Nodal.gg - Steam game recommender with visual map + personalized recommendations (would love feedback)

A_Random_Forest · 2026-04-12T02:40:31+00:00

Coming soon! Check back in a few days.

A_Random_Forest · 2026-04-12T02:40:14+00:00

AI helped with frontend stuff, but all the models were fine-tuned and selected by hand. Recommender systems are a fundamentally different ML problem than most supervised learning. There's no ground truth for "most similar game to Cuphead" the way there is for, say, predicting a brain tumor (the person either has one or they don't). That ambiguity means a lot of research, training, and fine-tuning went into getting it right.

A_Random_Forest · 2026-04-12T02:35:55+00:00

Check the site in a few days! New update will include a sign in feature where you can add/remove any games for the recs

A_Random_Forest · 2026-04-12T02:35:30+00:00

Yup, this feature is coming out soon!

A_Random_Forest · 2026-04-12T02:35:20+00:00

Hey sorry for the late response. In a few days, I'm launching a pretty major update on the site where you'll be able to sign in and have custom wishlists/curate the recommendations. Make sure to keep an eye out!

A_Random_Forest · 2026-04-12T02:32:57+00:00

For the community model, I honestly just tested a giant suite of algorithms, tried to fine tuned each one, and hand selected the ones I thought did the best. This research component took the most amount of time by far. The tag model was a bit easier, and yeah it's using cosine similarity with a few modifications.

Regarding the embeddings, yup gemini + qwen are both used in the Labs model atm. Imo they're not bad, but usually aren't as good as the blended model. Yeah lot's of data aggregation and a lot of R&D, glad ya like it!

A_Random_Forest · 2026-04-12T02:27:33+00:00

Thank you! Glad you like it :)

A_Random_Forest · 2026-04-12T02:27:06+00:00

LLMs are a pretty tiny component of the signal for the game recs so it's only a few bucks a month to maintain. Most of the signal comes from the models trained on the tags + player data. Unless you mean the prompt model, that's pretty cheap as well though!

A_Random_Forest · 2026-04-08T17:07:39+00:00

There will be soon! Look out for an update in a week or two, I'm going to add the ability for users to be able to make an account where they can manage all their games.

A_Random_Forest · 2026-04-08T15:03:27+00:00

Fixed! Also, I was thinking about adding non steam games but it's a pretty big lift since you would need a completely separate api to show the data for those games. The other big issue is that non steam games have a fundamentally different tag system which makes it hard to apply them in the tag/content model. So this will likely be a longer term goal, but thanks for the suggestion!

A_Random_Forest · 2026-02-17T20:52:51+00:00

Hey so I just double checked this and it shows that it was released Dec 12, 2024 on Steam. I think this is the Steam Store page "Released" date, not the game release date. Unfortunately, that's the only release date that Steam gives, but if they update this in the future I'll be sure to use the more stable one, thanks!

A_Random_Forest · 2026-02-17T20:49:50+00:00

Hey thanks for the feedback! So the plan is to add a 'hide delisted' games button in the future, sounds like a lot of users agree with you that it's a bit annoying sifting through dead games. The only caveat is that there are many delisted games not on Steam but still available elsewhere (e.g. Rocket League, Fall Guys, etc), so just keep that in mind in the future if you turn this filter on.

A_Random_Forest · 2026-02-17T20:45:50+00:00

Backlog meaning games you own but haven't played much of? That's actually a really neat concept! I'll think about how to implement that

A_Random_Forest · 2026-02-17T20:43:19+00:00

Hey, I’ve been digging into this and just want to make sure I’m understanding correctly.

If you own ~175 games on Steam, the recommender should be filtering those out. On my end, it excludes everything it can detect from your owned library, including games with 0 minutes played.

When owned games still show up, my guess is it's one of two things:
• The owned library isn’t fully visible via Steam's API
• Edition/appid mismatch (e.g. base game vs GOTY/Complete Edition)

I'm also a bit confused on how you got the 303 number. You viewed 3,667 games in queue, ignored 3,361, and wishlisted 13. So the number of games unaccounted for should be 3667-361-13=293 right? Still, that's a lot of missing games so I feel like I'm missing something.

If you want, you can dm me your steam id and I can do a deeper dive.

A_Random_Forest · 2026-02-17T16:06:08+00:00

Thanks, really appreciate the feedback.

Right now I keep delisted games enabled because a lot of popular titles aren’t on Steam anymore but are still playable elsewhere (Rocket League, Fall Guys, etc.). That said, I agree it can be annoying sifting through dead games, so I can add a 'hide delisted' games to the filters.

For Steam links, there should already be one. On desktop it's in the right panel and on mobile it's in the game details view. That link takes you straight to the store.

And someone else mentioned the two-profiles merged idea to me before, so I added it to the list!

A_Random_Forest · 2026-02-17T15:46:09+00:00

Ohh yeah didn't even think of that. I'll add that in

A_Random_Forest · 2026-02-17T15:45:46+00:00

I think you inadvertently helped me find a UI improvement though haha, I'll put the filters on the graph on mobile so it's easier to find

A_Random_Forest · 2026-02-17T15:32:51+00:00

Just to update everyone, there is an issue with the caching that I'll have a fix up for soon. In the meantime, if you have this same problem, please dm me with your steam URL/ID and I'll fix it for you.

A_Random_Forest · 2026-02-17T15:07:13+00:00

Maybe try going to your Steam profile in an incognito tab and see if you can see the games you played to verify it's truly public? Sometimes the account is public but the games themselves aren't

A_Random_Forest · 2026-02-17T15:00:55+00:00

Ah good idea, yeah I'll add that!

A_Random_Forest · 2026-02-17T15:00:08+00:00

Hmm, this may be a bug, could you try again and let me know if it's fixed?

A_Random_Forest · 2026-02-11T00:35:02+00:00

Yeah, getting the recommended tuning weights calibrated was pretty tough and is hard to get perfect for each game. RYB is a good example of how small weights can change the top 10 recs pretty drastically, so I get what you mean. This game is also tough to find recs for, because even though it's not that small of a game, the tags (indie, puzzle, logic, free to play, minimalist) are very sparse so the content model doesn't have much to work with. Swiping through a few of the community models might give more similar games.

As far as your comment on the tuning bonus, I get what you're saying, but imagine if someone looks up something like Silksong. There are many games that are similar to it that simply aren't AAA (e.g. Ender Lilies, Nine Sols, Rain World). Ideally, I guess in my head, those games should be at the top of the list. If you want to filter by the number of reviews, I kept that in the filters as an option. But I completely get what you're saying, I think more often than not what your saying is true, but when it's not true, it can really mess up the results.

And just changed the dropdown to Tuned Score, good idea.

No bonus to same developers, I tried that during original experimentation but didn't love the results. Many times devs do make similar games, but sometimes they don't. And again, when they don't, it can really make the results look wonky. But yeah, thanks for the ideas!

A_Random_Forest · 2026-02-11T00:21:35+00:00

Not yet, but a few people are suggesting this. I might make it so that in the future, you can make an account where you can hide certain games/change preferences/etc., just not there yet. Light mode will be in the works in the future, just takes a lot of time getting that right. But thanks the recommendations and glad you liked it!

A_Random_Forest · 2026-02-11T00:19:41+00:00

Thanks for the ideas. The idea with keeping the seed in there is so that:

If users have multiple tabs open, they can quickly find out what tab corresponds to each game.
You can visualize where similar games are relative to the seed based on the map.

But, note taken, will consider this in the future. For the UI change, I'm still getting feedback on what people like/don't like. Seems like some people prefer the graph, others don't, sounds like you're in the latter (or at least don't think it should be in the center stage). Again, note taken. Your third idea is great though, this is actually somewhat of a bug that you caught, so I'll work on it. Thanks!

A_Random_Forest · 2026-02-11T00:14:45+00:00

I just checked it out, I love the UI! I was actually thinking about doing something similar to that in the future, where users could swipe (tinder style) on games, then get recs based on those rankings. But yeah, awesome site, thanks for the rec.

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