zlacker

If a thing is well advertised, then it will never be a “hidden gem”, because people know about it.

But also, lists like that also implicitly often are euphemisms for “titles that are good, but cater to non-mainstream interests, and so never achieve vitality.” Hidden-object games get (probably unfairly and mostly self-perpetuatingly) classified as “girly games” — which leads to major game reviewers and journalists just completely ignoring them when they come out. So a good hidden-object game will almost always, inherently be a “hidden gem.”

>>derefr+(OP)
Fair, but mostly I'm talking about how certain genres have some extremely highly rated games that simply don't have a lot going on, because of user expectations being very low. This distorts the ratings to an extent, since a 95% for an RTS is generally going to be much harder to achieve than for a hidden object game.

>>Tulliu+i1
Surely if you’re looking for a game you pick a genre first, then look for the best reviewed game in that genre. It’s not like someone who wants an RTS game is going to choose a hidden object game instead because it has higher reviews.

>>imgabe+Ot
Some games are genre-defying, and so fall through the cracks of classification schemes based on how good the game is to appealing to fans of particular genres (e.g. does Undertale appeal to fans of bullet-hell shooters?) while still being otherwise agreed-upon as "good." One of the purposes of a general, non-genre-specific "Hidden Gems" game list would be to help you discover such games.

>>imgabe+Ot
It really depends. I absolutely do sometimes look for great games without specifying the genre ahead of time. That's part of why I've used the hidden gems list in the past.

Some games are so good that you may want to play them even if you're not the biggest fan of their genre. I guarantee you plenty of people played Undertale without being big JRPG fans.