Ludocene: A New Game Discovery Tool

The following is taken from a press release supporting the launch of the Ludocene Kickstarter campaign (live now) mounted by Andy Roberts, a trusted expert on games curation and family gaming. GameCritics does not generally cover crowdfunding campaigns, but for this we’ll make a happy exception.

With games media changing and social media fragmenting, game discovery is broken. We need a reliable way to discover games that match our tastes. Somewhere that’s around for the long haul, is independent in the true meaning of the word and pays experts for their knowledge.

Ludocene is a new way to find your next game. It uses rich human-researched data to build you a unique catalogue of games you’ll love in three playful steps:

Build your perfect deck of games you love
Pick experts whose taste you trust
Browse your suggestions to view trailers and prices

Each game is represented by a card that you can interact with – click to view a game trailer and flip to view more details and the best prices on storefronts.

Like a dating app, you are offered a stream of games and swipe to build your deck of games that represent your taste. Every choice refines the stream of games offered as you hunt for your next game.

It feels like you’re playing a game, where winning is discovering video games that perfectly match your tastes.The biggest coup of our project is the amazing video game experts who are supporting us. We pay experts to set themselves up on the site so that you can select their Expert card and immediately have your game suggestions tailored to their tastes.

We’ve worked to find experts from all corners of the gaming world already: streamers, developers, journalists, podcasters. But this is just the tip of the iceberg and we’re sure you’ll have some great suggestions of people for us to add.

Simon Parkin (New Yorker), Lucy Bundell (Videoverse, Kinmoku Games), Alexander Donaldson (RPG Site), Christian Donlan (Eurogamer), Matt Lees (Shut Up And Sit Down), Dominic Tarason (Rock Paper Shotgun, PC Gamer), Rachel Watts (LostInCult, GamesRadar), Susan Arendt (Previously The Escapist), Brian Crecente (founded Kotaku, co-founded Polygon), Matthew Castle (Backpage Podcast), Josh Boykin (Intelligames Streamer), Nick Suttner (Panic, Eggplant Podcast), James Batchelor (GamesIndustry.Biz), Chris Schilling (Previously Edge), Mairi Nolan (Escape Room Championships), Joseph Mansfield (Thinky Games), Angela Hickman (Education and Healthcare), John Rogers (Gaming In The Wild), Cath Knibbs (Game Therapist).

Every expert on Ludocene will be paid for their time and expertease on setting up a profile and adding new games they find. There is a sizeable portion of our funding budget dedicated to this. But the more we fund, the more amazing experts we can add.

The Ludocene Kickstarter is live now and will run until March 13, 2025.