine rush of endless waves of enemies, rewarding chest mechanics and various builds, here is a curated list of the best games like Vampire Survivors to play in 2025. These games mix minimalist gameplay with interesting builds, endless waves, and upgrade mayhem — and many are perfect for short sessions that quickly spiral into hours. Prepare to lose yourself in the chaos and emerge victorious!

Stardew Valley is a gold standard of cozy farming simulators, combining life, crafting, friendships, and cozy and peaceful gameplay with nice pixelated graphics. But once you’ve spent 300 hours in Pelican Town, even the most dedicated fans might want to try something new. In this post, I’ve gathered a list of the best games like Stardew Valley that share its cozy, creative, or community-driven spirit. There are games on Switch, Steam, Xbox, PlayStation, or mobile, so everyone will find something to try. Let’s explore!

Hey friends! Thank you for visiting Search to Play — you’re among the very first users of the platform, and that means a lot to me. Your feedback is shaping the future of this project, and I’m genuinely grateful for your support. As always, feel free to reach out via email or leave feedback on this page. Now, let’s get into the May development update. I didn’t ship as much as I wanted this month — I had some personal matters to take care of and got sick for over a week — but still made some solid progress.[Search to Play development updates May 2025] Game service imports The main goal for April/May was to ship game imports - big feature that allow you to import your gaming library from other platforms so you can quicker start using the website. I want Search to Play to be the easiest place to bring your gaming history together — and that starts with imports your existing collections. You can try out this feature inside your settings. I started this feature with adding two console integrations: Playstation and Xbox. You can now enter your username/gamertag, click a button, and we’ll import your game history and match it to our database.[Linked PSN and Xbox profiles]This import also takes: • Game titles • Start and finish dates • Time played • Platform Note: Xbox doesn’t provide the start date and platform. After import, you’ll see an overview page of all matched games. From there, you can decide which ones to sync into your library and optionally add ratings, reviews, etc. Or skip the ones you don’t want or already reviewed.[Matched games list]I also created a quick 3-minute walkthrough video showing how PlayStation imports work. Xbox works the same way. This is the first version of the import system, and your feedback or bug reports would be incredibly helpful. Steam integration is up next. Play later list sorting Your Play Later list (aka backlog) now supports sorting! My own backlog is already over 70 games, so this was very needed. You can sort by HowLongtoBeat time or OpenCritic scores, game added, etc. There is also a fun “Shuffle” option if you want to pick something to play randomly.[Sorting options inside Play Later list] Spoilers protection If you are writing a review with spoilers and don’t want to spoil the experience for other players, select the “Contain spoilers” checkbox and your review will be hidden by default and must be revealed manually by clicking the button.[Spoilers protected review] Small improvements When logging the game, you can now select two new completion types “Multiplayer” or “Co-op” where appropriate. A few more improvements to the landing page and dashboard. A better overall layout and a new Best this year dynamic section based on OpenCritic scores. I’ve created a quick 2-minute video on how the platform works for new users, and it’s now live on the landing page and YouTube channel. Reviews now have dedicated pages for easier sharing and place for discussions in the future. Here is an example of such a page. You can now edit reviews from anywhere they’re shown, instead of going to the game page as it was before. When adding a review, the Finished date is no longer auto-set to today — instead, there’s a “Set to today” button. Published our first version of the Community Guidelines, inspired by Letterboxd, to help keep the platform respectful and focused. What’s next? The project continues to grow steadily, with new users signing up daily. The project recently hit the 250-signed-up users mark. Last month, I also launched on Product Hunt — while it didn’t blow up, it was a good learning experience and helped reach a new audience. I continue working on new features daily. Here's my current roadmap of features I'm planning. You can vote for the ones you find most valuable. My main focus for May includes: • Steam import integration • Improvements to list and game pages (like adding series, etc.)  • Review interactions (likes and possibly comments) • Introducing Premium subscriptions to help cover increasing costs of the platform and support future development. If you’d like to support the project and help it grow, that will be the best way to do so.  I continue being more active on social media, and I turned social profiles into more personal ones instead of the anonymous platform channels. I post everything related to games, and am mostly active on X (Twitter), Instagram, and plan to start publishing short and long-form videos on my YouTube channel soon. Follow along if you’d like to stay up to date or just hang out and talk games. Thanks again for reading and supporting this project. I hope you have a great and sunny May! Keep playing, take care, and I’ll see you soon.

Hey friends! First of all, thank you for visiting my little website. I’m truly honored to have you here among the very first users. You’re helping shape the future of this project, and I’m really thankful for it. I’ve decided it’s time to start sharing, in more detail, how the project is developing and what new features I’m shipping. In this very first post, I’ll highlight everything we shipped during March and the beginning of April. I plan to publish these updates monthly. Let’s go![Search to Play development updates April 2025] We have a blog now This is kind of meta, since you’re reading it right now, but I just wanted to highlight that I’ve added a blog where I’ll post dev updates like this, and maybe some gaming-related articles (like game collections on specific themes). If you have any ideas for the blog, just let me know by email. And yes, I’ll occasionally send out newsletter issues to users who signed up. I promise not to spam! Improved filters This is one of my favorite changes from last month. In the soft launch, filters were pretty basic, and it was time to level them up. First, I added multi-select filters, which makes finding games way more efficient.[Multi-filter select] In addition, a few more new options were added:  • Themes: Works similarly to genres but focuses more on the game’s theme (e.g., Drama, Fantasy, Open World). • Game Modes: Single Player, Multiplayer, Co-op, etc. • Years & Decades: Selecting specific years or even decades. [New filter options] Sorting was also improved, and a new Upcoming filter shows games that haven’t been released yet.[New sorting menu] Followers, Activity Feed, and Members Top 100 Pages Since this platform has a social aspect at its core, I want it to feel like a place where people can follow friends, see what they’re playing, and share thoughts about games. That’s one of the biggest focuses for me. So first small step: you can now follow and unfollow members of the community. Also, on any user’s profile, the Network tab (or clicking the follower/following counters) will show you their followers and people they follow.[Follow button and Network tab on profile] Of course, if you followed someone, you might want to see what those people are up to, so an Activity feed was added. At least for now, I don’t want to make doomscrolling the main aspect of this platform, so the feed is not the main focal point of the website, but rather one of the aspects of it. I like the Letterboxd approach in that sense. On the Activity feed, you can also view a Recent feed of activity across the whole site. For now, it’s manageable, as the platform is still in the very early stage, but as the site grows, I might limit it to the past month or something.[Recent Activity feed] I always like some friendly competition and leaderboards (in the opposite to algorithmic social media approach), so I’ve created Top 100 members leaderboards by various aspects: most followers gained, most games added, most reviews written, and most lists created. Hopefully, it will add some fun into growing your profile and climbing this leaderboard. Maybe some special badges will be added later to highlight your achievements ;) [Top 100 leaderboard for most reviews] Profile customization and profile page improvements Up to no, there was no profile customization, but I want Search to Play users to have unique and personalized profiles to share with friends and on social media. So now you can: • Change your username • Add a bio, website, and location • Upload a profile picture (hopefully, there will be less dull initials on a gray background 😎) • Change your password More customization options are coming![Profile settings] In addition, the entire profile page has been revamped and improved. Instead of navigating through various sections, all user information is now visible on the profile page, and you can simply click on tabs to switch views to display: • Overview: aggregated information about a user • Library: all the games a user is playing, completed, or abandoned. • Reviews: all the reviews a user has written. • Play later: backlog list. • Lists: all lists created by the user. • Network: showing all the followers and people they follow. • Activity: any activity a user does. I believe user profiles will continue to evolve over time, but I'm quite pleased with their current state and can’t wait to see more users grow and personalize their profiles.[Profile page tabs] Proper HLTB integration One of the key ideas behind this project is data-driven discovery. I often use data to make both small and big life decisions, including choosing games. From the start, I integrated my favorite services: Opencritic and How Long to Beat (HLTB). HLTB focuses on collecting data about how long players spend on games in various modes. However, the HLTB integration was very quickly implemented and frequently buggy, so it was time for an overhaul. After the update, the integration works like a clock. For (Ruby) developers out there, I even created a gem for easier maintenance and maybe to help some other developers with integration. Additionally, I added new parameters to display on game pages based on the game’s modes. For single-player games, it now shows Main, Main + Extras, Complete, and All styles (combination of all types of playthroughs).[HLTB data for single player game] For multiplayer games, two new sections were also added: Multiplayer and Co-op, showing how much people on average spend in each mode.[HLTB data for the game with multiplayer] Overall, this integration is now much more stable, and it has reduced the number of requests made to HLTB servers, improving the overall performance of searchtoplay.com. Some games may still contain outdated data, but the platform is gradually updating all games’ database to ensure accuracy. Store links Each game page now includes links to various stores. I’ve added links to the PlayStation Store, Microsoft/Xbox Store, Steam, Epic Store, and Amazon (our first experiment with affiliations).[Links to stores] Unfortunately, this data isn't as comprehensive on the IGDB side, so if you notice any missing links, feel free to email me, and I’ll add them manually. In the future, I plan to either automate this process or allow users to add game store links themselves. This way, we can build our own crowdsourced collection without relying on external APIs. Small improvements A few smaller improvements have also been made. I’ve improved the landing page and dashboard. Both are accessible via the root URL at searchtoplay.com, but what you see will depend on whether you're logged in or not. I’ve added dynamic user-generated content to both, such as recent reviews, created lists, and friends' activity on the dashboard. I'm still experimenting with these features and would love your feedback on what you'd like to see on the dashboard. Feel free to hit me up with any ideas. User profiles are now accessible directly via searchtoplay.com/ instead of searchtoplay.com/users/ as before. The old links still work and redirect to the new, more streamlined URLs. We've transitioned from the old game slug system to using IGDB’s. Since we rely on the IGDB API as our primary source for games, it made sense to adopt their slug system. Now, if you can find a game at searchtoplay.com/games/grand-theft-auto-v, it will also be accessible on IGDB at igdb.com/games/grand-theft-auto-v. This change also simplifies debugging of missing games. More consoles have been added to filters and game pages, primarily retro consoles, such as old Nintendo and Sega models. The newly announced Nintendo Switch 2 is of course also included. I've set up a newsletter pool of users in my email service provider. Any signed-up user will be automatically added to this pool, allowing me to send out newsletters (you've probably already received one). This setup also ensures users can unsubscribe from these emails while still receiving transactional emails from the platform. A sitemap has been generated for Google and other search engines. This project is likely to host the most pages I've ever managed on a website, with hundreds of thousands of filter and game variations. Google and other search engines don’t like this. So I’ve created a sitemap highlighting our most important content to guide search engines in identifying the key pages for indexing and ranking. Currently, it includes 210,000 pages. What’s next? I'm quite happy with the project's progress, but like any social-based platform, I need to attract more users and feedback to guide improvements. If you'd like to support future development, please share the platform with friends or provide any feedback at https://searchtoplay.featurebase.app or via email. Here's my current roadmap of features I'm planning. You can vote for the ones you find most valuable. My current top priority is importing games from other platforms, especially integration with PlayStation, Xbox, and Steam, allowing you to sync your games instantly without manual one by one entry. I am also trying to be slightly more active on social media, mainly on BlueSky, X, and Threads. Feel free to follow! You can also join our Discord server or Subreddit for any questions/feedback. Thank you for reading this, and I have a great and sunny spring! Keep playing, take care, and I’ll see you soon.