Posted April 25, 2025
high rated
GameSieve.com
What is it?
Full-text search for the entire GOG game catalog, with advanced filters and price-tracking for 12 currencies.
I've tried to optimize for information-density without reducing usability. I also put a lot of effort into correcting and enriching the data from GOG's API.
Lots more of all of that to come.
Why?
Because I wanted to prove to myself I could, and because I keep discovering new gems on GOG which I wish I'd known about years ago already. The way GOG surfaces games keeps throwing up the same old titles I already know - but there are simply too many games here for me to try and browse through them all without any direction. GOG's search and filtering is acceptable - but not more than that, while so much more could be done in this space.
Please use this space to blather about all the nitty-gritty details which no one cares about, while I go wander off and do something useful with my time - maybe try the site for myself?
Sure thing!
So, the basics...
Searching:
* The search field will search through most of the information you see on a GOG game page - though not the reviews or the technical requirements (those I'll try to expose as a filter at some point down the road).
* You can use "phrase searches", which are also useful for searching for special characters, e.g. for ultimate 'intellectual property': "™" "®" (but then, y'know, with the actual TM and (R) glyphs, rather than the way the forum mangles this) ;)
* You can exclude -terms -"and phrases", e.g. space shooter -warhammer -"star wars"
* I've tried to be intelligent with the way search works - really thinking about which results you might want. E.g. you can search for rpg or roleplaying game and get the same results. I might have blind spots though, so let me know if a search doesn't return something which you think it should.
Grouping:
* By default all editions, expansions, demos, goodie packs and bundles are grouped together into a single result for the main game. You can toggle this off in the top left for a more classic search (as on GOG). The one usecase I've personally identified where this is really useful is when searching for specific goodies like soundtracks. (If you care about those, try a non-grouped search for flac.)
* Search will return a result if any grouped product matches. Filters only apply to information about the "main game".
* If there are three or more products grouped with the main game, they'll be collapsed. (The 3 editions and 65 expansions for Europa Universalis IV take nearly two full screens to show!)
Product types:
* I've manually identified all editions, demos and goodie packs, and given them separate categories. It's always possible I missed - or misidentified - something. If so, please let me know about it. (N.B. I did apply a broad brush to what is a "demo". Prologues and similar free "tasters" also got lumped in there.)
* There've been a few cases where I made a call on what's most useful which goes against the way products are actually structured; e.g. the chapters of Higurashi When They Cry Hou are technically standalone games, but I decided that they make more sense grouped together as expansions. Lust From Beyond (NSFW) is grouped as an edition of the "M Edition" remake (rather than the other way around), and so on. I'll be happy to discuss the merits of specific cases if anyone cares.
Sorting:
* Default sorting when browsing (and on the homepage) is percentage difference of current price to the best from the last 365 days, followed by percentage difference of current price to the all-time low, followed by release date on GOG (most recent first; taking the date of the full release for early access games, where possible). So this preferentially exposes the best "new" deals, rather than the same old discounts you see during each and every sale.
* Default sorting when searching is "relevance score"; that is how similar each matching game is to the search terms.
* More sorting options are coming very soon.
Filters basics:
* There are two types of filters:
1) Regular drill-down filters, which can overlap with each other. You can exclude each of these with the "X" to the right.
2) Multi-select filters, which have no overlap (with the exception of "never"/"none in the last year" for "frequency of sales"), which allow you to pick multiple categories independently (so that's effectively an OR operation).
* All filters are just regular links, so you can open them in a new tab to browse multiple paths. This does mean all filters trigger a full page load (no fancy JavaScript here), which can be annoying if you want to enable multiple multi-select filters. I might revisit this decision, but for the moment the tradeoff felt worth it.
More about filters:
* The "exclude NSFW" filter is special, in being applied by default (also applying to the recent releases in the sidebar). It's a single click to turn it off, and that's remembered for followup searches. Once it's turned off, the "NSFW" term shows in the Tags filter and can be "required" as usual for any filter.
* If you're not certain what a specific filter does, try hovering over it for a tooltip (if you're not on a touch device), or simply enabling it. The resulting page will frequently have an explanation at the top, e.g. that the "rarely" filter for "frequency of sales" indicates that the game has been on sale 1-3 times in the last year.
* It's a lie that I added the "At most 10 expansions" filter from the "About the game" section purely to exclude Paradox games. You can after all also exclude that filter to get all games with more than 10 expansions! (And then you'll see that of the 30 results, 'only' 5 are published by Paradox.)
Price tracking and currencies:
* I have price history for the US since April 2021, with massive thanks to Yepoleb from gogdb for providing that. Whenever you see "all-time low", that means "since April 2021".
* I have price history for Canada, Brazil, the UK, Germany, Poland, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland, China and Australia since early December 2024. I extrapolate price differences before that based on US price history, but this is pretty crude, so take it with a grain of salt.
* For the moment I only present price information in a single currency for each country. If you have a usecase for wanting a non-default currency for one of these countries, let me know about it?
* As far as I know, prices in the entire eurozone are identical, so if you're from France, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, Austria, etc, you should just be able to look at German prices. (If anyone knows an example to the contrary, I'd love to hear about it!) At some point down the road, I intend to actually compare prices for all products for all eurozone countries to make certain of this, but for the moment this isn't a priority.
Data quality:
* Besides badly chosen defaults (the many release dates of xmas 1991 and NYE 2000 and so on), data entry at GOG is obviously the work of humans who occasionally suffer from fat fingers. I've identified and corrected a lot, but I have no doubt there's a lot more to find. I'll be happy to take a look at any errors you know about, and since I'm also a human, please let me know about my own fat-fingered mistakes as well! (I'm also thinking about a way to contribute fixes back to GOG, though I suspect I'd really need a more rigorous process for that to actually be useful / something GOG would actually want.)
Thanks!
* Again to Yepoleb for gogdb; the historical price data is invaluable, but the changelog has also been really useful for tracking down actual releasedates for games where the API presented clearly inconsistent data for releasedates.
* To mrkgnao for magog. I'm heading in a different direction, but all the same she's been a major inspiration for what I'm aiming for. Also for some useful pre-release feedback and feature requests.
* To Doc0075 and bjgamer for useful pre-release feedback and feature requests.
* To everyone who contributed to the following threads: The Unannounced GOG New Game Thread and Unannounced "In Dev" departures. You helped a lot with determining the release dates for some games where this was hard to pin down.
* To GOG. You're not perfect in many ways, but I still vastly prefer my gaming with GOG than without.
=======================
GameSieve.com
Any and all feedback, feature requests and bug reports welcome!
What is it?
Full-text search for the entire GOG game catalog, with advanced filters and price-tracking for 12 currencies.
I've tried to optimize for information-density without reducing usability. I also put a lot of effort into correcting and enriching the data from GOG's API.
Lots more of all of that to come.
Why?
Because I wanted to prove to myself I could, and because I keep discovering new gems on GOG which I wish I'd known about years ago already. The way GOG surfaces games keeps throwing up the same old titles I already know - but there are simply too many games here for me to try and browse through them all without any direction. GOG's search and filtering is acceptable - but not more than that, while so much more could be done in this space.
Please use this space to blather about all the nitty-gritty details which no one cares about, while I go wander off and do something useful with my time - maybe try the site for myself?
Sure thing!
So, the basics...
Searching:
* The search field will search through most of the information you see on a GOG game page - though not the reviews or the technical requirements (those I'll try to expose as a filter at some point down the road).
* You can use "phrase searches", which are also useful for searching for special characters, e.g. for ultimate 'intellectual property': "™" "®" (but then, y'know, with the actual TM and (R) glyphs, rather than the way the forum mangles this) ;)
* You can exclude -terms -"and phrases", e.g. space shooter -warhammer -"star wars"
* I've tried to be intelligent with the way search works - really thinking about which results you might want. E.g. you can search for rpg or roleplaying game and get the same results. I might have blind spots though, so let me know if a search doesn't return something which you think it should.
Grouping:
* By default all editions, expansions, demos, goodie packs and bundles are grouped together into a single result for the main game. You can toggle this off in the top left for a more classic search (as on GOG). The one usecase I've personally identified where this is really useful is when searching for specific goodies like soundtracks. (If you care about those, try a non-grouped search for flac.)
* Search will return a result if any grouped product matches. Filters only apply to information about the "main game".
* If there are three or more products grouped with the main game, they'll be collapsed. (The 3 editions and 65 expansions for Europa Universalis IV take nearly two full screens to show!)
Product types:
* I've manually identified all editions, demos and goodie packs, and given them separate categories. It's always possible I missed - or misidentified - something. If so, please let me know about it. (N.B. I did apply a broad brush to what is a "demo". Prologues and similar free "tasters" also got lumped in there.)
* There've been a few cases where I made a call on what's most useful which goes against the way products are actually structured; e.g. the chapters of Higurashi When They Cry Hou are technically standalone games, but I decided that they make more sense grouped together as expansions. Lust From Beyond (NSFW) is grouped as an edition of the "M Edition" remake (rather than the other way around), and so on. I'll be happy to discuss the merits of specific cases if anyone cares.
Sorting:
* Default sorting when browsing (and on the homepage) is percentage difference of current price to the best from the last 365 days, followed by percentage difference of current price to the all-time low, followed by release date on GOG (most recent first; taking the date of the full release for early access games, where possible). So this preferentially exposes the best "new" deals, rather than the same old discounts you see during each and every sale.
* Default sorting when searching is "relevance score"; that is how similar each matching game is to the search terms.
* More sorting options are coming very soon.
Filters basics:
* There are two types of filters:
1) Regular drill-down filters, which can overlap with each other. You can exclude each of these with the "X" to the right.
2) Multi-select filters, which have no overlap (with the exception of "never"/"none in the last year" for "frequency of sales"), which allow you to pick multiple categories independently (so that's effectively an OR operation).
* All filters are just regular links, so you can open them in a new tab to browse multiple paths. This does mean all filters trigger a full page load (no fancy JavaScript here), which can be annoying if you want to enable multiple multi-select filters. I might revisit this decision, but for the moment the tradeoff felt worth it.
More about filters:
* The "exclude NSFW" filter is special, in being applied by default (also applying to the recent releases in the sidebar). It's a single click to turn it off, and that's remembered for followup searches. Once it's turned off, the "NSFW" term shows in the Tags filter and can be "required" as usual for any filter.
* If you're not certain what a specific filter does, try hovering over it for a tooltip (if you're not on a touch device), or simply enabling it. The resulting page will frequently have an explanation at the top, e.g. that the "rarely" filter for "frequency of sales" indicates that the game has been on sale 1-3 times in the last year.
* It's a lie that I added the "At most 10 expansions" filter from the "About the game" section purely to exclude Paradox games. You can after all also exclude that filter to get all games with more than 10 expansions! (And then you'll see that of the 30 results, 'only' 5 are published by Paradox.)
Price tracking and currencies:
* I have price history for the US since April 2021, with massive thanks to Yepoleb from gogdb for providing that. Whenever you see "all-time low", that means "since April 2021".
* I have price history for Canada, Brazil, the UK, Germany, Poland, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland, China and Australia since early December 2024. I extrapolate price differences before that based on US price history, but this is pretty crude, so take it with a grain of salt.
* For the moment I only present price information in a single currency for each country. If you have a usecase for wanting a non-default currency for one of these countries, let me know about it?
* As far as I know, prices in the entire eurozone are identical, so if you're from France, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, Austria, etc, you should just be able to look at German prices. (If anyone knows an example to the contrary, I'd love to hear about it!) At some point down the road, I intend to actually compare prices for all products for all eurozone countries to make certain of this, but for the moment this isn't a priority.
Data quality:
* Besides badly chosen defaults (the many release dates of xmas 1991 and NYE 2000 and so on), data entry at GOG is obviously the work of humans who occasionally suffer from fat fingers. I've identified and corrected a lot, but I have no doubt there's a lot more to find. I'll be happy to take a look at any errors you know about, and since I'm also a human, please let me know about my own fat-fingered mistakes as well! (I'm also thinking about a way to contribute fixes back to GOG, though I suspect I'd really need a more rigorous process for that to actually be useful / something GOG would actually want.)
Thanks!
* Again to Yepoleb for gogdb; the historical price data is invaluable, but the changelog has also been really useful for tracking down actual releasedates for games where the API presented clearly inconsistent data for releasedates.
* To mrkgnao for magog. I'm heading in a different direction, but all the same she's been a major inspiration for what I'm aiming for. Also for some useful pre-release feedback and feature requests.
* To Doc0075 and bjgamer for useful pre-release feedback and feature requests.
* To everyone who contributed to the following threads: The Unannounced GOG New Game Thread and Unannounced "In Dev" departures. You helped a lot with determining the release dates for some games where this was hard to pin down.
* To GOG. You're not perfect in many ways, but I still vastly prefer my gaming with GOG than without.
=======================
GameSieve.com
Any and all feedback, feature requests and bug reports welcome!
Post edited April 25, 2025 by gogtrial34987
